Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3)

by Daniel Arenson

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The battle raged around him, a theater of light and flesh and metal and blood.

  Marco stood in one of the Urchin's gun turrets. It was a bulky metal pillbox that bulged from the ship's starboard, dented and chipped. A rusty cannon thrust out from it. Through a narrow viewport, Marco could see the scum ships everywhere.

  "Die, assholes!" Addy's voice echoed through the ship. She stood in another turret, and Marco saw the shells fly from her cannon, slamming into a scum vessel.

  Marco aimed his cannon, a gun the size of an oak tree. The Urchin lurched. He nearly fell. He gripped the gun, planted his boots steadily on the floor, and stared through the viewport. The ship swayed, and there—a scum meatbag in the distance, firing globs of slime at the human fleet.

  There were no triggers on this cannon. It was an ancient design, and Marco had to yank a cord like kick-starting a lawn mower. The cord tightened. A shell the size of a baby blasted out from the cannon, streamed through space, and sank into the scum ship. It was like firing a bullet into a slab of jelly. For a moment it seemed like the meatbag had swallowed the shell. Then the explosion tore the scum ship apart, showering out chunks.

  Marco breathed out in relief.

  "Hell yeah!" Lailani said, standing at his side. The tiny soldier lifted another shell, wobbled under the weight, and carried it toward the cannon. They loaded the gun.

  Light flared through the viewport. Marco turned to see scum pods flying toward them. The Urchin jolted as the pods slammed into the hull. Centipedes spilled out.

  "Damn it!" Marco yanked the cord, firing the cannon again.

  White light.

  Flames.

  Pounding pain.

  He flew backward, slamming into Lailani, falling, falling, and the light washed over him, and his ears rang.

  He couldn't breathe, and he thought he was dying, and his throat constricted, and the smoke was everywhere. Ringing. Ringing in his ears. His ears were full of screaming, clanging cotton. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, saw blood on his fingers. Lailani lay beside him, curled up, coughing.

  He managed to push himself up, to kneel above her. He pulled on his gas mask, then grabbed Lailani's gas mask from her pack and slipped it over her face.

  "Lailani!" he said, and he couldn't hear his voice.

  She rose, shivering, and they lurched backward and stared at the cannon. It had shattered. Bits of scum lay strewn across the gun turret.

  "Scum got into the cannon," Lailani said. "Fuckers blocked it. Like an old Looney Tunes where Elmer's rifle backfires after Bugs sticks his finger in the barrel." She pulled a piece of shrapnel out of her leg and yelped in pain.

  "The air's leaking out," Marco said. "Come, back into the ship."

  He pulled her out of the gun turret, back into the main hull of the Urchin. His ears still rang, and he was bleeding somewhere, wasn't sure where, but blood was on his hands, on his cheeks. He slammed the round door to the gun turret shut, sealing off the breach. The Urchin lurched again as more pods slammed into it, and he and Lailani fell down hard in the corridor, banging their hips.

  He rummaged through his pack and found his military-issued bandages. He slapped one onto Lailani, then found his own wounds—gashes on his hands—and bandaged them too. For a moment they sat together, breathing heavily. The ship rattled whenever shells blasted out from the other turrets.

  "You all right?" Marco asked Lailani.

  She nodded. "Shaken, and the leg hurts like a son of a bitch, but I'm all right."

  "Let's go help at another turret," Marco said. "We can load shells."

  She nodded, and they were limping down the hall when they heard the crackling behind them.

  They spun around and saw it there. A scum in the corridor, ten feet tall, rearing before them.

  Damn.

  Marco pawed for his Fyre rifle. It still hung across his back. He managed to spin it around, to grab a plasma pack from his belt, to load . . .

  The scum lashed its claws, knocking his rifle aside. Marco leaped back, fell down. Lailani fired her gun, and her plasma flared out, but the scum shoved her down, and the blast missed, and Lailani hit her head hard on the floor.

  The scum leaped toward Marco. His gun was trapped under him. He drew his knife and tossed it, hitting the creature's mandible. A claw lashed down, scraping across his shoulder, just missing his neck. Marco yanked mightily, pulled his gun free, and roared up fire.

