Red Sky Dawning

by Ian J. Malone

  The remotes are on the way. I can hear the faint whine of micro-turbines. They will be using the sensors on the remotes and their armor, counting on the darkness blinding me. Their sensors against my monster. I wonder which will win.

  Everything becomes a kind of gray, blurry haze as my eyes adapt to the deep darkness. I can see the tunnel from sound echoes as I glide down the dark paths. I’m also aware of the remotes spreading out in a search pattern in the tunnel complex.

  I’ll never outrun them. I need to hide, but I glow in infra-red. One of the remotes is closing, fast.

  I back up against a rock wall, and force the monster to hide me. It’s hard; it wants to fight, but I need to hide first. I feel the numbing cold return as my temperature drops, hiding my heat. I feel the monster come alive, feel it spread through my body and erupt out of my skin. Fibers spread over my skin, covering me completely in fibrous camouflage. They harden, fusing me to the wall, leaving me unable to move. I can’t see, and I can barely breathe. If the remotes find me here, I’m dead.

  The remote screams by. I can’t see through the fibers, but it sounds like an LB-24, basically a silver cigar equipped with a small laser.

  I can hear the remote hover nearby. Can it see me? It pauses and then circles the area. Somehow, the fibers hide me. It can’t see me, but it knows something is wrong. It drops on the floor to deposit a sensor package and continues on. Likely it signaled the men upstairs about an anomaly. They’ll come and check it out.

  The instant I move, the camera will see me. So I wait. I listen to the sounds of the drones moving and water running in the caves. These caves are not as lifeless as I thought; a spider crawls across my face. I’m as still as stone.

  Soon, the drones have completed their search pattern and dropped sensors all over the place. I can hear them through the rock, so now I have a mental map of the caves stretching out down here. I wait.

  They send the recall, and the drones whine past on the way up. They lower ropes and rappel down the shaft. They pause by the pool, scanning the tunnels and blasting sensor pulses of sound, and likely radar and other scans as well. I wait.

  They move carefully down the tunnels. I can feel their every movement through the rock, hear their every word. These men know what they are doing: staying in pairs, staying in constant communication, and checking corners carefully. I wait.

  One pair comes up next to me. They pause. One of them has bad breath. I can feel the tension; they know something is wrong. They could shoot me any instant. I wait.

  “Let’s make sure.” I hear a deep voice and a switch clicks.

  Heat and fire fill the tunnel. I can see red light through the fibers. Roaring fire sucks all the air away, and the fibers seal my nose before I inhale flame. The fibers protect me from the liquid flame that covers everything. I can feel the heat slowly begin to burn through.

  It’s time.

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  Get “Warrior: Integration” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0875SPH86

  Find out more about David Hallquist and “Warrior: Integration” at: https://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Devil Calls the Tune:

  Devil Calls the Tune

  ___________________

  Chris Maddox

  Now Available from Theogony Books

  eBook, Paperback, and (Soon) Audio

  Excerpt from “Devil Calls the Tune:”

  Kenyon shouted, “Flyer! Fast mover!”

  Everyone grabbed their packs and started running. When McCarthy didn’t, Devlin grabbed him by his uniform shirt and yelled, “Come on!”

  The little outcropping they had weathered under was part of a larger set of hills. Devlin and McCarthy made for a sheer cliff face that was tall enough that it would make strafing difficult. They dove behind a few rocks, and Devlin peered over one. The flier had overshot the group and was circling.

  McCarthy reached into his pack and pulled out a rail pistol and magazine. He slapped the magazine home into its well and charged the pistol.

  “Where the fark did you get that!” Devlin panted. He reached over and took the pistol. McCarthy let him.

  “This was the surprise,” McCarthy said. “I found the pistol, then searched the wreckage for ammo. I found some and parts to a bunch of rifles. Most were in bad shape, but Pringle figured he might be able to cobble together a couple from the parts. He was going take the lot back to the camp so they would have something to defend the wounded with. He sent me with this for you. Best we could get together at the time. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. This is pretty good. I won’t beat the shit out of you now for the fire.”

  “The fire?” McCarthy looked blank for a moment, then realization hit. “Oh, you think that the fire attracted—”

  “Our flying friend over there. Yeah, I just—get your head down!” He pulled at McCarthy as rounds from the flier dug into the earth. There was something odd about this one.

  He took a quick look. This wasn’t the same flier that had attacked the camp, this one was…

  “Drone!” Devlin yelled. He watched the thing from the rocks, watched it circle around again. He braced the pistol on the rocks, steadied, and waited.

  When the drone started its run again, Devlin sighted in, breathed out, and fired.

  The drone disintegrated in a fiery cloud as the MAC round entered its main capacitor bank. He watched it fall and then rose from behind the rocks. McCarthy joined him.

  Devlin looked over at the tree line and waved his arm. A moment later, Kenyon appeared, followed by Gartlan and MacBain.

  “Devlin!” Decker’s voice came out of the tree line. Kenyon and the others started to where Decker’s voice had come from. Devlin started to run.

  He found the group gathered around Decker. She was holding Moran’s head in her lap. Moran’s uniform had a red stain in the abdomen that was growing larger by the moment.

  “Got hit as I dived into the woods,” Moran croaked. Her blond hair was already slick with sweat, her face pale.

  “Sorry, Devlin. I…I…” her voice trailed off as her implant fed nanites and nighty-night into her system. A moment later she looked dead, which for all intents and purposes she was.

