A thin smile touched Marco's lips. It was strange to see things so differently now, so clearly, so calmly, a bird's-eye view even from here in the dust.
He looked at his friends. At Addy. At Lailani. They walked at his side. Once more, they too wore the green of Earth Territorial Command. Sand rose around their heavy boots.
"You guys ready?" Marco said.
Addy nodded. "Fuck yeah, time to fry up some fresh meat."
Lailani nodded too. "Fry 'em up!"
Marco's smile grew. He had a feeling that Addy's and Lailani's soldiers would suffer a lot more than his.
A platoon of recruits awaited them by the tents. The boys and girls stood at attention, their sergeant scrutinizing them, holding an electric baton. They were just kids. Just goddamn kids, eighteen years old, terrified. One of them, a thin boy with thick glasses, was shaking. Another, a girl with red hair, had tears on her cheeks. Fresh meat indeed.
"All right, you fucking maggots!" shouted the sergeant. "Here are your squad leaders. These bastards have battled the scum more times than you've jerked off. They will whip you into soldiers! Corporal Marco Emery. Corporal Addy Linden. Corporal Lailani de la Rosa. They will turn you into killers, or by God, I will bury you under the sand myself."
Marco tried to stifle his smile. The last thing he had expected was to end up here, to train recruits for battle. He had wanted to serve in the archives, to spend his five years in a shadowy room, poring over computer screens. He had even tried it for a few months before requesting a transfer. In that shadowy room, he had remembered the war too often. Had felt imprisoned, anxious, even afraid. He had seen too many reports of alien species across the galaxy fighting for pieces of the scum's empire, fighting to become the next threat, to spread from star to star—and to Earth.
So no, he had not expected to end up here. But as Lailani had once told him, nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.
Marco looked at the recruits before him.
I hope that you never have to fight, he thought. I hope that you never know war. I hope that Earth will forever live in peace. But in case you must fight, in case a day comes again when the sons and daughters of humanity must fly into battle to defend the Earth . . . you will be ready.
The platoon divided into three squads, standing in new formations by Marco, Addy, and Lailani. The recruits hadn't even received their weapons yet.
One of the recruits gasped and pointed at Marco and his friends. "I know them! They're in the Why We Fight newsreel! They're the ones who killed the scum emperor!"
The other recruits stared with wide eyes, whispering amongst themselves.
"Right now the only scum here is you!" Addy shouted, pointing at the recruit who had spoken. "You will not speak without permission again. Down and give me thirty!"
The recruit dropped into the sand and began his push-ups. Marco thought of the time he had come here as a boy, a tattered paperback and photograph in his pocket. A boy who had wanted nothing more than to hide in his library, to read, to write, not to become this man. Not to become this soldier. Not to have these memories.
Forgive, Lailani spoke in his mind. Accept. If that is what we have, that is what we take.
"All right, recruits!" Marco said to his squad. "Follow me. It's time you learned how to shoot. It's time you became soldiers."
They followed him across the sand, through this training base in the desert, and Marco prayed that they would never follow him through fire, never follow him to war.
May you never know what I did, Marco thought. May you never see your friends die. May you never come home broken. May we build a better world for you, a world led by poets rather than generals, by healers rather than killers, a world that will never more burn. May you know nothing but peace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In the darkness, he peered.
In the shadows, he waited.
In the night's forest, he lurked.
Before him spread the cosmos. Before him burned the light of a million stars. Before him danced a million worlds. Before him waited a realm that had fallen, a realm that must be filled.
He was the watcher. He was the weaver of webs. He was the master of strings. He was ancient. He had only just hatched. He hungered. He was Malphas, the one with many eyes.
The hiss and clatter rose behind him. "The . . . centipedes . . . have . . . fallen."
Rasps. Scrapes. Guttural vibrations. Malphas reached out one of his six legs. His long digits unfurled, tipped with claws. His saliva dripped down his fangs, sizzling, seeping through his web. He grabbed a strand. He pulled. His web quivered. Another leg reached out, the claws made for disemboweling, for carving open bone, yet here in his dwelling they glided, so delicate, lovingly tugging. Glass spheres moved. Lenses came into place, ringed with dew. And Malphas saw.
He saw the stars. He saw the empire of the centipedes burn, crumble, vanish into ash. He saw the vastness of the cosmos. He saw the great empty spaces and the fusion in the heart of stars where all creation was forged. He saw the whispers of life quiver in mud across a billion worlds, trying to rise, fading away. He saw creatures emerging from the ooze. He saw them reaching into the emptiness. He saw them crave. He saw them fear. For he had many eyes.
And he saw a great web, strands extending from world to world, his claws woven of light, tugging, delicate, loving, pulling the strings.
The voice rose behind him again. One who served him. One who would fight. Who would feed.
