Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3)

by Daniel Arenson

  Another deep breath.

  Let go of the anger, Einav. You're not that girl anymore. You're not the girl dragged from base to base, who ran away five times, who sought comfort in alcohol and the arms of rough boys. You're a confident, successful woman now, a leader of warriors. All that matters now is the mission. Not the past.

  She watched the watery world of the Guramis draw closer. At first it was just a blue marble, not unlike Earth, cloaked in swirls of cloud. Yet as they drew closer, Ben-Ari saw no landforms. The world was composed entirely of water. There wasn't even an ocean floor there, just liquid all the way down. Some scientists believed there was a small, metallic core buried deep within this planet, barely larger than an asteroid, but for all intents and purposes, here was a massive, floating bubble of water.

  Her platoon joined her on the bridge. The soldiers stood together, watching the planet approach. The Urchin—this clunky, rusty old cargo ship, chosen precisely because it seemed useless—flew closer until the ocean world filled the viewport. From the water below rose several alien vessels.

  "They're a lot nicer than scum ships," Addy said. "They look like fishing lures! Ironic, considering the Guramis are fish, right?"

  Ben-Ari sighed. The girl was always speaking out of turn, and if this were any other time, any other war, Ben-Ari would have confined Addy to the brig by now.

  In a way, Addy was right. The alien vessels did look a little like glittering, spinning fishing lures. They were long and slender, and the sunlight gleamed against them. Green and blue fins spread out from their silver hulls, coated with scales that functioned as solar panels. As the alien ships flew closer—there were three of them—Ben-Ari could see transparent bulbs bulging out from their thin hulls like eyes. Blue water filled the cockpits, and creatures swam within, still too distant to see clearly.

  "The way humans fill their ships with air," Ben-Ari said to her platoon, "the Guramis fill their ships with water. In many ways, we humans are like fish ourselves, but instead of swimming in a sea of water, we swim in a sea of gasses."

  "Especially after Marco eats cheese," Addy said.

  "Very funny, stinky feet," Marco said.

  Ben-Ari groaned. "I will court-martial you both someday, you know."

  Osiris turned from the controls toward them. "Ma'am, the Guramis send a message. They say that if our ship is not waterproof, they will offer transportation down to their city."

  "Tell them we accept," said Ben-Ari. "I think the Urchin is rusty enough as it is."

  "The Urchin?" said Addy. "What's the Urchin?"

  "That's the ship we're on," Marco said.

  "This piece of junk?" Addy raised an eyebrow. "I thought it was the Shithouse."

  Marco groaned. "You didn't really think that was the real name, did you?"

  "Well, it suits it!" Addy said. "And that's what everyone calls it."

  "Emery, Linden, enough!" rumbled Sergeant Jones. The burly, bald NCO was fuming, fists clenched.

  One of the Gurami vessels hovered up beside them. They orbited the watery planet, two hundred kilometers above the endless ocean. From a distance, the alien ship had seemed small and delicate, a glimmering jewel, so dainty and beautiful by the bulky and boxy Urchin. But up close, Ben-Ari saw that the silvery ship was massive, easily three times the Urchin's size. It had a central pillar, silvery and smooth like mother-of-pearl. Its eight wings thrust out like flower petals, coated in scales that changed color as the sun hit them, alternating between lavender to blue to gold to turquoise.

  "Did you know?" said Osiris from the controls. "The Guramis build their ships much like the scum do. They produce the material from their own bodies, similar to how clams on Earth can produce pearls. In fact, the entire ships are made of a material similar to pearls."

  "Maybe Marco can buy me one," said Addy. "I'll wear it as a necklace."

  Two shimmering fins stretched out from the alien ship, spinning and coiling around each other, lengthening and forming a tunnel. They snapped onto the Urchin's round door, enclosing it.

  "All right, platoon, follow me," Ben-Ari said. "We're all going. Osiris, you stay and man the fort."

  "The fort, ma'am?" the android said. "Man it?"

  "Android the ship," Addy suggested. "That means you stay and guard while we're gone fishing."

  Osiris smiled and saluted. "Happy to comply! Have you heard the joke about the fisherman and the . . ."

