"Warriors, pilots, and all soldiers of humanity. It is with honor that I, Admiral Evan Bryan, lead you in this journey. We have embarked upon the great flight, the final crusade. The hopes and prayers of humanity everywhere, upon Earth and all her outposts, fly with you today. In the company of your brothers and sisters-in-arms, you will bring about the utter destruction of the scum menace, the elimination of that cruel empire's tyranny over the galaxy, and security for our species to thrive upon our Earth and the planets beyond.
"Your task will be hard. The enemy is plentiful and brutal. He will fight savagely.
"But we are no longer the frightened, shell-shocked species we were fifty years ago, back when the enemy first devastated our world, when they butchered billions of our people. Over the past fifty years, I have seen humanity grow stronger, grow bolder, rise from the ashes like a phoenix. I have seen the Human Defense Force grow from a ragtag group of partisans into a mighty military that can challenge any force in the galaxy. Today we fly to victory!
"As we fly toward Abaddon, toward destruction of the enemy's planet, our brave brothers and sisters back on Earth fight to defend our world. We expect the enemy to strike Earth. We expect them to strike with furious vengeance. But we expect Earth to fight them well. We will fight them in space. We will fight them in the air. And should they reach the fair soil and sea of our planet, we will fight them there too, in field and forest and city and ocean. As we fly to an alien world, we do not forget the world we leave behind, the world we—even here, so far from home—cherish and fight to protect.
"For fifty years I have served in this military, and I have seen in its warriors the noblest spirit of humankind. You are strong. You are brave. You will overcome. You will win!
"Good luck, warriors of Earth, and may the stars forever shine upon you."
They all stood silent for a long moment, staring out at the fleet. Finally Addy whistled.
"Not a bad speech," she said. "Still, not quite as good as mine."
Across the fleet, hundreds of exhaust pipes began to glow blue. Osiris turned from the controls to face the platoon.
"The fleet is beginning its activation of warp drive, ma'am," she said to Lieutenant Ben-Ari. "Engaging azoth hyperspace engines."
Marco noticed that only the largest ships seemed to have hyperspace engines. The smaller vessels, such as the Firebirds and ambulance jets, were powered by simpler thruster and nuclear engines, incapable of faster-than-light travel. As he watched from the viewport, he saw those smaller vessels move in closer to the larger ships. Many of those larger ships moved out to form rings around the fleet. Marco inhaled sharply, realization dawning on him.
"We're all going to bend spacetime together," he said. "We're going to suck up the smaller ships into our warp like a boat's wake sucking up smaller boats behind it."
"Correct," said Osiris. "If you fly close enough to a ship bending spacetime, you can fly within its curve, sharing its warp. We're creating a massive tunnel through space." The android smiled. "I'm proud to say: Even the HDFS Shithouse is equipped with azoth engines and prepared to help the warp."
"Don't call it that," Lieutenant Ben-Ari said. "This ship has a real name."
"Sorry, ma'am," said the android. "I thought it would be funny. Do you want to hear another joke?"
Addy groaned. "Great. Does every unit of these androids tell groaners?"
"Whoever coded them must have had a sense of humor," Marco said. "Or a streak of sadism."
The engines brightened across the fleet, shining pale blue. With a sudden blinding flare, the fleet's flagship, the HDFS Terra, blasted off into hyperspace, vanishing in a streak of light that stretched into the distance. With it, it carried the forms of a hundred smaller ships sucked into its warp. An instant later several other ships followed, streaking forward, leaving trails of light, dragging with them the smaller jets. One by one, the ships of the fleet popped out of regular spacetime, entering the warped space that would allow them to travel faster than light.
"Warp drive in three," said Osiris, "two, one . . . Activated."
Marco blinked.
He was hovering outside the viewport, gazing at himself standing on a bridge ahead. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, and he was back in the ship, but the chamber was too small, curving like a donut, and Lailani and Addy stood above him. The viewport was a kilometer away, so small he could barely see it, and his legs were a kilometer long. He cringed and shook his head wildly, struggling to focus. Finally the dizziness and strangeness faded. Once more, he existed in regular three dimensions, standing among his platoon on the bridge of the Urchin. The rest of the fleet was still flying around them, a hundred thousand vessels, but the stars now formed lines all around them. They were flying through a vast tunnel of light, moving many times faster than the speed of light. It was impossible, of course, to travel faster than light, but they were bending spacetime around them, bending the very laws of physics.