"The . . . humans . . . will . . . rise."
Malphas turned from the cosmos, web trembling. He fixed his four terrestrial eyes upon his slave.
The creature stood before him on the web, jaws opened and drooling, large enough to swallow one of the humans whole, claws long enough to skewer them. Upon his abdomen gazed the eye sockets of a thousand skulls claimed in battle, glued onto the body, forming clattering armor. This servant was inferior to Malphas in every way, yet mighty enough to devour the greatest human warriors, even those who had defeated the centipedes in their lairs. And Malphas knew their faces, knew their names, for he had many eyes and his gaze was long.
Malphas opened his jaws, letting the clattering, the grunts, the scraping emerge, a rumble of his dominion.
"Then . . . we . . . will strike them down."
His slave hissed. "We . . . will . . . feed."
Malphas's abdomen twitched with hunger. His own trophy skulls, the mementos of a hundred vanquished enemies, clattered across him. Feed? Yes. Soon his brood would feed. Soon they would spread across the darkness. Soon they would breed upon the endless worlds. Soon they would rise, and soon the humans would fall.
But now, on this world of murk and mist, it was time to whet his appetite.
He moved across his web, six legs rising, falling, tugging, cutting. He descended, the dark trunks dripping around him, moving down through the primordial forest, skulking, hungering. Always hungering. He left the stars above, plunging into the deeper, thicker darkness, where mist rose from the cold soil, where ancient roots grew in unholy cathedrals, where the air was rich and rank with sweet rotting things.
There, in the murk, she waited. His morsel.
A human woman, female, young, just blooming into her full ripeness. Webs embraced her pale, naked flesh. Malphas inhaled, savoring her sweet scent, the aroma of her skin, her fear.
"Please," she whispered. "Please, sir, whoever you are, I mean you no harm. Our species can be allies. We—"
Malphas stretched out a leg, and he caressed her cheek with a claw. She shut her eyes, trembling, and oh, the smell of her, how it mingled with the richness of this air. He could already taste it.
"You . . . are . . . afraid." He licked his fangs.
"I am," she whispered, one of her tears rolling onto his claw.
"Good." His nostrils flared. "Fear enhances the flavor."
He lashed down another leg, and he gripped her head firmly in place.
She screamed.
She kept screaming as
his claws cut, sawing through the skull, as they peeled off the top, exposing the quivering brain within. How she screamed!
"Please," she said. "Please, I'm scared, I'm scared . . ."
Malphas could wait no longer. His tongue unfurled from his jaws. It reached into the skull. He scooped out the brain and lapped it up, felt it wriggling down his throat, rich with terror. Rich with nutrients. Rich with the full, pure flavor that only sentient prey could give.
His hunger sated, he worked in silence, cutting the rest of the skull from the body, then licking the flesh and blood until it was clean. Soon the skull was pure. He added it to the armor on his back, his first human trophy.
But not the last.
He climbed his web.
He climbed through mist and roots.
He returned to the sky, and he tugged his strings, and he gazed through his lenses.
There, in the distance, he could see it. A small, distant sun. Orbiting it—a pale blue dot.
"We hunger," said his slave.
Malphas grinned. "Soon we all shall feed."
The story continues in Earth Fire (Earthrise, Book 4).
Click here to read the next book in the series:
DanielArenson.com/EarthFire
AFTERWORD
Thank you for reading Earth Rising. I hope you enjoyed the novel.
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Thank you again, dear reader, and I hope we meet again between the pages of another book.
Daniel
NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON
THE MOTH SAGA
Moth
Empires of Moth
Secrets of Moth
Daughter of Moth
Shadows of Moth
Legacy of Moth
REQUIEM
Dawn of Dragons Requiem's Song
Requiem's Hope
Requiem's Prayer
The Complete Trilogy
Song of Dragons Blood of Requiem
Tears of Requiem
Light of Requiem
The Complete Trilogy
Dragonlore A Dawn of Dragonfire
A Day of Dragon Blood
A Night of Dragon Wings
The Complete Trilogy
The Dragon War A Legacy of Light
A Birthright of Blood
A Memory of Fire
The Complete Trilogy
Requiem for Dragons Dragons Lost
Dragons Reborn
Dragons Rising
The Complete Trilogy
Flame of Requiem Forged in Dragonfire
Crown of Dragonfire
Pillars of Dragonfire
The Complete Trilogy
ALIEN HUNTERS
Alien Hunters
Alien Sky
Alien Shadows
EARTHRISE
Earth Alone
Earth Lost
Earth Rising
Earth Fire
OTHER WORLDS
Eye of the Wizard
Wand of the Witch
Firefly Island
The Gods of Dream
Flaming Dove
KEEP IN TOUCH
www.DanielArenson.com
[email protected]
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Twitter.com/DanielArenson
Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3) Page 23
