Reclaim: Books 1-3

by J. A. Scorch

  "Just a simple strategy utilized by the UESF. Once you had gone through the training, your previous rank would have been restored."

  Teve shook his head. "I understand. Damn military."

  "Get some rest, Sergeant. You too, Specialist," Miller said as he began to leave. "In three days, we lay everything on the table. Be ready." He vanished around the curtain, leaving the three soldiers to digest the news.

  Teve glanced at Pocket and sprang into action. "Oh, I'm sorry. Mish, this is Pocket. Pocket, meet Mish."

  The two shook hands. Mish spoke first. "Pocket? I take it that's a nickname."

  "Yeah, a new one. Unfortunately, I think it might stick, too. Tower here got the better end of the deal if you ask me."

  "Tower?"

  "Right. You know him as Teve, don't you?"

  "Yeah, but I get it. Tower suits him."

  Scratching the back of his head, Teve turned a slight shade of red. "Just a stupid name, I guess."

  "Sounds like you don't seem to mind it," Mish said.

  The three shared a laugh and got to know one another over the next twenty minutes. Pocket left the two alone and headed off to find Romeo and Red.

  "I'll see you later," Teve said as she left. He turned back to Mish and kissed her on the cheek. "So, ready for the next crazy mission out there?"

  "I guess. Just wish we had more time before it all goes down."

  "I know. It's been a strange few weeks. I never expected to come out of it alive, but here we are."

  A moment of silence passed between them.

  "Tell you what," she said. "Until they come here and take you away from me, let's not worry about the future. For now, it's just the two of us and no one else."

  "Deal," he said. Teve climbed farther into the cot and pulled Mish over the top of him along with the blanket for the only bit of privacy the two would ever receive.

  "Just the two of us and no one else."

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Porter fell into his bed and felt the weight of a thousand missions come crashing down. Briggs was still out celebrating the victory and would be long into the night. Command let them have their time to break every rule in the handbook with the capture of the final Cyclone. Garcia and her teams from the fleet would be drooling over the alien ship, going through every inch of its insides for a scrap of intelligence. Porter had no idea if the destruction of the purple sphere ruined any chance the experts had of interfacing with the carrier, nor did he care.

  As he began to drift off into a deep slumber, a hand slid inside his blanket and ran its way over his chest. Porter flew up into the air to find Cannon there smiling away.

  "Hi," she said in her cheeky voice. "Didn't mean to scare you."

  "How did you even get in here?" Porter asked scratching his head.

  "You left the door open, silly."

  "Oh, Jesus. What an idiot."

  "Don't stress. You must be tired. Hopefully not too tired, though." Cannon gave him a special grin.

  "Come here," he said. "I'm never that tired." He pulled her farther into the bed as a surge of energy woke him up. Once they had finished, the two fell asleep and stayed that way until someone came to find them.

  A knock at the door woke Porter up. He checked the time and realized he had been down for nine hours. It was the deepest sleep he'd had in years. "Don't tell me you forgot your keycard, Briggs," he said as he walked toward the door. Porter opened the seal to find Garcia standing there.

  "Sir? What brings you here?" He tried to conceal Cannon on his bed with his body.

  "I know she's in there with you. That's not why I'm here." Garcia pushed through. He didn't resist. The commodore walked in and sat down on Briggs' bed. Porter had never seen her so frazzled. Her hair was a mess, her eyes were bloodshot, and her hands had a slight shake.

  "I'm sorry to intrude on the two of you, but neither of you responded to my calls."

  "What's going on, ma'am?" Cannon asked as she slid her clothing back on. Porter got fully dressed at the same time.

  "It's about the Cyclone."

  "What about it?" Porter asked as his brows dropped down. A million bad thoughts ran through his head at once, but nothing concrete came to mind. He and Briggs had killed the brain of the ship. There was no coming back from that.