  The platoon hurried off the bridge. They walked through the ship, wearing their spacesuits, until they reached the exit door. The suits worked in space, and according to everything Ben-Ari had read, they would work underwater too. They weren't bulky, white spacesuits like those astronauts had worn in the old days when the astronaut Pat Szabo had first walked on Mars. Here were slick, form-hugging suits, black and deep blue, similar to diving suits used on Earth's oceans. Fitting, perhaps. Oxygen tanks hung across the soldiers' backs, and they wore their Fyre plasma guns too. The rifles were designed to work in water—Earth's navy used them too—and Ben-Ari figured the weapons would impress the Guramis.

  They want to see that we're warriors, she thought. That we can defeat the scum. And they want to see me, the daughter of the first human they ever knew.

  They opened the door. The Gurami tunnel, formed from the scaly fins, spread before them like a jet bridge. Air from the Urchin's airlock filled the tunnel's vacuum. Once the platoon had entered the tunnel—it was a tight squeeze—they closed the Urchin's airlock behind them. They now hung in a thin, translucent cylinder hundreds of kilometers above the planet. The material bent under their boots; it seemed as thin as paper. Ben-Ari winced. If the material tore, it would send them plunging down to their fiery deaths in the planet's atmosphere. They would be nothing but ashes and chunks of spacesuit by the time they reached the ocean.

  At the end of the tunnel, where it connected to the Gurami ship, stood a shimmering doorway like mother-of-pearl. The doorway—it looked a bit like a seashell—pulled open.

  Water flowed into the tunnel.

  "Bath time!" Addy said. "Anyone bring a rubber ducky?"

  "Good, maybe it'll wash the stink off your feet," Marco said.

  "Just be careful around the cheese, Marco," Addy said. "We'll be able to see the bubbles."

  "How mature, Addy." Marco rolled his eyes. "I forgot that they drafted seven-year-olds these days."

  The water rose around their boots, then their knees, finally their chins. It was warm and soothing. The water level kept rising, soon halfway up Ben-Ari's helmet, and she fought the ridiculous feeling of panic as it rose above her nose. Her head was enclosed within a helmet. She could breathe fine in here. Still, it was a little disconcerting once the water rose over her head, filling the tunnel.

  A melodious voice flowed from ahead, deep and beautiful.

  "Enter, humans. Welcome."

  Ben-Ari led the way, swimming into the alien starship.

  She had grown up with her father's stories, but she had never joined him on his journeys. Einav Ben-Ari herself had never been beyond the solar system until this year, let alone inside an alien starcraft. She gazed around, struggling to hide her wonder from her platoon.

  She floated in a vast, round, glittering chamber, a piece of the ocean risen into space. As a child, her mother had once taken her to an aquarium, and little Einav had marveled at the massive tanks full of seaweed, coral, rays, sharks, and colorful fish. This place put that old aquarium to shame. There were waves, actual waves here, probably produced synthetically to mimic the world below, the same way humans mimicked gravity on their starships. Plants the size of oaks grew here, swaying in the water. Among them floated wondrous organisms, so small that Ben-Ari could have caught them in her palm. Each seemed to have a different shape: some like jellyfish, others like spinning wheels, some finned, all spinning and gleaming with bioluminescence. They were, perhaps, this world's version of plankton.

  "Hello, Gurami!" Addy said, waving at a tiny jellyfish. "We come in peace!"

&nb
sp; "Um, Addy?" Marco said. "I think you're talking to their food." He pointed. "Look."

  Ben-Ari looked too. An alien came swimming toward them, about twice the size of a human, consuming the smaller creatures as it advanced. Its actual body was small, but graceful fins rose from it, blue and purple and coiling like banners, forming most of its size. Three indigo trumpets thrust out from its head, forming three mouths, and four eyes blinked above them. Dozens of golden tendrils hung from the alien's underbelly like the stalks of jellyfish, trailing through the water. As a child, Ben-Ari had once owned a betta fish, a beautiful animal that had lived for two years in a fish bowl. This alien—a Gurami—reminded her of that old pet.

  "Um, Marco," Addy whispered behind them. "Don't mention the tuna you had for lunch. Might have been a relative."

  "Addy, shush!"

  Ben-Ari glared at the two—they really did need time in the brig—and returned her eyes to the alien.

