Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4)

by Daniel Arenson

  Noodles gasped. He peered at her through his thick glasses. "You don't trust me, Captain?"

  "I wouldn't trust you if I were falling off a cliff and you had wings," Ben-Ari said. "Lieutenant, adjust."

  Kemi flashed Noodles a smug grin, then turned to her controls and changed the ship's course through warped space. Behind them, the enemy vessels continued along their old path, blind to the Brendan's change of course. Meanwhile, the warden and his guards were now too far to see; Ben-Ari had jettisoned them a while back, enclosing them in spacesuits and giving them communicators to call for aid.

  "It's working," Ben-Ari said.

  "Of course it's working!" Noodles stiffened. "It was fixed by yours truly, InfectedNoodle1337."

  Ben-Ari looked at the wispy private. He wore a new uniform, a spare found on the ship, which hung loosely across his scrawny frame. Too poor to afford laser surgery, his eyes blinked from behind Coke-bottle glasses. She remembered commanding a timid, trembling soldier five years ago, a boy too frightened to speak to other recruits, who skulked apart from his comrades, reading The Lord of the Rings while the others laughed or played ball. Noodles had not grown any larger or stronger, but he had certainly grown cockier. Life as a famous hacker, it seemed, had boosted his confidence more than Ben-Ari's training ever could have.

  "Well, InfectedNoodle337—" Ben-Ari began.

  "InfectedNoodle1337," he corrected her. "The number means leet. Which means elite. Which means I'm the best."

  "If you were the best, you'd have never been caught," Kemi said.

  Noodle leaned back farther in his seat. A sigh rolled through him. "Ah, but I was not caught due to any intellectual neglect, only a mistake of the heart. I spilled my beans to a comely lass, an MP agent in disguise." He glanced at Kemi. "She looked a little like you. Beautiful, big hair, kissable lips . . ."

  "That's enough!" Ben-Ari barked before Kemi could pound him. "Private, I'll be more than happy to blast you out of the airlock like I did to your guards. I didn't bring you here to hear your bragging or quips. I brought you here because—"

  "Because you need me." Noodles nodded. "Like you needed me to code the chip that went into sweet Lailani's head. Like you needed me to fix your stealth engine." He placed his feet on the floor, leaned toward Ben-Ari, and narrowed his eyes. "But any engineer worth his salt can fix a stealth engine. A child could fix it. If you needed me, the absolute best, you surely have more of a challenge for me. So what is it, Einav?"

  "You will call her ma'am!" said Kemi.

  Noodles looked over his shoulder at her. "Calm your tits, toots."

  This time Kemi had heard enough. She leaped toward the scrawny hacker, knocked him onto the floor, and wrapped her metal fingers around his throat. Her knee shoved into his chest. Noodles gasped beneath her, struggling to free himself. He looked at Ben-Ari and just managed to whisper hoarsely.

  "Call her off! Call off your beast!"

  Ben-Ari shrugged. "I thought you're the best, Noodles. Why would you need my help?"

  He tried to speak again, was turning purple. Kemi was not a large woman, no stronger than average, but Noodles was weak as a child. He was growing limp.

  "All right, Lieutenant, that's enough," Ben-Ari said.

  With a grunt, Kemi released the private and stepped away. Noodles gasped for air, rose to his feet, and glared at Kemi.

  "We have ways of making you miss your prison cell," Ben-Ari said. "So play nice. Help us. And life will be good." Her voice softened, and she tossed in some honey along with the vinegar. "I know that you're the best, Noodles. And I need your help. Only you can help us."

  The combination of threat and flattery seemed to mollify him. He leaned back in his seat. "Very well. But first I require some sustenance. Frozen lasagna if you have it, steak and taters otherwise. A few bottles of Mountain Dew—every starship comes with them. A tablet with a library, ideally one with a wide collection of fantasy and comic books. And a date with Kemi. Kidding, kidding!" He inched away from the furious lieutenant. "Just the food, drink, and reading material should suffice. Oh, and a full pardon for all my crimes."

  Ben-Ari sighed. "I'll see what I can do about the pardon after we save the galaxy."

  This would be a long, tedious flight. She should have just brought a marauder aboard for interrogation; the creature would have been more pleasant.

