Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4)

by Daniel Arenson

  "A hurricane!" a child cried.

  "Asteroids!" shouted the girl in the blue dress.

  But Lailani knew what this was. She had seen it before.

  "War," she whispered.

  Starships. Thousands of starships. They descended from the sky, shrieking, spinning, spewing out fire. Ships of dark metal, shaped like claws. Alien ships.

  The marauders.

  Lailani recognized them at once. With much interest, she had been following the story of Ben-Ari's discovery in the DMZ, her trial and imprisonment, and the hunt for Lieutenant Kemi Abasi. She had read the reports Kemi had been leaking online—reports of vicious aliens mustering for war, of a military cover-up, reports dismissed as mere conspiracy theories, as the ramblings of a madwoman. But Lailani had served with Ben-Ari and Kemi. They were her friends, her mentors. She trusted them. She had always believed.

  And now she saw this truth rain down with fire and death.

  The ravager ships uncurled their claws. From their swirling centers, plasma rained. Like comets, bolts of fiery torment slammed into the shantytown. Huts blazed. People screamed. Farther west, on the hazy horizon, ships were slamming into skyscrapers, knocking them down, and dust and smoke filled the air, rolling over the city like tidal waves.

  "Children!" Lailani shouted. "Run! Hide!"

  The ships were slowing their descent. They came to hover above the shantytown, their fire dying down. On their hulls, doorways dilated.

  "Run!" Lailani shouted.

  The girl in the blue dress grabbed her. "But Tita Lailani, I'm scared!"

  Lailani knelt by the girl. "You have to run now. Hide in your home. Help the other children hide."

  Weeping, the girl ran, collecting her siblings. In the sky, webs unspooled from the ships, and clawed legs emerged.

  Lailani turned to look at Sofia. Her beloved, her soulmate, stood behind the cart of books. Their eyes met.

  "I'm ready," Sofia whispered, face pale.

  Lailani nodded. She opened the secret compartment on the cart, then pulled out the forbidden book—a copy of Loggerhead by Marco Emery, a copy she had printed herself. But when she opened the book, she revealed not Marco's story but a box. A box containing two handguns.

  She took one and handed the other to Sofia. Above them rose clattering, grumbling, and inhuman screeches.

  "For Earth," Lailani said.

  Sofia nodded. "For humanity."

  They shared a quick kiss, then raised their guns.

  From the thousands of ships above, the aliens emerged.

  Lailani had heard stories of these creatures, but she had never imagined anything so vile. They were as large as cattle, all jagged horns and claws, moving on six legs down their webs, as nimble as spiders. Already they salivated for human flesh, baring rows of teeth as long as human arms. Their ceremonial armor of skulls clattered on their backs, and Lailani knew they would add many skulls to those bony suits today. All over Manila, they were descending, their ships filling the sky, their webs like sheets of rain coating the city.

  Lailani waited, gun raised.

  "Remember, Sofia," she said, thinking back to Kemi's leaked videos. "Aim for their eyes. The rest is bulletproof. Don't shoot until you're close enough to hit their eyes."

  Fighter jets soared over the city, firing missiles. Flames exploded overhead. Armored vehicles rolled down the streets, and soldiers shouted and fired shells into the sky. A few marauders fell, burning, but thousands were still descending on their webs. A hailstorm of bullets rose from below, slamming into the aliens, shattering their ceremonial skulls but unable to harm the bodies beneath. A Firebird crashed down, pierced with ravager claws, and slammed into the shantytown only meters away from Lailani.

  "Wait," she whispered. Children raced around her, screaming, burning. "Wait . . ."

  She was a civilian now. She wore shorts and sandals, not a uniform and boots. But she still wore her old dog tags around her neck; she had kept them, never removed them. She was still a staff sergeant in the reserves. She was still a decorated war heroine. And she was still a fighter.

  The aliens landed.

  Screeching, they scurried through the city.

  Their claws tore into fleeing children. Their jaws ripped flesh off bones. Several adults leaped from roofs, wielding knives and clubs, only to be ripped apart. Their corpses thudded onto the ground. The crude shelters collapsed.

  "Wait," Lailani whispered.

  At her side, Sofia raised her gun with one hand, held Lailani's hand with the other.