  "Thank you, kind Gurami," she said, "for welcoming us aboard your vessel. My name is Lieutenant Einav Ben-Ari, daughter of Colonel Yoram Ben-Ari, a man who knew your world well. I come to you now with friendship and with important words for your leaders."

  The Gurami bobbed in the water, its fins swaying. Several more of the aliens swam behind it. Ben-Ari noticed that there seemed to be three kinds of Guramis. Some had long purple-and-blue fins like curtains, another type was silvery and fat, while the third kind was smaller and plainer, their underbellies blobby and their backs lined with spikes.

  Of course. Ben-Ari thought back to her father's stories. The Guramis had three genders. The fat silvery ones laid the eggs. The purple ones showed off their beautiful fins, with the loveliest member allowed to fertilize the eggs. The plain ones roosted on the eggs, their backs spiked to deter predators. Ben-Ari knew that some species in the cosmos had three, four, even five genders, but she had never seen them with her own eyes.

  The Gurami seemed to nod, purple and blue fins flowing. The tendrils beneath its body swayed like curtains, and one of its mouths—shaped like a trumpet—trilled with a beautiful, melodious voice, raising bubbles. "We know of the great tragedy in your world, of the great cruelty of the enemy, of the great battle only several turns of the world ago. Come with us into the waterdepths. Time moves slowly in the sea but ever races in the great dryness above. Time is now our enemy. Come, now! Into the murk. Into the great Mother Sea."

  The ship began to descend back toward the watery planet. Through the round windows, Ben-Ari could see the stars, then swirling clouds and blue skies. There was barely any tremble, barely any heat to their reentry. They descended through the cloudscapes, through rain, through rainbows, through swirling plains, layer after layer of clouds, and finally—with barely a jostle—into the water.

  They dived through the ocean. Through the windows, Ben-Ari saw a sea of life. Algae grew from floating pods, leaves swaying. Countless creatures swam, some ring-shaped and glistening with beads of light, others elongated and graceful, some blobby and tentacled, others spiky and scaled, all beautiful. She had never seen so many colors, so much variety of life.

  They kept descending until they reached an underwater city. There was no seabed in this world, no ground to raise structures on. Buildings floated here, round and silvery, full of windows. It was a city of huge bubbles, some small as houses, some a kilometer wide. Thousands of Guramis swam between them, fins streaming like banners of purple and blue and gold. There were vessels here too, long and silvery, spinning lazily as they moved between the bubbles like enormous dancing plankton. Artificial lights shone in bulbs that floated through the city. There was no permanent structure to this city. The buildings all bobbed, drifted, sometimes even bounced against each other.

  The ship took the platoon to a large, shimmering globe that hovered in the city center. Here the platoon exited the starship, swam through the ocean, and entered the globe. The warm water was so salty and dense Ben-Ari barely had to move her limbs. She floated. The High Council of the Guramis swam within this globe, beautiful and ancient beings, their bodies adorned with necklaces of shimmering shards that changed color as they moved.

  "Welcome, daughter of Earth," they sang through their trumpet mouths. "Welcome, daughter of the human we loved, the human who swam with us, who came from the great dryness above."

  Ben-Ari spoke to them, as her father had years ago. She spoke of the great war against the scum. She spoke of the battle on the frontier where thousands of ships had burned, where they had defeated the scum. She spoke of a great invasion to end the war, to destroy the scum emperor, to shatter the evil empire that had been spreading across the galaxy. The Guramis listened carefully, bobbing, eyes flashing whenever she described a tragedy, such as the fall of Vancouver.

  Finally they too spoke. "We are beings of peace," they said together. "We live for beauty, for music, for color, for light. But the dry centipedes are creatures of destruction, of hatred, of death. They slew many of our people, shattered many of our globes, and infected our Mother Sea with their poison. We fought them alone. Many of us died. But still we swim. They mistook us for meek, but we are fierce. They mistook us for cowards, but we are courageous. The enemy destroyed most of our ships, but we still have a fleet armed for war. We will send that fleet with you. Three hundred dryships shall fight in your war, daughter of Earth. They will slay many centipede pods."