  "When you attacked the lower deck, it sent the Cyclone into a lockdown mode. The automated sequence is the reason the ship began to leave the area. All the alien personnel on board were placed into what we can only assume was some form of hibernation, possibly for long-distance travel."

  "That explains why none of the Zeal were active when we got inside."

  "Indeed, but that is not the bigger problem here. When the ship went into lockdown mode, it sent out a distress signal."

  "A distress signal? You mean like back to their home planet?"

  "Something like that. Don't ask me how, but our team has deciphered the outgoing beacon and more importantly, the return message."

  Porter's heart skipped a beat. He normally had nerves of steel being a Stalker pilot. Death waited around every corner, but he feared the next words out of Garcia's mouth more than anything else.

  "The return message was brief with one clear point: more ships are on the way."

  "Jesus," Cannon said. "How many?"

  Garcia shook her head. "No idea."

  "Do we at least know how long before they arrive?"

  A smile formed on Garcia's mouth. It wasn't a happy one as her eyes came closer to bursting into tears. "We don't know precisely, but the use of hibernation technology would suggest a time ranging from months to years, but our understanding is limited. All I can tell you is that the Zeal are coming and they comprehend what we've done to their ships."

  "I'm guessing they won't be sending a small fleet this time round," Cannon said. Porter had never heard her voice sound so deflated.

  Garcia shook her head. "There's a strong possibility the Zeal will send every spare ship they have to our system. If that happens, our crippled fleet won't be able to hold them back. Mars will fall. Earth will die. Humanity will end."

  Garcia slumped down farther into Briggs' bed. Silence filled the small space as all three officers lowered their heads.

  "No. That won't happen," Porter said as he raised his head and stepped toward Garcia. "You said it could take them years to arrive."

  "In theory."

  "And we have one of their ships and are capable of interfacing with it."

  "What are you getting at, Porter?"

  "That it's not over. As far as I can see, we have an opportunity to find out how the Zeal function and how they managed to attack us in the first place. We've all seen their arrogance. Well, now they recognize we are not a species to be taken for granted."

  The commodore nodded her head. "Yes. We can reverse engineer their technology and use it against them. We also have thousands of Zeal bodies in that ship. We could see what makes them tick. Figure out how to kill them easier."

  Cannon stood from the bed, both hands on her head. "This is crazy, right? The chances of us pulling off some grand defense to stop them will be slim to none."

  "Not if we work together: Mars and Earth," Porter said. "For once, humanity will need to think of the bigger picture and fight side by side instead of competing for top spot." Porter directed his words at Garcia as he stared into her eyes. "If we do this, we have to do it right. Otherwise, we are all dead. I know I have no right to ask or expect anything from you, but I feel like we can get humanity back on track and set things right. Are you with me?" He offered Garcia his hand.

  She stared down at his open palm with narrowed brows before glancing back up to his eyes. "You really are a crazy son of a bitch." She grabbed his hand and gave him a firm shake. "You'll be the death of me, Porter."

  BOOK 3: REBORN

  By

  J.A. SCORCH

  Copyright © 2017

  All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  Staff Sergeant
William Pérez woke from hibernation. The tiny life pod's alarm blared away in his ear, timing itself with a concoction of chemicals designed to wake him from the deepest sleep of his life. His hands immediately reached for the breathing mask wrapped around his face, pulling it off a second later. Despite knowing he had been wearing a respirator for the past however many days, Pérez couldn't cope with the feeling of the tight plastic on his face.

  He let out a groan as his eyes blinked and adjusted to the auto lights flicking on overhead. After several eye rubs, Pérez pulled himself up and out of the hibernation chamber that had been his home for an unknown number of days. He instantly felt the atrophy in both of his arms as they strained to pull him up and out of the sterile, white coffin.

  The vomit came up on its own, spilling over the side of the box, dousing the limited space with a black substance that only made him want to hurl more.

  "What the hell is that?" he asked nobody, unable to take his eyes off the throw up on the ship's floor. It was then he remembered the only other person inside the life pod, Junior Science Officer Gabriela Souza.

