BATTLE BEYOND EARTH: REVENGE
By Nick S. Thomas
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright © 2016 by Nick S. Thomas
Published by Swordworks Books
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Prologue
Bolormaa's ultimatum seemed as much a guarantee of defeat than a welcome reprieve, but Colonel Mitch Taylor and the Alliance would take anything they could get. Times had never seemed so desperate as these, not since the Krys first threatened Earth, but a far greater and more ruthless enemy now existed in the universe, and more than just Earth was at stake. Bolormaa, an ancient enemy that had almost passed into myth, now threatened the lives and freedoms of the Alliance of races that had fought so hard to achieve peace.
Going head on against whatever Bolormaa threw into the fight seemed the only way, and that's precisely what Taylor did. Spearheading a rapid response force, he took the fight to the mining colony of Kapteyn. Taylor had expected the enemy to attack with an overwhelming force and strike them head on. Everyone did. But at Kapteyn it was different. The enemy fleet fled and left behind ground forces on the Colony's surface, leaving the population at their mercy. Under the protection of a powerful energy dome, Taylor had no choice but to lead the newly formed 1st Recon Regiment onto the surface. The most well equipped and trained volunteers in the Alliance; formed with Taylor's Immortals at their core, and humans and Krys alike. It was the most formidable fighting force Taylor had ever had the pleasure of commanding since his awaking in this new life, hundreds of years from his glory days.
The ground combat on Kapteyn was brutal and took its toll before the shielded dome could be broken, and even as the tide turned, it became clear that the enemy engagement there was nothing more than a ruse. One that Taylor kicked himself for not seeing. He had allowed his judgement to be clouded by his hatred of Bolormaa, and that brought a new danger he should have seen coming.
She was after the same thing she always had been, the weapon that was known to be the only thing in the universe that could bring about her destruction. The spear that had almost cost Taylor his life to find and secure - The Pauri Tau, or Tamir as the despicable warmonger Bolormaa would call it. They had to go after it, no matter what it would cost them.
However, what came next was something nobody could have foreseen. Arriving on the supposedly safe location of the mythical spear where the Aranui had hidden it, an epic battle was ensuing between two rival creatures. They both wanted the weapon but for very different reasons, and both were Morohtan Princes. Locked in deadly battle, they fought with everything they had for the spear, and finally the truth was out. Bolormaa was not all powerful, all commanding. She had an enemy, and it was one of her own.
The traitorous son of Bolormaa seemed to want nothing but revenge for the wrongdoing he had suffered at her hands, and he was determined to take the battle to Bolormaa. An ally that Taylor could use, but the former Prince Zaya seemingly wanted no contact with Taylor and his Alliance. He took the spear for himself and used it to make a direct attack against Bolormaa.
Taylor knew they had no choice but to follow the former Prince. The Alliance could not afford to lose the spear, and the attack against the Queen was the best opportunity they had to do some damage to her and her vast armies. But could Zaya be trusted? An epic battle ensued as Zaya fought his way to his mother, the Queen of the Morohta, and finally fought the battle he had waited hundreds, if not thousands of years for.
It was the battle that could have ended it all, but Bolormaa would be no push over. The brutal confrontation with her almost cost Zaya and Taylor their lives, and still they did not defeat her. But there was hope. In an act of desperation, the alien Queen set her flagship to self-destruct as she fled, trailing blood from the limb Zaya had removed.
Victory, or so it seemed, the first against Bolormaa herself; and she was running scared and wounded. She had failed to recover the spear, failed to kill Taylor, and failed to spread the fear she had so successfully managed before. Zaya was barely alive and Taylor's own forces and fleet had taken a beating to get this far. It seemed there was finally hope, but it was not over. They had not won the respite they had been expecting. News soon reached the fleet that the unthinkable had happened. What Taylor had feared he would once again see in his lifetime - the invasion of Earth.
Chapter 1
Prepare to jump in five, four, three, two..."
Taylor's heart was pounding as he felt the anger and despair overcome him in equal measure. He had fought his entire life to protect Earth. It is where it had all begun, the invasion of the Krys. Terrifying creatures that towered over humanity in stature and science, creatures he now counted among his friends. But this was different. For whatever humanity he had found in the Krys people, there seemed not a shred of evidence for in the Morohta.
"One..Jump!"
His stomach turned as it always did, but in a flash they appeared on the other side. Their ship rocked as an explosion burst before their eyes. Taylor was thrown across the bridge. He crashed into the navigation console with an officer still sitting at it. He hit his head hard and regretted in that moment that he ever took his helmet off. His head began to pound. He reached around with his right hand to feel for the wound. He withdrew the hand; it was covered in blood from a gaping wound on the back of his head. His vision was blurred and he tried to get up, but couldn't quite get his balance. He staggered forward and fell over once again.
