Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4)

by Daniel Arenson

  Once more, they ran together.

  They ran as they had as children, fleeing the death of his mother and Addy's parents.

  They ran as they had in boot camp, training side by side.

  They ran as they had on Corpus, fighting the scum in their hives.

  They ran as they had on Abaddon, invading the enemy's homeworld.

  For so many years, since we were children, we ran together, Marco thought. But it was here, on Haven, on a world at peace, that I drove Addy away. That I fell apart. That I lost her. I never want to lose you again, Addy.

  Another marauder leaped toward them. They fired their guns together, slaying the beast. A ravager ship streamed overhead, slammed into a Firebird, and the human jet fell and crashed into a tower. Far above, a human warship was firing its cannons, barely visible through the storm, then tilted, tipped, and slammed down onto the city. The ground shook. A mushroom cloud rose where it had fallen, where its armaments burst, the sound deafening, and Haven trembled.

  Addy pulled Marco along, and they raced into one of the buildings that still stood. A marauder lurked in the lobby, feeding on human corpses. The skulls had been sawed open, the brains removed. Blood splashed the lobby, and the creature raised its head, leering. A child's severed arm dangled between its teeth.

  A nightmare, Marco thought. A nightmare risen into reality.

  He and Addy fired their guns. The marauder laughed, bounded toward them, nearly reached them. They hit its eyes only a meter away, and it crashed down.

  Addy spat onto the corpse.

  "They're ugly bastards, these new guys," she said. "Fuck me, I never thought I'd miss the scum." She discarded her empty magazine and loaded another. "Now come on, follow me."

  She took him down a staircase. They plunged several stories underground, finally reaching a doorway. Addy unlocked the door, and they stepped into a cramped apartment, barely larger than a closet. There were no windows. Marco saw a bed, a Maple Leafs poster, and a table covered with weapons. Mold covered the walls.

  He frowned, looking around. "Addy, do you . . . live here?"

  She glared at him. "It's fine and cozy. And rent's cheap. I can't afford a nice place anymore on my salary alone, all right?" She snorted. "Especially when those bastards keep docking my pay every time I punch somebody out."

  Marco noticed that fresh bruises coated her knuckles. "You're not supposed to fight the bad guys? I thought that was your job."

  Addy stared at the wall. Her fists tightened. "Marco, I never fought bad guys. I stand guard at a fucking subway station."

  "But . . . the bruises! The black eyes! You always came home hurt, and I thought—"

  "I fought the other guards, all right?" Addy refused to look at him, and she blinked away tears. "The other damn security guards. But I won every fight." She finally turned toward him, eyes red. "They bullied me, all right? They bullied you too. They made fun of us. Called us names. Murderers. War criminals. So I beat the shit out of them." She wiped her eyes with her bruised knuckles. "Besides, none of that matters anymore. The whole damn planet is overrun with space bugs. We're unemployed now, Poet."

  "No." Marco shook his head. "We have a job. We're soldiers."

  Addy sniffed. "We're soldiers," she whispered.

  The muffled explosions and screams of war still sounded above. The basement apartment shook and dust rained from the ceiling. Marco took Addy's hand.

  "Addy, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I was a complete idiot."

  She nodded. "You were."

  "I acted like an ass."

  She nodded. "You did."

  "I . . ." Marco lowered his head. "I didn't know how to be anything but a soldier. I didn't know how to live as a civilian. I didn't know how to deal with the trauma, the memories, the nightmares, the feeling of being trapped, useless, purposeless. So I drank, I slept around, I sank into a pit, and worst of all, Addy, I was a bad friend to you." He wiped his eyes. "I drove you away. And that's the worst thing I ever did. Because I lost my best friend."

  She smiled tremulously. "I'm right here, Marco. You found me again. Or, more correctly, I found you and saved your ass."

  He still held her hand, and he looked into her eyes. "Addy, I love you. I don't care how that love works. I don't care whether I love you as a friend, a brother, or something more. All I know is that I love you more than anyone, more than anything. I almost died, Addy. I don't just mean from the marauders. I almost died before they ever invaded. Because I couldn't live without you. I love you—always, fully, completely." His voice shook. "You're the most important person to me in the world. Can you forgive me? Can you let me back into your life?"