  After taking a moment to catch his breath and clean his face, Pérez climbed out of the coffin and stretched out his weak frame. He wasn't old enough to feel this way, but his body ached as if he'd been asleep for months.

  He checked Souza's hibernation unit, quickly checking on her life signs. He found an array of positive readings, allowing him to take a moment to collect his thoughts.

  Hibernation, however long a person was subjected to it, took its toll. For every day spent in stasis in one of the Mars Armed Forces' life pods, the chances of death increased. Without delay, Pérez tapped out a sequence of commands to wake Souza from her deep slumber. The lid on the hibernation chamber folded open and away as the unit slightly raised its occupant on enough of an angle to stir her safely. Souza went through the same agonizing routine as Pérez, all the way down to the black vomit.

  Without a hello, she asked Pérez the one question he had chosen to ignore in his mind. "How long have we been asleep?"

  His voice croaked. "I'll check. I didn't think to find that out before waking you." He shuffled over to the nearest display fixed to the wall of the life pod and ran the primary analysis of their hibernation. When the data came flooding down, line by line, the final number spewed out by the ship's computer almost made him fall over.

  "What is it?"

  Pérez spun around with his mouth open. He went to speak, but the figure wouldn't allow him to.

  "What does it say?"

  Pérez shook his head as he gave himself time to think straight. "1,503 days."

  "No," Souza uttered.

  "Afraid so," Pérez half whispered. "How are we even alive?"

  Pérez was a sergeant in the Marines while Souza was a junior science officer. If anyone could answer his question, it was her.

  "We should be dead," she said.

  "Well, that's reassuring," he said as he spun around on the spot grabbing at his head.

  "The why doesn't matter now. What's more important is where we are."

  Pérez nodded his head. Finding that out never occurred to him either. Nothing of importance seemed to be flowing through his mind at that moment. It was as if he couldn't work out how to add two and two together.

  "Help me out, will you," Souza said, holding out one of her hands. Apparently, she noticed Pérez freaking out.

  "Ah, yeah. Here." He grabbed her wrist and pulled up slowly, knowing her body would be as fragile as his. Souza reached for her temples, no doubt tending to a similar migraine.

  "Pass me that e-slate from the wall."

  Pérez turned around and yanked the fixed display off the mount, handing it over to Souza a moment later. Her fingers entered dozens of commands into the small unit. Whatever information it was giving her caused her brows to screw up tightly.

  "So?"

  Souza gazed up from her screen, lowering it with one hand. "We are at the Mars relay. There's a ship locking on to our beacon as we speak. It should be here within a few hours."

  Pérez let out a long breath. Why it took them this long to travel only a short distance was irrelevant. All that mattered was what had happened in the last four years. The last thing Pérez and Souza saw were three massive alien spaceships heading on a direct path to Earth and Mars.

  "How bad do you think everything might be?" he asked.

  "Well, given the fact that a ship is coming to pick us up, hopefully not too grave, but it's been four years. Anything could have happened in that time."

  Pérez kept shaking his head, remembering the massive mechanical aliens that killed his entire squad without any effort. The eyes of all the soldiers he'd failed stared into his mind at once, in particular, the greenhorn private who he had tried to save.

  "Are you okay?" Souza asked. On two rocky feet, she attempted to comfort him as best one could after four years of hibernation.

  "I'll be fine. I just need a minute to think about this. I mean, one second we are fighting for our lives, the next we wake up from four years of sleep. Who knows what we are going to find back home—if there even is a home left to go to."

  Souza went to speak, but her mouth froze on the first word. There was nothing she could say to comfort him.

  Pérez sat down on the edge of his hibernation unit as more thoughts of failure hit his mind. The pair of them had somehow escaped a ship full of vicious aliens after witnessing the death of their comrades. Pérez had given himself one final objective before he fell asleep: warn Earth and Mars about the invaders. Once again, he had failed.