  The plasma washed across the scum, and its exoskeleton melted, dripping searing-hot globs onto Marco, burning his uniform and skin. He grimaced and brushed them off, his fingers sizzling. Lailani rose to her feet, her helmet tilted, and blasted more fire, finishing the job. The scum curled up, exoskeleton melted. The soft innards still lived, throbbing, bubbling, mewling pathetically, but without the exoskeleton it was no threat.

  "Damn, they are ugly without their shells," Lailani said, staring at the wiggling pink goo.

  "Pink slime," Marco said. "It's what Spam is made of, you know."

  Lailani smacked her lips. "Mmm, it's full of scummy goodness!"

  Another gun turret had shattered on the ship, killing the two gunners. Marco and Lailani grabbed spacesuits from the corridor, then entered the breached turret, plasma guns firing. Three scum were there, feasting on the dead. Marco and Lailani burned them, melting their shells.

  The vacuum of space gaped open through a crack the size of a man. In their spacesuits, Marco fired the cannon while Lailani kept loading more shells. Scum vessels shattered before them. Through the gaping breach in the turret, Marco could see the battle: thousands of ships, human and scum, firing their weapons. The scum's meatbags, as large as warships, kept belching out purple globs that seared through metal hulls. The smaller pods were whipping around the battle, fighting squadrons of Firebirds. Missiles streaked through the battle, lighting the darkness.

  Marco had never seen, never imagined anything like this, over a hundred thousand ships firing their guns together, a battle that spread out for thousands of kilometers across space, some of the ships so distant they were merely specks of light shooting luminous streamers.

  The battle lasted for hours. They fired shell after shell, ripping through the scum. Across the sky, the fleet pounded the enemy, and the Firebirds flitted between the cruisers and jet carriers, taking out the pods one by one.

  Finally Marco and Lailani shot a last shell, tearing through a scum meatbag, and the battle ended.

  The scum swarm was gone, its last few centipedes flailing into the distance.

  "Victory!" rose distant voices from their ship. "Victory!"

  But as Marco gazed across the fleet, he knew: This victory came at a terrible cost.

  The fleet had shattered. Several jet carriers, each of which had held thousands of soldiers and hundreds of fighter jets, had been destroyed. They now floated as chunks of metal. Cargo ships had fallen apart, losing precious water, food, and ammunitions. Countless Firebirds and their pilots were gone. Warships listed, dead, cracked open and filled with a few last centipedes.

  Aboard the Urchin, the Spearhead Platoon stepped onto the bridge and stared at what remained of the fleet. The voice of Admiral Bryan rose from the speakers, crackling, grainy, vanishing and reappearing.

  ". . . We don't yet know the losses, but estimate . . . thousands of ships lost. Casualties will be in the hundreds of thousands. Medical bays will be moving between ships, and . . ." For a moment, nothing but static. ". . . salvage teams will attempt to repair those ships that still float. We will be opening a communication wormhole to Earth. News to follow. All ships, regroup in your formations. Report to . . ."

  The signal gave a last crackle, then died.

  For several hours, Marco sat on the bridge, watching the salvage efforts. Small ships zipped back and forth, some of them medical ships bearing red crosses, crescents, and Stars of David, others ships of engineers and mechanics struggling to repair cracked hulls and damaged engines. There was no time for funerals, no
space to store bodies. Thousands of coffins were sent into space, a burial in darkness.

  Throughout the day, updates came in spurts through the speakers. They had left Nightwall with a hundred thousand vessels, about half of them single-pilot fighters, the rest ranging from small three-man ships to massive jet carriers.

  They had lost a quarter of their fleet.

  Over two million soldiers had perished.

  "This was a battle on the scale of the Somme," Marco whispered. "On the scale of Stalingrad. This was worse than Vancouver. This was the worst massacre since the Cataclysm. Two million lives, just . . . gone."

  The platoon stood together on the bridge, heads lowered. They had won the battle, but this victory felt an awful lot like defeat. And Abaddon, homeworld of the scum, was still many light-years away.

  Two million, Marco thought, still reeling. This wasn't just a battle. It was genocide.

  "Look!" Lailani said, pointing. "There, between those ships!"