Where he fell he found Captain Wilcox lying lifelessly. His head was bleeding from an impact on his forehead and his left leg twisted and broken. Taylor looked around for some help but couldn't get his words out when a medic rushed in to aid the Captain. He felt something wrench him around, and he lost his balance and fell back onto his ass. Looking up, Jones was asking him questions. The Captain had sensibly kept his helmet on and was fully composed as he asked after Taylor. His hearing was coming back, but it came with the flood of pain flowing through his body as he had felt so many times before.
"Come on, Colonel, we need you!"
Jones pulled him forward so he could check on his wound.
"You'll be okay. It's just a scratch."
It sure doesn't feel like a scratch.
Jones withdrew a med seal and sprayed it onto the wound. It stung, but he knew at least that would stop the bleeding. Jones hauled him to his feet and dropped him down into the Captain's chair. He slumped comfortably into it.
The crew were fighting a fire off to his left side, and he watched as medi
cs hurried off with the ship's Captain on a stretcher. It was a grim sight, and as he began to regain his composure, he looked out at the screen ahead. Vega's ship was engaging the enemy in a brutal battle ahead of their position. Two wrecks of friendly vessels lay between the Admiral's position and theirs. He looked around. Two bodies of the bridge crew were still waiting to be removed, and several more wounded were being seen to. A few positions remained vacant, including the primary tactical console. Many of the crew looked to him for command, and the XO was nowhere to be seen.
Shit!
He could see the battle raging ahead of their position. The crew of the Independence were looking to him now. All he wanted to do was find his rifle and get into the fight, but this wasn't that kind of fight. Jones took up position behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, hard enough that it hurt as he felt the pain in his neck from where he had landed and been injured.
"Whatever you're gonna do you better do it fast," whispered Jones.
Taylor looked to him as if for advice, but he didn't offer any. Taylor appeared to be in utter shock, as if his whole world had been turned upside down.
I’ve been through this too many times before. I don't know if I can take it again. I’m starting to wonder if anything I do can ever save my beloved Earth. Will all roads lead me back to this dark day?
"Why does this keep happening? What did I ever do to deserve this? I had enough in my own lifetime. This was supposed to be your time, not mine."
Jones could see he was beginning to lose it. The hit to his head had shaken loose some thoughts he had long repressed. It was as if his two lives, separated by hundreds of years, were now clashing in his mind.
"I don't want this anymore. We can't win. We never could," he said quietly.
He looked lost as he stood up. He was still a little shaky and turned as if to leave the bridge.
"We need you, Taylor," said Jones.
He only shook his head. "No, it's your turn. I have done enough, probably too much. Maybe I'm not what this universe needs anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you see anything getting better?"
He shoulders slumped, and he staggered off the bridge. He was totally demoralised. Physically and mentally beaten down, and that had rubbed off on the crew who were already weak from everything they had endured. Jones was left in despair and amazement. He didn’t know what to say or do. He looked at the distraught faces all around him and then to the scene of destruction ahead.
Vega’s battleship, the Resolution, was taking a beating but was hitting back hard. Three enemy ships of the line duked it out with Vega’s fleet and many more smaller vessels. A combined Krys and human fleet were fighting alongside Vega. In the distance, two other battles were raging closer to the atmosphere. The Earth defence grid was less than half operational, and being pounded at a pace it could not withstand for long. Even as he watched and thought of what to do, several ships on both sides were blown apart and completely destroyed.
“Take us in!” Jones gave the order.
The crew looked at him in terrified shock, as if they wanted to run and play no part in what lay ahead.
“You heard me. I am assuming command of the vessel. Take us in, lock onto the nearest enemy target, and throw everything we have at them!”
“But, Sir, we are badly damaged. More than a fifth of the crew are dead or wounded. We are not ready for this,” protested an ensign.
Jones scowled at the man and pointed to the battle.
“You think they are fairing any better? Those are our friends and colleagues out there, and they need our help. Get us in this fight!”
The man looked sheepish, but he still followed the orders. They soared forward slowly, even as crews still worked to put out another fire on the bridge and repair the damage as best they could.
“This is suicide,” muttered one of the crew.
Jones turned around to see who had said it, but he couldn’t identity them as nobody wanted to admit to it. He didn’t know what to say, knowing they might well be right. Taylor had always been there to handle such situations, and he felt lost without him.