  As he went to ask Souza another unanswerable question, a memory hit the forefront of his mind like a slap in the face: the data stick.

  He jumped up and paced across the short gap to the storage unit fixed to the side of the life pod. Inside hung his battle armor and weapons, and more importantly a small, foreign object that resembled an ancient data stick. He pulled out the small gadget from a secured pocket in his armor and held it up to Souza.

  "Why have you taken that out?"

  Pérez studied the small indents on the device as he raised it to the light. He looked around and said, "This has to be important. This has to have been worth all the death we witnessed. Otherwise, these last four years of our lives have been meaningless."

  Souza stepped over to him and placed both hands on his biceps. She stared up into his eyes, offering him more than she ever had in the past. "We are going to make this right."

  Without another word, she held him tight and drifted to the timer counting down on her e-slate. In less than two hours, a small Martian freighter was going to pick them up and let them know just how bad the last four years had been.

  Chapter Two

  Master Sergeant Teve Porter stayed low as he stared ahead at the alien base. The towering citadel hovered over the city of Atlanta, staring down at the mess below of twisted iron and shattered memories of the once-thriving civilization. He aimed the sights of his X762A1 rifle at the peak of the tower, spotting the dozens and dozens of alien drones hovering around the top of the Zeal construction.

  Staff Sergeant Roxanna Mishina crept up beside Teve and raised her weapon to stare down the scope of her rifle to discern what he was gazing at.

  "What do you see?"

  "The same old crazy bullshit."

  "Yeah, this base looks no different than the last three we destroyed. It's a little bigger than most, but apart from that it's filled with the same damn alien pricks."

  Mish lowered her rifle and tugged on his sleeve. "Why do you think they've got us on this recon? I mean, we know what we're doing now. It's been a year of this. You think Command would figure it out by now."

  "Command can never work out anything, that's why we're here." Teve glanced around and noticed Red, Pocket, and Romeo all waiting for his orders. The team of Special Forces had spent the last twelve months attacking bases within occupied cities the alien invaders had seized four years ago. Every base had been the same. H
ordes of the regular Stilt soldiers defended the former municipalities with their lives, fighting down to the last soldier. Only the deadly, blade-covered abominations known as hybrids gave off any resistance to the Special Forces. With alien nanites running through their bloodstream, Teve and his team of enhanced soldiers could manage to take on the hybrids with the added support of the regular United Earth Forces.

  "How far into the city do we need to go?" Mish asked.

  "As far as Command wants us to. They are watching the live feed through our helmet cams. I was told to keep pushing forward until they contact me and say otherwise."

  "Jesus. What the hell kind of mission is this?"

  Teve shrugged, not knowing what else to say. It was highly irregular for Command to give such an order. Every other base they had destroyed came about with a much more direct approach. Teve thought back to the first city they liberated: Los Angeles. The Special Forces were loaded up in UHC80 transporters. The standard drop ships were initially used to insert the Special Forces soldiers into the middle of Zeal occupied territory. He remembered the first time the pilot climbed to a high altitude and opened the rear loading bay. He and Mish crept up to the edge of the open compartment and felt the wind howling in at an alarming rate, tearing into the body of the craft like a sandstorm. When the green light buzzed, the pair dropped out from 10,000 feet above the city.

  Parachutes would create an easy target for the Zeal to shoot at, so the Special Forces used gravity dampers on their palms to slow down their descent to a reasonable rate, enough to let them reach the surface at a fast pace without breaking their bones. Even if they did break a leg, the alien nanites in their bodies would rapidly heal any injuries.

  While the Special Forces dropped from the sky, the regular soldiers of the United Earth Forces would storm the city in armored Humvees and transporters. The soldiers on the ground kept the aliens busy that day as Teve and his team moved in swiftly, heading straight for the base. The towering alien structure built on top of what was left of Los Angeles was their only target.