  They all stared. A small swirl of light formed between two cargo vessels, expanding, then shrinking to a dot ringed by a halo. Behind it, they could see a strand swirl into the darkness like the funnel of a maelstrom.

  "They've opened a wormhole to Earth," Marco said, and even through the grief, he felt a sense of wonder. "A way to communicate faster than light. See how the HDFS Terra is pointing its radio dishes toward the wormhole? They're going to send and receive signals through it."

  For a long time, there was silence. Finally the wormhole closed, and Admiral Bryan's voice emerged through the Urchin's speakers. The general sounded grim.

  "We've received news from Earth," rose his voice through the static. "In response to our invasion of their space, the scum have begun their assault on Earth. The Iron Sphere defense system is standing. As expected, it is achieving a ninety-eight percent success rate at blocking the scum attacks. But two percent of the pods have gone through, and their punishment has been devastating. The cities of Calcutta, Yekaterinburg, and Chongqing are gone. We do not know the number of casualties, but we expect them to be in the millions." The admiral paused, then spoke in a hard, deep voice. "We will continue our mission. We have suffered terrible losses, but our resolve still stands, stronger than ever. Our fleet is still mighty. In ten minutes we will return to hyperspace and continue to Abaddon. We will defeat the scum emperor. We will achieve nothing less than complete victory."

  Lailani raised her hand high and held out two fingers. "Victory."

  Addy followed her lead. "Victory."

  Soon the entire Spearhead Platoon—the warriors tasked with killing the emperor himself—raised their fingers in salute. "Victory. Victory."

  Marco repeated the word with them, but he couldn't summon the determination he saw shining in his comrades' eyes. He knew that their journey had just begun, that many more terrors waited on the way. Many more lives lost.

  Millions are dead, he thought. And we're still far from Abaddon.

  The ships reactivated their azoth engines, forming a new funnel of curved spacetime. They flew on—limping, bloodied, battered, hurtling toward the enemy's world.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They plowed on through scum space, hour after hour, day after day, cannons firing, plasma blazing.

  The scum attacked relentlessly, harrying their flanks. Rarely a moment went by without alarms blaring, without scum pods streaming into hyperspace, without the Firebirds rising to face the menace. The enemy did not mount another major offensive. With each assault, they sent only a few hundred vessels against them. But their sorties came without rest.

  "It's like The Old Man and the Sea," Marco said, lying on his bunk in the Urchin. He gazed out the window at the battle outside, a hundred-odd scum pods engaging a wing of Firebirds.

  "The who and the what now?" Addy said.

  "It's an old book," Marco said, thinking of Jackass. They had once had a long conversation about Ernest Hemingway. It seemed another lifetime now. "An old fisherman catches a great fish, so large it can't fit in his boat. He pulls it behind his boat toward the shore. Along the way, little fish show up and nibble, tearing off bits and pieces of the fisherman's catch. By the time he reaches the shore, there's nothing but bones."

  Addy tilted her head. "Are you saying you want to go fishing?"

  "I'm saying we're the big fish dragging behind the boat," said Marco. "And the scum are biting away at us. They lost the major battle at the border. So now they'll nibble and nibble."

  Addy rose from her bunk, stepped toward his bed, and bit his arm—hard.

  "Ouch!" he said.

  "Nibble," she said.

  "Why does everyone keep biting me?" Marco shoved Addy away when she tried biting him again. "Get lost. You're not a minnow, you're a goddamn shark with those teeth of yours."

  The speakers in their bunk crackled to life, and Lieutenant Ben-Ari's voice emerged. "All troops report at once to the bridge."

  Marco glanced around the bunk, but the others all shrugged. They smoothed their uniforms, pulled on their boots, slung their Fyre rifles across their backs, and left the chamber. They gathered in formation on the bridge, the entire platoon. Lieutenant Ben-Ari stood there in her battle fatigues.

  "How many of you," she said, "are familiar with the Guramis?"

  "The gourmet?" Addy asked. "Like Spam sandwiches?"

  "Guramis," Marco said. "I've heard of them, ma'am." The platoon turned to look at him. "A sentient alien species. If I recall correctly, they live on an ocean world, spending their lives underwater."