"Jump to hyperspace completed," said Osiris. "Estimated travel time to Abaddon: Seven days, three hours, and twelve minutes."
A hundred thousand ships, Marco thought, gazing around him. His head spun again, and it wasn't the warp drive this time.
Some in the platoon returned to their bunks or the mess, but Marco remained on the bridge, watching the fleet flying through the tunnel of light. He could see spacetime curved around them, forming a pathway like a giant wormhole. Spacetime itself, the actual fabric, was invisible, but Marco could see the starlight bending, even wisps of engine light. When some of the Firebird fighters strayed too close to the warp's edge, they seemed to stretch out, their wings to bend, until they flew back toward the larger warships.
"We're like the Israelites following Moses through the Red Sea," Marco said. "But instead of fleeing Pharaoh, we're flying toward him."
"And will kick his mummified ass," Addy said.
"Try to get some sleep, soldiers," Lieutenant Ben-Ari said, walking toward the doorway. "Osiris will guide the ship onward. Use the next few days to rest."
"I'll stay up for a bit here if it's all right," Marco said. "Goodnight, ma'am."
Addy yawned, scratched her backside, and wandered away too. "Sleepy time."
The bridge emptied of soldiers, leaving only Marco and Lailani alone with the android.
"We're flying in a spaceship," Marco said. "Among a hundred thousand spaceships. Bending spacetime, traveling many times the speed of light, heading hundreds of light years away from Earth, all while piloted by an android. It's not what I was expecting when I showed up at RASCOM and a doctor cupped my balls."
"You know what they say." Lailani gave him a wan smile. "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."
"Or the Scummish Inquisition, in our case."
"Hey, don't offend my people!" Lailani gave his arm a playful bite. "Chomp. Confess! Confess!"
"You're only one percent scum," Marco said. "So be quiet, you one percenter. Occupy Lailani!"
She bit her lip, stood on her toes, and kissed him. "You can occupy me."
He placed his hands on the small of her back, and he kissed her, and he knew what he was fighting for. Not just for Earth. Not just for humanity. For her.
A light caught the corner of his eye.
He turned toward the viewport.
Still holding Lailani, he frowned and pointed toward the edge of spacetime's curve. "Lailani, do you see a purple glow?"
She paled. She gripped his hand. Suddenly she was trembling. "Marco, I . . ." She gripped her head with both hands and grimaced.
The fleet's ships began to change formations. An alarm blared.
With indigo light and flaring white flashes, the tube of spacetime tore open, and a cloud of scum ships swarmed in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sirens blared.
"Scum attack!" rose a voice from the speakers. "All pilots to your Firebirds!"
The alarms rang through the HDFS Sagan, one of forty jet carriers in the fleet. Kemi ran down the corridor. Hun
dreds ran with her.
"All Firebird pilots, take flight and engage the enemy!"
Kemi kept running, heart pounding. Through a viewport, she saw scum vessels fill the sky, their ships organic and veined, wreathed in purple flame. One of the pods flew toward the Sagan, and the jet carrier shook and roared like a thousand metal beasts. Kemi fell against a wall, pushed herself off, and kept running.
She burst into Hangar 18 where her squadron—the Avalerions—was positioned. Fifteen Firebird jets were there. The other pilots were already climbing into their jets. Kemi saw Major Verish, commander of the squadron, close the cockpit on his own jet. Kemi raced across the hangar, leaped into her Firebird, and yanked the cockpit shut as the hangar doors began to open.
Air streamed out from the hangar into space, and before her, she saw the inferno.
"My God," Kemi whispered.
The scum pods filled space. Thousands were flying there. Several pods slammed into a cruiser, shattering the ship, and the explosion tore apart smaller vessels nearby. As the ships collapsed, they fell out from hyperspace, smearing into elongated lines of gray and red before fading.