  Tears filled her eyes. "Fuck you, Marco Emery. Fuck you, because you're making me all emotional and shit." She sniffed, her tears falling. "I forgive you, you asshole. Because I need you. Because I love you too, even though you're an idiot. I love you. I love you. Now hug me, you moron."

  He hugged her for a long time. She squeezed him against her. They stood, silent, holding each other.

  A boom shook the building. The weapons rattled on the table. Addy pulled away from Marco and pointed at the weapons.

  "I've been collecting these for a while now," she said.

  "It's a goddamn armory," said Marco. "You're a nut."

  She nodded. "Aren't you glad you're my best friend?" She tossed him a grenade. "Now stock up!"

  They stocked up. An assault rifle and two loaded pistols each. Spare magazines. Grenades. Bulletproof jackets. Battle knives. Marco didn't dare ask where Addy had bought all this stuff; he didn't want to know.

  But yes, tonight, I'm grateful that I'm best friends with this nut.

  "Now are you ready to go out there and kick alien ass?" Addy said.

  "No," Marco said. "I want to hide here underground. I never want to see war again. But I'll fight with you. Like we used to."

  Because maybe that's all that I am, he thought. All that I know how to be. And he didn't know if that comforted or horrified him.

  They walked up the staircase and back into the lobby. Through the shattered doorway, they saw the battle raging across the street. Barely any humans were still fighting, and the city swarmed with the marauders.

  "For Earth," Addy said.

  "For humanity," Marco said.

  Addy cocked her gun. "For hot dogs."

  Marco nodded, smiling thinly. "And rakes."

  They ran outside, bullets firing.

  The terrors of the galaxy rose before them. Hundreds of the marauders filled the street, climbed the buildings, cast their foul webs over cars and homes. Corpses of humans littered the streets, and only a handful of Firebirds still fought above against thousands of black, spiky ravagers.

  The colony has fallen, Marco knew, heart pounding against his ribs. He bared his teeth. Then I die—not like a coward, defeated and weak. Like a soldier. Not alone. With Addy.

  He roared, firing his T57. Addy stood at his side, firing her own assault rifle. Marauders ahead screeched, the bullets slamming against them, and turned toward Marco and Addy. The aliens advanced, sneering, laughing, snapping their jaws. One fell. Another. A third marauder screamed and died. More replaced them, and hundreds were soon advancing over corpses toward Marco and Addy. They were the last two humans still alive on the street, maybe on the planet.

  "Goodbye, Poet!" Addy shouted, firing her gun. "See you in Hell!"

  "I'm going to Heaven!" he shouted, knocking back another marauder.

  "Wuss!" Addy said, lobbing a grenade. It burst, shattering a marauder's legs.

  The aliens moved closer. Their claws lashed. Marco screamed, fired his gun, emptied his magazine. Claws thrust toward him. He swung his gun, knocking them aside. More claws lashed, slicing across his arm. Addy screamed at his side, firing into a marauder's open jaws, then falling as an alien spewed webs at her feet. Webs shot from another marauder's tail, and the net caught Marco's legs, wrapped around them, and knocked him down.

  This is it. He grimaced. The
end. With Addy.

  Engines roared above. A shadow fell. A ravager ship lowered itself over the street. Plasma heated up in its cannon, and Marco winced, prepared to burn. Perhaps that was preferable to being torn apart by claws.

  Plasma rained, and he closed his eyes.

  Marauders screeched.

  Marco waited to die.

  The aliens screamed, and heat bathed Marco, but he didn't feel the searing pain of death.

  He opened his eyes to slits.

  The ravager ship was raining its flames onto the marauders.

  The aliens burned. They fled from the inferno. The plasma streamed across the street, knocking the aliens aside. The ravager's engines roared, and the ship kept moving from side to side, burning the aliens, sparing Marco and Addy.

  When the last marauder on the street was dead, the ravager thumped down before them, knocking over electrical poles.

  The ship faced Addy and Marco, its plasma cannon still hot.

  "What the hell?" Marco said, rising to his feet.

  A hatch opened in the alien vessel, and a figure emerged.

  "Need a lift?" the figure said.