  Fangs bloodied, the marauders scuttled down the alleyways toward them. One of the creatures made eye contact with Lailani. It grinned, a child's severed leg in its jaws. It leaped toward the two women.

  Lailani fired her gun.

  Her bullet slammed into one of the marauder's four eyes.

  The creature squealed and fell.

  Lailani stepped closer, firing again, hitting another eye. When the creature opened its jaws to roar, Sofia fired bullet after bullet into its maw. It screamed, thrashing.

  A bullet to the third eye finished the job.

  Shrieks rose behind them.

  Lailani and Sofia turned to see a dozen more marauders racing toward them, ripping into children.

  "We're going to run out of bullets before they run out of aliens!" Sofia said.

  "Then we'll fight with knives," Lailani said. "And then with sticks. Then with tooth and nail."

  She fired another bullet, missed an eye. Sofia fired and hit the mark, and the creature before them squealed. More howls came from behind, and Lailani turned, saw marauders ripping through the shanties, racing toward her. She fired another bullet, loaded another magazine. The two women stood back to back, the creatures surrounding them.

  And so here is where I die, Lailani thought. Here in my hometown. With the woman I love. With—

  Pain blazed through her skull.

  She grimaced and touched the back of her head.

  A buzzing thrummed across her skull. The chip! The chip in her brain!

  A marauder leaped. Lailani fired, missed an eye, rolled aside, fired again. Sofia screamed beside her, firing more bullets. People fought around them with whatever makeshift weapons they could grab, falling fast.

  Lailani fired another bullet. The pain subsided, blazed again, faded once more.

  It had been years since she had felt the chip. Not since the war against the scum. In that war, Lailani had learned that her father hadn't been an American GI like she had thought. She had no true father. The scum had planted her into the womb of her mother—a homeless, thirteen-year-old prostitute from here in the slums. They had altered Lailani's DNA, giving her a touch of the scum, turning her into a drone. At their command, Lailani had killed, had betrayed her fellow soldiers, unable to stop the scum from tugging her strings, from controlling her from afar.

  The HDF scientists had placed a chip inside her skull. Noodles himself, a boy Lailani had gone through boot camp with, had written the code. The chip disabled the scum from controlling her, from awakening that one percent of alien DNA. Whenever the scum had tried to control her, the chip had hurt, blocking them.

  But the scum were dead. Here was a different alien species. Who was trying to access her mind now? Why was her chip heating up?

  A marauder leaped toward her. An armored vehicle rumbled forward, fired a grenade, and knocked the alien back. Lailani fired into its eyes. She loaded her third and last magazine. A marauder leaped onto Sofia, and claws grabbed her leg, and she screamed. The Ukrainian fired bullet after bullet, emptying her magazine into the creature's mouth, but couldn't stop it.

  "Sofia!" Lailani ran, leaped onto the armored vehicle, then vaulted onto the marauder's back. She landed among the skulls glued onto its back. Sofia screamed below, the claws tearing at her legs.

  Die, fucker, Lailani thought, placing her gun against an eye.

  She fired.

  The bullet entered the marauder's brain and it fell, burying Sofia beneath
it.

  Lailani slid off the dead alien, fear pounding through her, as marauders and soldiers fought around her, as the last few fighter jets burned above. She strained, shouting, using all her strength to shove the marauder off Sofia.

  The young woman lay, legs bloody, but still alive. She managed to rise, wincing.

  "I'm fine," Sofia whispered, trembling.

  Another Firebird crashed. In the distance, a skyscraper collapsed. The city crumbled. And more ravagers kept emerging. More marauders kept descending from the clawed ships. The bullets of the human resistance died down to sporadic fire.

  We resisted the scum for years, Lailani thought. Do we fall to these new enemies within moments?

  She clasped Sofia's hand. They stood together as more marauders—hundreds, thousands—crept toward them from all sides. Human limbs crunched in their jaws. In a nearby puddle, a marauder cracked open a girl's skull and lapped up the brain. Blood drenched the corpse's blue dress.

  "I love you, Sofia," Lailani whispered, down to her last few bullets. "Always."

  "We go down together," Sofia said. "Fighting."

  They fired their guns.

  A boom shook the sky.

  The heavens seemed to crack open.

  A new ship emerged.