"All right, pilots, stay close to me, and here we go!" said Major Verish, flying his ship out from the hangar.
Kemi glanced at the photo she had pinned to her dashboard, showing a young Lydia Litvyak, the first female fighting ace.
Be with me, Lydia.
She flew out from the hangar with her squadron, entering a sea of enemies.
Scum pods flew toward her squadron and slammed into the Firebird jets.
Kemi screamed.
One of their jets exploded, and the pilot's scream died in her headphones. Fire raced across her cockpit. Her ship shook madly. The hull dented. Shrapnel slammed into her. Another jet shattered, showering flames and metal across space, and Kemi kept flying, and a scum slammed into her cockpit, clawing the silica, trying to break in, and she fell, she fell, and below her spun hundreds of ships, firing their cannons, and the scum were everywhere, pods crashing into hulls, cracking metal, spilling out centipedes.
"Avalerion Squad, rally!" rose Major Verish's voice. "Battle formations!"
Kemi couldn't see the others. She couldn't breathe. Scum were everywhere. She fired her machine gun, sending rounds into a pod, and it burst, and another pod skimmed across her tail, knocking her into a spin. Space whirled around her. She saw scum pods slam into a massive cruiser, a ship with thousands of marines inside. The ship cracked open, and the warriors spilled out, hundreds, then thousands of them, kicking, screaming silently, dying in the vacuum. Shrapnel pelted Kemi's jet, nicking her cockpit. The shattered cruiser dipped, nearly split in half, and vanished from hyperspace with a streak of light and cracking metal.
"Ensign Abasi!" Major Verish's voice emerged from her headphones, and she looked up, and there—she saw him and the surviving Avalerions. From fifteen Firebird jets, ten remained. She pulled her joystick, flying toward them. A scum pod flew toward her, and she fired her machine gun, riddling it with bullets, and it cracked open, spilling out lavender fumes and centipedes. She flew through them, cracking their bodies, and rejoined her squadron.
The Firebirds quickly took formation. Kemi had only been training for several weeks, barely knew what to do, and this all seemed too big for her, too dizzying. Hundreds of other jet formations flew around them, streaming across space. The scum were everywhere. Thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, slamming their pods into the human fleet. A cargo ship collapsed, spilling out water, gasoline, and munitions that burst and destroyed smaller vessels. The curves of spacetime began to straighten out. The scum slammed into an azoth engine of a jet carrier, and turbines rolled through space, and suddenly the Firebirds were all falling, stretching, shrinking, and the stars wobbled and snapped into single dots. Kemi was flying in regular space again, and all around her, starships were reappearing in reality, some right by her, others thousands of kilometers away. All formations seemed to crumble, ships flew upside down, ships spun madly. Some were still in hyperspace, streaming overhead, appearing as lines of light.
And in the confusion, the scum were merciless.
The alien pods—small fighters the size of Firebirds—flew everywhere, taking fluid formations like schools of fish. Larger vessels flew there too, massive, red, pulsing, sticky ships like the disemboweled organs of giants, lurching and leaking through space, pumping out more fighters from valves and sphincters. There was no metal in their fleet, no plastic, no smooth lines or sharp angles. They constructed their vessels from their own biology, spewing and sweating and expelling membranes to form these veined structures, giant eggs and shells of flesh. Their ships spurted miasma and globs of searing acid, tearing into the hulls of human starships. They belched out purple flames to roast Firebirds. They birthed centipedes that flew through the vacuum, their claws shattering the cockpits of Firebirds and ripping out engines from star cruisers.
And around Kemi, Firebirds fell from the sky. They burned, twisted, careened through space. They tumbled like sparks from a flame, vanishing into the distance, spinning and petering out. At her side, centipedes slammed into a Firebird in her formation, ripping it apart.
Everything was silent.
In the vacuum, everything was so silent.
Perhaps more than the devastation, the death, the monsters . . . it was the silence that unnerved her. She was watching a silent film of oblivion.