  Devlin rubbed his scalp. He glared over at McCarthy, whose shocked face got even paler as he looked at the body, hibernating though it was, of Lisa Moran. He bowed his head and started to stammer, “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

  “Shut up, Tom. Just shut up,” Devlin said tiredly. “You didn’t know; you had no way of knowing. This wasn’t even the same flier that attacked the camp. Just a stupid mistake, but it’s one that we have to deal with now. Is anybody else hurt?”

  Arnette was sitting on the ground beside Decker with her legs crossed. She held one ankle in her hands. “Well, now that you mention it…” She looked at Devlin with pain-filled eyes. “I think my ankle is broken. I stepped straight into a hole as I came into the woods.”

  Decker moved her legs out from underneath Moran’s head and laid it gently on the ground. She made her way to the other woman. Gartlan bent down as well and said, “Let’s get your boot off.”

  Together, the two started trying to get the girl’s boot off. When Arnette hissed once and nearly passed out, they realized they’d have to cut it off. Gartlan produced a tactical knife and used the monomolecular edge to slice down the side of the boot. His cut made, he handed the knife to Decker, who sliced down the foot portion of the boot, careful not to cut too deeply.

  “Here you go, Wolf,” she said handing the knife back to Gartlan, who folded it and put it back in his pocket. Together, he and Decker were finally able to peel the ruined boot off the injured girl’s foot.

  Her foot, already purple, immediately started to swell. They propped her leg up on a rock covered with Gartlan’s tunic. Gartlan shook his head at Devlin. “She isn’t likely to go nighty-night, but she might as well. She ain’t going anywhere on that foo
t for a few days. And she’s not going to like this, but we’re going to have to set it and splint it so that the nanis don’t knit it wrong. Probably still will, but the canker mechanics should be able to fix it without too much problem if we get home.”

  Sarah Arnette’s eyes went wide as Gartlan’s words hit home. “Oh Gods!” she moaned. “This is going to suck!”

  “Do it,” Devlin said. “Come on, guys. They don’t need an audience, and we’ve got to get our shit together.”

  He turned to walk away as Gartlan bent back down, and Decker opened a med kit.

  Another drone flier came to halt in front of them, and a voice came over its vocoder, “State your name and passcode.”

  * * * * *

  Get “Devil Calls the Tune” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0849QYWMJ

  Find out more about Chris Maddox and “Devil Calls the Tune” at: https://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/chris-maddox/

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of the Earth Song Cycle:

  Overture

  ___________________

  Mark Wandrey

  Available Now from Theogony Books

  eBook and Paperback

  Excerpt from “Overture:”

  Dawn was still an hour away as Mindy Channely opened the roof access and stared in surprise at the crowd already assembled there. “Authorized Personnel Only” was printed in bold red letters on the door through which she and her husband, Jake, slipped onto the wide roof.

  A few people standing nearby took notice of their arrival. Most had no reaction, a few nodded, and a couple waved tentatively. Mindy looked over the skyline of Portland and instinctively oriented herself before glancing to the east. The sky had an unnatural glow that had been growing steadily for hours, and as they watched, scintillating streamers of blue, white, and green radiated over the mountains like a strange, concentrated aurora borealis.

  “You almost missed it,” one man said. She let the door close, but saw someone had left a brick to keep it from closing completely. Mindy turned and saw the man who had spoken wore a security guard uniform. The easy access to the building made more sense.

  “Ain’t no one missin’ this!” a drunk man slurred.

  “We figured most people fled to the hills over the past week,” Jake replied.

  “I guess we were wrong,” Mindy said.

  “Might as well enjoy the show,” the guard said and offered them a huge, hand-rolled cigarette that didn’t smell like tobacco. She waved it off, and the two men shrugged before taking a puff.

  “Here it comes!” someone yelled. Mindy looked to the east. There was a bright light coming over the Cascade Mountains, so intense it was like looking at a welder’s torch. Asteroid LM-245 hit the atmosphere at over 300 miles per second. It seemed to move faster and faster, from east to west, and the people lifted their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding light. It looked like a blazing comet or a science fiction laser blast.

  “Maybe it will just pass over,” someone said in a voice full of hope.

  Mindy shook her head. She’d studied the asteroid’s track many times.

  In a matter of a few seconds, it shot by and fell toward the western horizon, disappearing below the mountains between Portland and the ocean. Out of view of the city, it slammed into the ocean.

  The impact was unimaginable. The air around the hypersonic projectile turned to superheated plasma, creating a shockwave that generated 10 times the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated as it hit the ocean’s surface.

  The kinetic energy was more than 1,000 megatons; however, the object didn’t slow as it flashed through a half mile of ocean and into the sea bed, then into the mantel, and beyond.

  On the surface, the blast effect appeared as a thermal flash brighter than the sun. Everyone on the rooftop watched with wide-eyed terror as the Tualatin Mountains between Portland and the Pacific Ocean were outlined in blinding light. As the light began to dissipate, the outline of the mountains blurred as a dense bank of smoke climbed from the western range.

  The flash had incinerated everything on the other side.

  The physical blast, travelling much faster than any normal atmospheric shockwave, hit the mountains and tore them from the bedrock, adding them to the rolling wave of destruction traveling east at several thousand miles per hour. The people on the rooftops of Portland only had two seconds before the entire city was wiped away.

  Ten seconds later, the asteroid reached the core of the planet, and another dozen seconds after that, the Earth’s fate was sealed.

  * * * * *

  Get “Overture” now at:

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077YMLRHM/

  Find out more about Mark Wandrey and the Earth Song Cycle at: http://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/.

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