  While Noodles sat in the kitchen, feasting on lasagna and drinking wine, Ben-Ari told the private everything she knew. About the marauders taking over a prison in the demilitarized zone. About seeing their battle formations circling human space. About the high command and Chrysopoeia Corp keeping the information hushed.

  "What I need you to do," Ben-Ari said, "is to hack into Chrysopoeia Corp's mainframe. I need you to find information on their dealings with the marauders. I need to know what the enemy plans and why this is being kept secret."

  "Piece of cake," said Noodles.

  "So you think it'll be easy, huh?" Ben-Ari said.

  "No, I think it'll be exceedingly hard, much like my manhood during Slave Leia's immortal scene. Piece of cake, please." Noodles swallowed his last bite of lasagna and pointed at the pantry. "Chocolate."

  "You'll have all the cake you want once you start working," Ben-Ari said.

  He sighed. "Don't I even get a day off? I just got out of prison, you know."

  She shook her head. "Get to work."

  He stood up and brushed crumbs off his uniform. "All right. Here's what I'll need. The highest security access codes you have into military and civilian databases. Three computers, separate from the ship's mainframe—one for me to rebuild, another to function as a code test harness, a third to stream The Lord of the Rings while I work. Access to every terminal on the Saint Brendan with admin passwords. And I'll need us in the solar system as soon as possible and out of warped space; I can't reach Earth's networks from here. Coffee. Lots of coffee. And finally, a straw and some duct tape."

  Ben-Ari frowned. "Why a straw and duct tape?"

  "Because I'm going to need to stream that caffeine directly into my veins. Chop chop! Bring me what I need." He rubbed his hands together. "Let's get to work."

  Hours passed, and Noodles worked.

  Hour after hour, he typed, hummed, cursed, sipped his coffee, broke apart computers, and put them together again.

  The hobbits had left the Shire by the time Noodles cracked his first smile. "Aha! Access codes are working fine."

  By the time the beacons of Gondor were lit, his smile had widened. "Here we go, baby."

  Frodo was sailing to the Undying Lands when Noodles yawned and took his first nap. He was up three hours later, typing away again.

  They were floating around Neptune, back in regular spacetime, when Noodles' smile faded.

  "Oh boy," he mumbled. "This is bad."

  He had taken over the empty berth that had once housed the ship's squad of marines. The fifteen cots had been moved down to cargo, making room for an array of computers, cables, keyboards, monitors, and a handful of anime posters (which Noodles claimed he needed for inspiration) featuring the cat-eared heroine from All Systems Go!. The hodgepodge reminded Ben-Ari of a marauder's web. Noodles sat in the center like a spider, typing on two keyboards at once.

  "What is it?" Ben-Ari said.

  He leaned toward a monitor, squinting. "Oh, this is very bad. I have to dig deeper." He clapped once—a loud sound. "Kemi, fetch me more coffee!"

  Kemi's head popped around the doorframe. "I'll fetch you a fist to the teeth."

  "I'll get your coffee," Ben-Ari said. "Keep working."

  "Remember, five lumps of sugar this time!" Noodles said. "I'll know if you skimp out and only use four again."

  As he kept working, Noodles' frown deepened. "Unbelievable," he muttered. "This is some nefarious Sauron shit right here. Evil as the dark overlord of Mordor himself." He pushed a keyboard away and shuddered. "We're onto something. We're really onto something here."

  Ben-Ari sat beside him. "Tell me wh
at you found."

  Noodles looked green, and it wasn't just from all the Mountain Dew. "I reached the Chrysopoeia mainframe. That was easy. But I found layers upon layers of encryption and protection. It was as hard as breaking into the Iron Bank of Braavos, I can tell you. But finally I made my way in. I explored their little chamber of secrets. And what I found . . ." He gulped. "Let's just say that Voldemort himself would cringe."

  Ben-Ari couldn't understand half of that, but that was normal with Noodles.

  "Tell me," Ben-Ari said softly. "Whatever it is, we'll fight it."

  "You told me that you found a prison in the demilitarized zone," Noodles said. "That the marauders had overrun it, had captured the prisoners. But you were wrong. The marauders were given those prisoners. Chrysopoeia, which owns all civilian prisons in the Human Commonwealth, invited the marauders there. A gift for the aliens."