  Marco gasped.

  "Einav!" he said. "I mean, Captain Ben-Ari! I mean, ma'am!"

  She stepped down the ramp, wearing a bloodstained orange jumpsuit. "I received your letter." She reached down her hand. "Climb aboard, Sergeant Emery and Sergeant Linden."

  Marco cursed his damn eyes. It must have just been the smoke that made them water. He took his captain's hand, and he climbed aboard. He was entering an alien starship, but for the first time in a very long while, he was home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Marco looked around him at the innards of the ravager. For the first time, he got to see an alien warship from the inside.

  This wasn't like a scum vessel, constructed of flesh and skin and shell. Like human ships, ravagers were made of metal. Yet there was no true floor, walls, or ceiling here, just a roughly cylindrical fuselage. Black webs hung everywhere, hundreds of strands. They were thickest at the front of the ship, where the strands were attached to what looked like electrical outlets.

  A chair—a human chair—was lodged into the webbing at the front of the ship. Several glass spheres clung to the web like dewdrops the size of watermelons. Shower curtain rings hung from several marauder strands, and paper notes were attached to them, labeled with words like "thrust" and "brakes" and "altitude" and a dozen other commands.

  "We had to make some tweaks," Ben-Ari said, climbing into the seat. "But a human can pilot her now." She grabbed one of the curtain rings that dangled from a strand. "I don't know if the marauders ever named this ship, but I've named her the Anansi. The name of an old spider god from Earth."

  Addy looked around, scratching her chin. "Where's the cup holder?"

  Ben-Ari smiled wryly. "Hold on to something, soldier. She's a bumpy ride." She yanked a shower curtain ring, and the engines roared to life.

  Marco and Addy swayed, reached out, and grabbed the strands that dangled everywhere. These ones weren't connected to any controls, it seemed. They were rubbery, sticky, and warm. Marco hung on for dear life as Ben-Ari piloted the Anansi, raising the ravager above the city roofs. The spheres in the web crackled to life, showing images of the world outside.

  They're monitors, Marco realized. Spherical monitors.

  He watched the view in the spheres as the Anansi soared. Many other ravagers flew around them, still raining plasma on the city. A handful of human ships were still engaged in battle, flying close together, but thousands of enemy vessels surrounded them; Marco doubted the human resistance would last much longer. One sphere showed a view of the colony below. Haven lay in ruins, many of its skyscrapers fallen, and marauders were swarming through the city, rounding up prisoners. Thousands of colonists, bound in webs, were being marched down roads.

  Marco felt queasy. He thought of Anisha, wondered if she still lived, and guilt filled him.

  I'm sorry, Anisha. I'm so sorry for how I treated you. I'm so sorry for what you must be going through now.

  "There's a house we have to go to," Marco said. "A friend of mine lives there."

  Ben-Ari shook her head. "No, Marco. The colony is too dangerous now."

  Marco inhaled sharply. "Then put me down. Let me off. I have to save her. She's . . . important to me."

  He felt Addy looking at him, felt her hand on his shoulder.

  Ben-Ari paused for only a second, though it seemed like a year. Finally she nodded. "Show me the way. We'll do it quickly."

  "It's fifty kilometers north of the city," Marco said. "I'll guide you."

  They flew between the other ravagers. The marauders, it seemed, were flying as a horde with no organized units. No other ship challenged the renegade Anansi. They flew, unmolested, for several moments until they hovered over the suburbs. Marco pointed the way, and they lowered themselves to fly over Anisha's street.

  Except her street was gone.

  The glass domes had shattered. The houses, the trees, the meticulous yards—all had burned. Charred corpses lay among the ruins. Marco wasn't sure which house was Anisha's, which corpse was her. He lowered his head.

  Addy's hand returned to his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Marco."

  He nodded, throat tight, unable to speak.

  Ben-Ari gave him a soft look, then increased altitude. They kept flying. They left the burnt suburbs and flew through the wilderness, hidden in the storm. Finally they reached a mountain, and Ben-Ari gently guided the Anansi into a large cave. They landed on the rocky floor beside a second starship: a small human vessel, its hull black, dented, and emblazoned with the words HDFS Saint Brendan.