  It was somewhat smaller than a ravager, perhaps the size of a truck. Its black hull was dented, burnt, but still showing its original slick design. A golden phoenix still reared on its starboard, clutching letters beneath it: HDFS Saint Brendan.

  "The ship that was missing," Lailani whispered, tears in her eyes. "Kemi's ship."

  The Saint Brendan lowered itself to hover above the shantytown roofs. The airlock opened, and Kemi stood there, a machine gun in hand. She fired, knocking back marauders. With her other hand—a metal prosthetic—she tossed down a rope.

  "Lailani, come on!" Kemi cried.

  A marauder leaped.

  Sofia screamed.

  Blood spurted, and the young Ukrainian fell.

  "Lailani!" Kemi cried above.

  Lailani fired another bullet, perhaps her last, killing the marauder who had sliced through Sofia's side. She knelt above her beloved.

  "Sofia!" she cried.

  Her face was so pale. Her blood kept flowing.

  "Fight them," Sofia whispered. "Fight them always."

  Lailani sneered. "We'll fight them together."

  Marauders pounced. More gunfire sounded from above, knocking back the beasts, but thousands still swarmed. The Saint Brendan fired a missile, and a ravager exploded, crashed down, and buried huts beneath it. Fire blazed, and more ravagers swooped in.

  "Lailani, hurry!" Kemi shouted. "Now!"

  Lailani wrapped one arm around Sofia, and she grabbed the rope with her other hand.

  The Saint Brendan began to rise at once, pulling them up from the ruin.

  Marauders leaped from below, jaws snapping, like crocodiles leaping at a dangling morsel of meat. Lailani fired another bullet, missed the eye. Ravagers flew all around, and the Brendan fired another missile, hitting one ship between the claws. The ravager shattered, and shrapnel blazed, narrowly missing Lailani. She dangled on the rope, holding Sofia, as the Brendan kept rising. She couldn't climb with one hand. Kemi was busy firing her machine gun, knocking back the leaping beasts. The sound of screaming bullets rang in Lailani's ears.

  As they rose higher, the devastation became more clear.

  Within only moments, Manila had fallen.

  Skyscrapers lay strewn like fallen toys. Shantytowns burned. Ravagers covered the city sky, lowering more and more marauders into the devastation. The aliens were everywhere, killing, feeding, rounding up prisoners.

  We are a feast to them, Lailani thought. They didn't come to destroy like the scum did. They came to feed.

  They were hundreds of feet above the city, and Kemi began reeling up the rope, when the ravager flew directly beneath them.

  The alien vessel was twice the Brendan's size. With its claws closed, it looked like a black seed, spiky, metallic. It turned its pointed prow upward, facing the ascending Brendan, and bloomed open. Its claws pulled back like petals, revealing the fiery cannon in the middle, a pit of plasma like a cauldron of molten metal. It gurgled and smoldered beneath them, a gaping gate to Hell.

  Lailani shouted, fired her gun into the blazing pit, emptied the magazine. She was out of bullets. The plasma roiled, brightened, about to shoot upward.

  "Kemi, fire on it!" Lailani shouted.

  "Noodles, aim our cannons downward!" Kemi shouted into the ship.

  But there was no time. Lailani stared at the flaming pit below, at her death.

  Like a volcano, the inferno blazed skyward toward them.

  "Hope into despair," Sofia whispered, tears in her eyes. "I love you."

  As the fire rose below, Sofia let go of Lailani.

  She fell.

  "Sofia!" Lailani screamed.

  As the woman fell, she met Lailani's eyes, and she smiled.

  The plasma washed over Sofia, and her burning body fell into the flaming pit in the heart of the ravager.

  Flames roared out.

  The alien ship exploded like a shattering Christmas ornament.

  Metal claws flew in all directions, tearing through nearby ships. A scrap of metal sliced across Lailani's thigh, and she screamed. Another piece hit the Brendan, and the ship shook. Fire and metal rained onto the city.

  Sofia was gone.

  Lailani wept as Kemi pulled her into the airlock, wept as she stumbled into the hull, wept as the Saint Brendan shot into space. Below, she could see her city, her country, her planet burning. The blue planet seemed red. All of Earth wept.

  The azoth engine hummed, and the stars stretched into lines, and they streamed through warped spacetime, moving millions of kilometers per second, leaving Earth behind.