  Three hundred ships. It wasn't much. Not when facing an empire as massive as the scum's. But every little contribution helped. Ben-Ari nodded.

  "Thank you, children of the water," she said. "We will fight together as siblings-in-arms. We will defeat the enemy."

  The HDFS Urchin flew away from the watery world, and behind her flew three hundred "dryships"—the starships of the Guramis. They rose through space like massive, glimmering plankton, their scaled wings spinning and catching the starlight, their slender hulls bulging with glassy domes full of water.

  They were beautiful, graceful ships, but they were more than that. And they proved their might within only moments.

  As they were heading back toward the main fleet, a swarm of scum pods—fifteen of them—crackled out of hyperspace and streamed toward them.

  The Urchin fired its guns, lobbing shells at the enemy. But the true wrath came from the Guramis' dryships. Slender cannons unfurled upon their tops like sprouting plants, organic and graceful. They bloomed open, flowerlike, and blasted out pulsing globs of energy. The pulses shattered the scum pods. Centipedes spilled out, only for the dryships to fire bolts of light, searing the creatures in space.

  "Damn!" Addy said, watching from the Urchin's bridge. "Fish can fight, man!"

  Ben-Ari nodded. "They can fight. And our work is not done." She raised her chin and stared out at the stars. "We will find more allies on the way to Abaddon. This is the great hour for all free civilizations. All the galaxy will rise."

  They rejoined the fleet, traveling through hyperspace for another few light-years. Then the Urchin emerged from the funnel again, flying toward another planet.

  This time, they flew toward a rainforest world, a planet with no oceans but a vast network of rivers and trees that grew hundreds of meters tall. Ben-Ari and her platoon descended in a shuttle through mist. Among the trees, they found vast cities built of wood, rope, and crystal. A race of sentient aliens called the Silvans lived here. Their torsos were disk-shaped and coated with thick brown fur. Eight eyes blinked on one side of their bodies, while mouths and nostrils breathed on the other side. Six prehensile tails grew in a ring around their bodies, able to grab the branches, use tools, and build starships.

  "They look like a cross between spiders, starfish, and monkeys," Addy said, which Ben-Ari had to agree with.

  "We will help you," the Silvans said, speaking by clicking and clacking their teeth, which Ben-Ari's communicator translated into English. "The scum have infected many of our trees with rot and have overrun our moons. We will fight them."

  The Silvans raised four hundred starships built of
crystals and amber, and through gemstones the size of boulders, they could fire photon beams to sear open scum pods. Soon these ships from the jungle world, like the Guramis' ships full of water, flew with the human fleet.

  At another world, they found a battle raging. It took a hundred Firebirds to descend to the planet and destroy the scum crawling across it. It was a beautiful, sunny world, its hills alive with singing flowers. A race of aliens lived here, shaped like living harps. Their vocal cords were outside their bodies, golden and thin, which they plucked with elongated fingers, communicating with music. Their fingers could also build tools, and they had built starships from gold and steel, full of many strings to pluck instead of buttons to press. Those harp-ships could blast forth deadly laser beams, and hundreds of them rose to fly with the fleet.

  World after world, Ben-Ari raised the civilizations of the galaxy. All those who had suffered under the scum. A world where floating, living spheres of metal communicated using magnetic fields. A world of aliens composed of gassy clouds, portable souls who moved in suits of armor left over from an earlier stage of their evolution, like hermit crabs in abandoned shells. A world of aliens formed from intelligent beams of light, massless creatures who were able to control the minds of animals on their world, harnessing their physical bodies to build their starships, like ghosts possessing flesh. A world where swirls of liquid ink lived in bubbles, able to raise floating starships that could blast out electricity. A world with creatures not unlike Earth animals, with four limbs and a head, but who were microscopic, no larger than dust mites, yet able to raise floating cities the size of scum pods and fire nuclear weapons. A world of sentient plants, moving on roots, who flew ships which Addy described as giant flowerpots. A species of intelligent moss that coated asteroids, able to hurl their stony vessels at enemies.

  Some worlds could only send a handful of starships. Some could send fleets of hundreds. But all joined the fight. All hated the scum. Dozens of species, the civilizations of this small corner of the Milky Way, of this vast cosmic arena, rose together.