  "Your friends are waiting to see you," Ben-Ari said. "They're aboard the Brendan. Go see them."

  Marco and Addy leaped out of the Anansi. The cave was dark, but lights shone in the Brendan's portholes. The airlock slid open. Marco and Addy trudged through the soupy atmosphere, covering their mouths, and stepped into the human vessel.

  A woman stood in the shadowy airlock, wearing a blue Space Territorial Command uniform. Black curls haloed her head. She stepped into the light, revealing a young face, brown skin, and large warm eyes. She smiled.

  "Hi, Marco."

  "Kemi!" He approached her, hesitated, then pulled her into a hug.

  Kemi laughed and mussed his hair. "You need a haircut." Her eyes softened. "And you're too skinny."

  Marco gasped. "Your hand . . ."

  She smiled and flexed it—a metal hand, its gears whizzing. "It dices, it slices—it even gives haircuts!"

  "What happened?" Marco whispered, touching her metal fingertips.

  "I got overeager when biting my nails," Kemi said.

  Addy ran up and squeezed them both between her arms. "Look at us! The three amigos together again. Just like in high school."

  Kemi grinned. "Those were good days. Though if I recall correctly, you mostly hung out with the hockey players."

  "And you and Marco were always in the library studying," Addy said. "Nerds." Suddenly she frowned. "Say, Kemi, did you know that you lost your hand?"

  Kemi gasped. "I had no idea!" She examined her prosthetic, curling and uncurling the steel fingers. "That would certainly explain all those ripped gloves."

  Soon the three of them were laughing, shoving one another, and arguing about who was the biggest nerd or knucklehead. And even here, on a distant world, with war raging outside, it felt almost like home. Almost like the old days. Almost like three kids, not three war veterans caught in another hell.

  Addy was busy retelling the story of Marco's famous all-night Dungeons and Dragons game—proof of what a nerd he was!—when a hesitant voice rose from deeper in the ship.

  "Addy? Marco?"

  Addy fell silent, rubbed her eyes, and bolted forward. Marco followed. They ran into a corridor, and there Marco saw her.

  "Lailani," he whispered.

  "Tiny!" Addy bellowed, grabbed the little woman by the waist, and lifte
d her. She spun Lailani around, then crushed her in a hug. "What the hell are you doing here too?"

  "Let me go, you crazy Canadian beast!" Lailani laughed, shoving Addy off. "I had to come get you. Noodles insisted." She jerked her thumb, pointing at a scrawny young man who entered the corridor.

  "Hello, ladies and gentlemen," Noodles said.

  Addy gasped. "You!" She pointed. "I know you! You were at boot camp with us! For a few weeks, at least. You're the other dragon nerd, Marco's twin!"

  Addy ran toward Noodles, and the two began reminiscing about boot camp.

  Marco turned toward Lailani. She stood, biting her lip, looking at him.

  "Hi," Marco said.

  Lailani gave him a hesitant wave. "Hi."

  They stood facing each other, silent. Marco could barely believe it. There she stood, right before him—Lailani. The woman Marco had met at boot camp, had fallen in love with. The woman he had made love to. The woman he had proposed to. The woman he had thought he'd live with for the rest of his life. The woman who had left him, choosing to travel with another lover to do charity work in the Third World. The woman who had broken his heart.

  It was two years since Marco had left Earth, since he had last seen Lailani, but she looked the same. She still sported a messy pixie cut. She wore cargo shorts, a tank top, and sandals, and tattoos of flowers still coiled around her wrists, hiding her scars. Her old army dog tags hung around her neck. She was still beautiful. She was so beautiful.

  "Lailani, I—" he began.

  "You don't have to say anything," she whispered. "I know. Everything that you're feeling, I know."

  He nodded, throat tight. "How is Sofia?" he finally said.

  Lailani lowered her head and stared at her feet. "She fell. The marauders."

  "I'm sorry, Lailani. Truly, I'm sorry for your loss."

  She nodded, still staring at her feet. "Come on. You look hungry. There's some food."

  Within a few moments, the crew was sitting in the kitchen of the Saint Brendan, eating microwaved lasagna. Only Kemi had not joined them; the lieutenant stood outside the ship, guarding the cave entrance.