  Lailani stood at the porthole, tears on her cheeks, as Kemi stroked her hair.

  Goodbye, Sofia, she thought. Goodbye, Earth. Goodbye.

  Then Lailani fell to her knees, embraced Kemi, and softly sobbed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Flying the Saint Brendan, Kemi saw it ahead, floating through space.

  "Fort Blackwell Disciplinary Barracks," she said. "Otherwise known as Hell's Hilton. And the buggers got here first."

  Sitting at her side on the bridge, Noodles cringed. "There are about a thousand ravagers around that asteroid. Kems, are you sure we need to save Ben-Ari?"

  Kemi glared at him. "For God's sake, Noodles. She busted you out of this exact prison!"

  "I know, I know!" He clutched his head. "But . . . Damn it. The Saint Brendan is already busted up. She can barely fly as it is. And you want us to blast through a hundred enemy ships, then infiltrate the most secure prison in the galaxy? And . . ." He winced. "You won't like hearing this. But you girls needed to save me. You needed my considerable hacker skills. But do we need Ben-Ari?"

  Kemi gasped. "She's the commander of this ship!"

  "Was the commander," Noodles said. "She's only a private now. She was demoted, remember? Look, Kems. We saved Lailani. She studied the Ghost Fleet while stationed at Oort, and she'll help us find it. But Ben-Ari is useless to us. I know she's your friend. I know I owe her a huge favor. But she's useless, and that's the hard truth. Maybe once the war is over, we can pick her up, and—"

  Lailani walked onto the bridge and slapped Noodles' head.

  "I'm not telling you a goddamn thing about the Ghost Fleet unless Ben-Ari is here," Lailani said. "We rescue Ben-Ari, or my lips are sealed."

  Noodles glowered at her. "I have ways of making you talk. I can torture you. I can show you the Star Wars Holiday Special. I can code the ship's speakers to play Yowling Cat Perkins's Greatest Hits on an infinite loop. I—Ow, ow! Let go of my glasses! Okay, okay!" He snatched his glasses back from Lailani. "Fine! We'll rescue Ben-Ari, then save the galaxy. Happy?"

  Kemi ignored him. She flew closer, the stealth cloak still on. The asteroid lazily rolled ahead, a hundred k
ilometers long. Its small moon, the size of a city park, orbited it. Ravagers flew around the twin asteroids, and more clung to the rocky surfaces. Already webs coated the prisons built here.

  Kemi's heart sank. She had never forgotten the overrun prison in the DMZ. That place still haunted her nightmares.

  Please be alive, Ben-Ari, she thought. I can't do this without you. I need my friend, my mentor, my captain.

  They were getting close now. Soon they would be in visible range. The Brendan's stealth technology did not offer complete invisibility. It protected them at a distance, scattering reflective light and cloaking emitted heat and radiation, making the ship difficult for sensors to detect. But at close range, the ship could still be seen by the naked eye.

  They'll see us soon, Kemi knew. We can't beat so many with strength of arms. But we have speed.

  "Noodles, are you sure she'll be held on the moon?" Kemi said. "Not in the main prison on the larger asteroid?"

  "I'd bet on it," he said. "The installation on the moon is harsher, reserved for only the most notorious prisoners. They call it the Seventh Circle." He shuddered. "I don't miss that place. After the shit she pulled, Ben-Ari will be there."

  Kemi nodded. "Here's the plan. We fly in, activate our azoth engine, and scatter the ravagers. We'll also knock the little moon out of orbit. We then fly back and blast the prison roof open. We climb down. We grab Ben-Ari. We climb back out. We fly like the wind."

  "If she's still alive," Lailani said. She hit a few controls, and the viewport zoomed in on the prison. Lailani cringed. "Those bastard marauders covered the entire prison with their webs. Every prisoner inside might be dead already."

  "Then we'll explore every cell until we find her body," Kemi said. "If there's even a tiny chance Captain Ben-Ari is alive—and to me, she's still a captain—I'm going to fight for her. She would do the same for us. She saved our lives more times than I can count. Whatever it takes, we're finding her. And if all we find is her body, we'll give her a proper burial. We—"

  She bit down on her words.

  "They saw us," Lailani whispered.

  One of the ravagers was flying straight at them.

  "Damn," Kemi muttered. "We're still far. They shouldn't have seen us yet."