  Ben-Ari nodded. "Very true. The Guramis are highly intelligent and have developed an advanced technological civilization on par with our own. In recent years, the scum empire has encroached on their territory. The two civilizations have been clashing in space, with the Guramis losing most battles. The Guramis just began venturing out into space a couple of centuries ago, around the same time humans did. And they've suffered horribly at the claws of the scum. Only months ago, the scum assaulted the Guramis' world, poisoning the water. Millions of Guramis died."

  Addy licked her lips. "Are you sure they're not made of gourmet Spam?"

  Marco elbowed her. "Shush, biter."

  Ben-Ari continued. "Recently, we reached out to the Guramis, requesting their aid in fighting the scum. Until now, the Guramis have refused, fearing scum retaliation. We believe the time is right to approach the Guramis again. They grieve the loss of millions of their kind. They will want a chance to fight back. We can offer them that chance. Their fleet—at least, what remains after their long war—is smaller than ours, but their starships are mighty."

  "Great," Addy said. "Spam-fish flying fishbowl starships. As if things couldn't get any weirder in our lives."

  Sergeant Jones growled and stepped toward her. "Linden, watch it, or your life will involve cleaning latrines for the rest of the war." That finally got Addy to shut up.

  "Admiral Bryan has sent his orders," Ben-Ari said. "Our platoon will visit the Guramis' homeworld and meet with their high council. We're to convince them to fight with us."

  The platoon glanced at one another, then back at Ben-Ari.

  "Ma'am," said Marco, "why us? We're not dignitaries. We're not high ranking. With all due respect, we're just grunts."

  "Yeah!" said Addy. "Why is it always us, the same people in this huge army, who do all the big stuff?"

  "Watch it, Linden!" Sergeant Jones warned.

  Ben-Ari looked at her boots for a moment, then took a deep breath and raised her head. "You're right," she said. "We're just grunts. We're not high ranking, we're not dignitaries, but we are famous."

  "For clearing out the Corpus mine, ma'am?" Marco said. "Surely we're not the only platoon that—"

  "Because of my father," said Ben-Ari. She took another deep breath. "My father was the first human to make contact with the Guramis. They will speak to no other human . . . aside from his daughter and the soldiers she leads."

  Marco understood. He had heard of the Ben-Ari family, o
f course. Most soldiers had. They were a famous military dynasty, a family that lived in the Human Defense Force. Their country had been destroyed. They had no ancestral home, no wealth, no land. Their only home had been the military for generations. Einav Ben-Ari was only a lieutenant, a junior officer, not a mighty colonel or general, but her family name preceded her. Marco had heard that Colonel Yoram Ben-Ari, Einav's father, had been an accomplished officer. He hadn't known that Ben-Ari Senior had also been an explorer and ambassador.

  "We'll emerge from hyperspace in an hour and head toward the Guramis' world," said Ben-Ari. "Oh, and everyone—wear your spacesuits. The Guramis are a gilled, water-breathing species, and their planet has no solid surface, not even an ocean floor. We'll be scuba diving."

  As they walked back toward their bunk, Addy nodded at Marco. "You were right," she said. "Just like The Old Man and the Sea. Fish everywhere!"

  * * * * *

  The HDFS Urchin—Ben-Ari sighed to think of how her soldiers called it the Shithouse—flew out of hyperspace and glided toward the watery world ahead.

  "Well, Father," she said softly, gazing out the viewport. "I'm doing what I always hated you for." She smiled bitterly. "I'm going to all the places you left me for."

  She did not like thinking of her childhood. She did not like dwelling on her anger. Throughout so much of her childhood and youth, she had suffered that horrible anger, endless rage, shouting, breaking things, running away, crying in the darkness. As an adult, she had learned to release that anger, to always remain calm. It served her as a soldier, as a leader—but mostly, it served her as a person, as a daughter.

  "All my childhood," she whispered, "I just wanted a home, Father. A house. A yard. A dog. Stability. I wanted you to have a boring job working nine to five, and I wanted more than anything to know my place in the world. But you dragged me from one military base to another. From one rocky outpost to another. I grew up among soldiers. I grew up in the military. I grew up with guns instead of teddy bears, with sergeants instead of babysitters."