  Ben-Ari winced. "Why?"

  "Because the marauders crave this." Noodles tapped his head. "The juicy brains inside our skulls. The smarter the brain, the tastier the meal. As you can imagine, an inmate with my sizable cranium would be especially vulnerable. Luckily, I was in a military prison rather than a civilian one. That probably saved my noggin. Let me pull up this report on the marauders, written by Chrysopoeia's exobiologists. There. Brain-eaters."

  "Like zombies," Ben-Ari said. "Lieutenant Abasi called them zombie croco-spiders."

  "But zombies, crocodiles, and spiders are dumb," Noodles said. "These beasts are smart. They're at least as smart as humans, maybe smarter. And here's the kicker. Their favorite food is sentient brains. Mere animals won't do. Offer them a cow's brain and they'll raise their noses at it. They'll eat animal brains only in a pinch. If a brain can't figure out language and basic arithmetic, it's flavorless." He cringed. "Mine must taste like filet mignon."

  "And they collect the skulls as trophies," Ben-Ari said. "I saw the skulls on their backs."

  "Probably how they built armor before they discovered metal," Noodles said. "Today the armor is ceremonial, a way to boast of their hunts. The smarter the victim, the more valuable the skull. Again, as you can imagine, I'm particularly vulnerable. Want to hear the weird thing, though? Nobody knows their homeworld. Nobody knows how they evolved. I can't find any record of them more than a few years old. It's as if they just popped into existence." Noodles shuddered. "Maybe aliens from another dimension? Another universe? The buggers came out of nowhere, hungry for conquest and brains."

  "And Chrysopoeia has been feeding them," Ben-Ari said.

  Noodles nodded. "I have the shipment logs right here. They're written with a lot of euphemisms. Where it says clients? That's the marauders. Where it says meals? That's prisoners."

  Ben-Ari stared and felt the blood drain from her face. "Five hundred meals a day. Five hundred prisoners."

  "Quite a few brains," Noodles said. "Enough to keep the marauder elite happily fed. Of course, there are millions of marauder warriors—mere commoners—who still just eat flesh or animal brains. The possibility of tasting human brains, just like their masters, could probably motivate the marauder grunts to attack Earth. We have billions of delicious brains, enough to feed their entire horde."

  Ben-Ari rubbed her temples as if she could feel her own brain being sucked out of her skull. The sight of the prisoner in the DMZ, his skull sawed open, begging as his brain quivered, still haunted her. She felt queasy.

  "Why is Chrysopoeia doing this?" she said. "What are the marauders paying them?"

  "Technology," said Noodles. "The marauders are quite intelligent. Admirable, really. According to one Chrysopoeia exobiologist, the average marauder intelligence is analogous to a human IQ of 130, quite bright by human standards. And many among them have IQs well into the 200s. That's as smart as a Von Neumann, a Gandalf, a Yoda. Must be all the brains they eat. They're brilliant scientists; even I don't understand all their tech. They're nasty buggers, but I'm impressed."

  "And they're giving Chrysopoeia some of that technology in exchange for prisoners," said Ben-Ari.

  "Specifically, regenerative technology. Used in the medical field. See, the marauders have the ability to cocoon themselves during times of drought, famine, or other hardship. Possibly an ability they naturally evolved years ago, maybe refined with genetic engineering. When they're near death, they can simply cocoon themselves. In times of peace and plenty, they can emerge from their cocoons, healed, and continue their search for brains."

  Ben-Ari nodded. "It sounds like stasis. Before humanity developed warp drive, scientists experimented with the idea. You freeze the passengers. You send them into space at sub-light speeds. A thousand years later, you wake them up among the stars. Before the technology could be widely used, we discovered warp drive and it became obsolete."

  Noodles grinned. "Here's where it gets interesting. Stasis is still used—in the medical field. It's not common. Only a few hundred patients use it. Their illnesses were too great to cure. They were near death. So their doctors froze them. Some are centuries old already, still on ice. There's an urban legend that even Walt Disney's severed head is frozen in a jar somewhere. The problem is—we don't know how to unfreeze the patients without killing them. But with marauder technology, we can. We can cure these poor souls, have them emerge healed from stasis like marauders from their cocoons. And boom—Bambi sequels all over the place. And guess who's one of those frozen patients? Besides Disney, that is."