A pilot spun through space, a claw in his chest, and thudded against Kemi's jet, then scraped across the hull and vanished. The sudden sound—thud, scrape, fingernails on the hull—tore her out of her reverie.
"Major Verish?" she spoke into her communicator. "Maj—"
She looked over to his Firebird. Verish was still flying beside her, his cockpit cracked open, a scum feasting on him. Slowly, almost gracefully, his jet rose higher, higher, and slammed into the belly of a cruiser above. Fire rained.
Kemi's heart sank.
This wasn't supposed to happen, she thought. We're still light-years away from Abaddon. We're being destroyed before even reaching our destination.
Another Firebird collapsed nearby. Dead warriors wheeled through space before her.
Kemi touched the black-and-white photograph of Lydia Litvyak on her dashboard. Lydia was her inspiration in this war, but Lydia had also died at age twenty-three, shot down while assaulting a formation of Nazi planes.
Kemi raised her chin.
If I die, I die. I die fighting. Like her.
"Squadron!" she said. "Rally here, battle formation! Let's kill those sons of bitches."
The others flew closer—eight Firebird jets, all that remained of their squad of fifteen. A swarm of scum pods streamed toward them, a hundred or more.
The squadron fired their missiles.
The projectiles streamed forth, leaving trails of light, and tore into the scum swarm. Pods shattered. Centipedes spilled out, spinning, slamming into jets. One cockpit crashed open, and the pilot tumbled out into space, only for other centipedes to grab him and tear him apart.
Kemi took a deep breath.
Feel them. Feel the scum. Think like them.
She cringed. She never wanted to think like the aliens again. But if she were to survive today, she had to connect to their hive. Had to smell them. Like she had back on Corpus.
She bit her lip, and she let them in.
Smells, visions, cruelty, hatred filled her mind. The network spread before her, a labyrinth of light and shadow, racing with a million senses.
She was Kemi. She was alien. She was them.
Kemi fired again, spraying bullets, ripping open more pods.
"Come on, boys and girls, higher!" Kemi said. "Follow!"
She soared.
"You're flying too high!" said a pilot, voice crackling in her headphones. "You're flying right at them!"
"Trust me!" Kemi shouted. "Follow!"
She soared and the other pilots followed, storming toward a cloud of pods. She swerved left hard.
The pods flew to the right. The Firebirds sprayed out bullets. Kemi dived, and the other Firebirds followed, and an instant later a swarm of pods streamed overhead, narrowly missing them. Kemi zipped forward, knowing where every pod would fly a second in advance, able to whip around them as other squadrons collapsed. Their missiles flew, tearing into the enemies. All around, squad after squad of Firebirds burned. Kemi led her pilots onward.
I know you. I can kill you. You cannot hurt me again.
"See that scum meatsack up there?" Kemi said. "Let's rip it open."
They soared higher, bullets knocking back pods. The meatsack hovered ahead: a massive scum ship the size of a warship, throbbing and pulsing, veins rippling across its surface. Kemi was reminded of the medical experiments she had seen back in the hive. This ship seemed grown from such organic material, and she cringed, wondering if human DNA—maybe even live humans—formed part of its construction. She felt the ship's hatred ooze from it. It was a living, stinking creature, a vessel of meat and consciousness.
"Fire!" she shouted.
Missiles flew from the squadron, streaked through space, and slammed into the enormous sack of meat above.
The bloated scum ship burst open.
Fleshy gobbets, yellow liquid, and shards of what looked like bone spilled out. Centipedes followed. Kemi pulled her trigger, firing another missile into the opening. An explosion filled the scum vessel with light and fire. Kemi banked hard, swooped, and rose through a rain of fleshy globs. She fired again, firing bullets into a cloud of pods.
"Hell yeah!" shouted one pilot in her squadron, voice emerging through her headphones.
Around her, the rest of the fleet was beginning to regroup too. Warships were firing their plasma cannons. The great jet carriers were blasting out photon beams. Many human ships were still distant, trying to fly closer, to reach the battle. Space itself seemed to burn, a vast arena of light and plasma and fire and shattering metal. Beyond, far in the distance, the stars shone on, Earth's sun lost among them.
Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3) Page 11