What the hell am I doing?
He had never been so doubtful of anything in his life. He had been responsible for hundreds of men in his time, never thousands, not in such a frightful and horrifying situation. It was a responsibility he had never wanted, at least not since he’d had his first taste of war. He watched them close the distance.
What the hell am I going to do next?
* * *
Taylor staggered through the corridors like a man who had lost everything. Everything he owned, all that he loved, and all of his hopes and dreams. Everyone he passed could see it on his face. He knew he needed to keep himself together, but he didn’t know how. The hit to the head had hurt, but the pain was far deeper and more severe than the wound itself. It sparked the memories of Coco and the videos she had left him. He had not watched them in a while now, but for some reason he was reminded of them, and of better days when what he’d fought for had achieved something.
He used to feel that everything he had done had been worth it, and always told himself that the sacrifices were worth it for the outcome. The day he thought he’d died on that open plain in North Africa against Erdogan, he had finally felt at peace. He faded away in the knowledge that he had achieved what he needed to in life.
Now it seems all for nothing. Have I saved the Earth from one monster, only to see it fall to another?
He staggered onwards but had no idea where he was going. There seemed nowhere left for him to go. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t hide, and he couldn’t win by fighting. It all seemed for nothing. That physical trauma to his head had shaken him up and made him doubt everything he had done since he awoke in this future.
I wish they’d never brought me back.
Taylor stopped suddenly with a feeling that he was being watched. More intently than he had been before. He looked up slowly to see the last person he would have expected. Alita stood before him. Her left arm was in a sling, her neck and head bandaged up, but she was on her own two feet and smiling back at him. He couldn’t help but smile back. In all the chaos of the fighting on Kapetyn, and the events that had followed it, he had not had a chance to check on her.
“Hey, stranger,” she said happily.
Taylor was shaking his head in surprise and disbelief.
“How can you be here?”
She only smiled for a moment, as she looked him up and down.
“Nothing could keep me from you. Not doctors, not injuries. Nothing short of death.”
“Don’t joke about that, please,” he gasped.
“I didn’t,” she replied confidently.
She stepped up to him and put her one good hand on his head, turning it so she could check his injury.
“What have you been doing to yourself, Mitch?”
Even before she had finished, the ship rocked as it was hit by a heavy impact, but he was so focused on her that he didn’t even notice.
“Didn’t you know there’s a war on?”
“Yeah, there is, so why aren’t you up there fighting it?"
He was slow to answer, but then said quietly, “I’m done, Alita. I can’t do anything more about this. If I can’t even protect you, how can I protect the rest of them?”
She stared at him for what seemed like an age before without warning she slapped him hard across the face. His head snapped to one side. He hadn’t seen it coming, but it was enough of a shock to wake him up.
“What was that for?”
“You aren’t yourself, and it’s a hell of a time to have a crisis of faith.”
“I didn’t choose it.”
“None of us did, but this life seemed to choose you, and so did the rest of us. We volunteered to fight with you. We all did. Do you know why?”
He shook his head.
“Because we believe in you. We believe in you more than anything else in our lives. When every
thing was falling apart, it was you who stood up and showed us that we could be strong, even in the face of something so terrifying that it could cripple even the strongest among us.”
The gesture hit home, and it meant a lot, but it wasn’t enough to make him turn back into the storm.
“You were born for this. You always were. You are the great Mitch Taylor. You are our saviour. If you can’t fight this, no one can.”
“Maybe we can’t win, Alita.”
“Is that what Coco would have said? Is that what Eli would have said?”
Those names struck a sour note with him, and he looked up into her eyes as if gravely offended that she would even utter their names.
“That’s right. I know who they were to you. I know more about you than any person alive today. Would they have given up? How about Chandra?”
He thought back to them and remembered how they had carried him through the worst experiences of his life. He couldn’t believe Alita even knew who they were.
“We all have moments of weakness and doubt, especially when the obstacle before us seems so vast, but you know what we do?”
He stared at her as she replied softly, “We do what Mitch Taylor would do. We improvise and we overcome. They need you. The Alliance needs you, and I need you,” she added and placed her hand lovingly on the side of his cheek.
“What if I can’t win?”
She smiled in response. “I don’t believe you can’t win. Not a thing in this universe could stop you, not while your friends stand with you.”
His head was starting to ache even more from the wound now, but it was a relief that the weight was being lifted from his shoulders. He knew those doubts for the future always hung over him, but he had been able to suppress them, and be the fighter everyone needed him to be. At this new low he needed help, and Alita had been there for him.
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