  Ben-Ari thought.

  Somebody important, she knew. Or rather—somebody related to somebody important. Somebody with family high up—who would make sure this deal happened, make sure the prisoners reached the marauders, made sure the regenerative technology reached human hands.

  A memory flashed through her.

  An aging, grieving admiral.

  Words echoed in Ben-Ari's mind: My eldest daughter is dying of cancer.

  "Admiral Komagata's daughter," she whispered.

  "Bingo!" said Noodles. "Give that woman a cookie! Admiral Komagata himself, commander of Nightwall, one of the highest ranking generals in the Human Defense Force. His daughter has horrible cancer. She's still alive—frozen, only moments away from death. Chrysopoeia's doctors believe that they can heal and revive her using marauder technology."

  "Chrysopoeia and the Human Defense Force have long been in bed together," Ben-Ari said. "They build our weapons. We fight with them. Now these two bedfellows have invited the marauders into their bed."

  Noodles nodded. "Why fight the aliens? Too dangerous. And the marauders are good business partners. Stupid human brains for smart alien tech. It's a good deal for the shareholders. And Admiral Komagata certainly doesn't want to jeopardize any chance to cure his daughter."

  "Except these marauders are building massive armies," Ben-Ari said. "I've seen them in the Augury. Fleets. Fleets of warships, surrounding us. I didn't see business partners. I saw an army that's planning an invasion." She shook her head. "Why is Admiral Komagata allowing this? Is he willing to sacrifice the entire species just to save his daughter?"

  Noodles' grin widened. "Oh, he's a wily bastard. I dug up the dirt on him too. Guess who just bought himself a deserted, habitable moon in the Gurami sector, far from any potential war between marauders and humans? That's right. Our dear friend Admiral Komagata. He plans to be far, far away from the bloodshed before the invasion begins—with his little daughter spending her days splashing around in their new swimming pool. As I said, Sauron-level evil shit."

  "There's only one thing to do now," Ben-Ari said.

  "Get the world's biggest can of bug spray and pray that the Rohirrim show up to help?"

  "The next best thing," said Ben-Ari. "We go to the only authority higher than the military and Chrysopoeia Corporation. We go to the woman who once pinned a medal to my chest. The president of the Alliance of Nations—the leader of humanity. We fly to Earth and we land right on her front yard."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "I promise you, ma'am," Marco said. "We're smart. We'
re educated. We're good workers. We'll find a job. We'll be good for our rent. We—"

  "No job, no rent!" The woman pointed at the door. "Out. Out! Out or I call cops."

  Marco and Addy hurried out of the building, pulling on their hoods. They stood on the street. The cursed rain had stopped, but a foul, unbreathable haze filled Haven today, and ash still wafted.

  "It was an ugly building anyway," Addy said.

  They turned back to look at the building. A Vacancy Available sign stood in a dirt yard. Tiers of concrete balconies rose into the clouds.

  "We'll find another place," Marco said.

  They walked onward. Cars raced down the road, spraying them with mud. A helicopter buzzed above, scattering whistling birds—or screaming vultures, as Marco had come to think of them. It was a neighborhood a few kilometers away from the subway stations but still crowded. Thousands of people clogged these streets. Some seemed well off, wearing business suits under their atmosuits; they emerged from expensive cars and stepped into office buildings, commuters from the burbs. Others were the locals, wearing only rags, and Marco even saw two naked men sleeping on a concrete slab, their beards long, their bodies covered with sores.

  "Look, another one." Addy pointed.

  A brown building rose ahead, and a sign outside announced: Apartment for Rent.

  They stepped into the lobby, thankful for a respite from the shrieking wind and screaming birds, and rang the superintendent.

  "No job, no rent!" The old man glowered. "Go, go. Go sleep on street! Employed tenants only!"

  Again, Marco and Addy fled back outside.

  Addy screamed.

  "Fuck!" She punched a wall. "Fuck. That's ten apartment buildings that rejected us today, Marco. Fuck. Fuck! I'm not spending another night on a bench. I'm not!"

  It had been weeks since Marco had slept in a proper bed. The thought of another sleepless night on a subway platform, shuddering as screams and groans sounded in the darkness, seemed worse than anything he had faced at boot camp.