by Graham Brown
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
THE GODS OF WAR
Copyright © 2014 Graham Brown
All rights reserved.
ISBN 13: 9781939398185
ISBN 10: 1939398185
Also by Graham Brown and Spencer J. Andrews
Shadows of the Midnight Sun
(Book 1 of the Shadows Trilogy)
Shadows of the Dark Star
(Book 2 of the Shadows Trilogy)
Coming August 2014
The Gods of War: Redemption
(Book 2 of The Gods of War Series)
Coming November 2014
Other novels by Graham Brown
Black Rain
Black Sun
The Eden Prophecy
Co-authored with Clive Cussler
Devil’s Gate
The Storm
Zero Hour
Ghost Ship
THE GODS OF WAR
Copyright © 2014 by Graham Brown and Spencer J. Andrews
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the authors or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Stealth Books
www.stealthbooks.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-939398-18-5 (Paperback Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-939398-19-2 (Kindle Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-1-939398-21-5 (ePub Edition)
Published in the United States of America
DEDICATION
Every story draws inspiration from a thousand sources, be it a snippet of conversation overheard in a restaurant or a street sign emblazoned with an odd sounding name that somehow becomes a character. And above all, from those who support and encourage.
For this story two people in particular stand out and we wanted to say thanks. To Michael Palmieri, who gave us direction when we were lost in the labyrinth of too many plots, and to John Soriano who taught us to re-write and refine until the job was done, no matter how long it took. In effect, to never give up, or give in.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
PROLOGUE
August 2137
“The Earth is dying.”
These words were spoken by Lucien Rex from his position at the head of the long conference table. “And there is nothing we can do to save it.”
Tall, lean and imposing. Lucien stood in a dimly lit room, reserved for the powerful. Around him, pinpoint spotlights illuminated twelve men and women who sat at the table. They were the members of the Cartel, those who’d risen above all others. So wealthy and powerful that their voices mattered more than the billions who lived in the filth beneath their feet.
They stared at Lucien as if confused by what he’d said.
“Let me clarify,” he said. “This planet is already dead. We are merely living off its last gasping breaths.”
He spoke to them without pity or fear or remorse in his voice. As if there were nothing to be mourned in the loss of humanity’s home. He spoke to them as subordinates or perhaps students.
Despite the grave words, they sat like statues, these twelve pillars of power. They were accustomed to such predictions. The prophets of doom had not been silent all these years. But in the enclaves of the wealthy, where all things were plentiful, the misery of a decaying planet, endless war and the suffering of twenty billion people in a constant struggle to survive simply did not register. Private armies and fortress-like compounds saw to that.
Finally, a rotund man at the far end of the table cleared his throat. “Not like you to play the part, Lucien. The sky falls on others, not on us. What’s your angle here? Are you trying to scare up more money for President Collins and his efforts?”
“And where is Collins?” another voice asked. “Why isn’t he here?”
Lucien almost smiled. “Our President for Life and Leader of the Military Executive was not invited to this session, because he is not aware of the true gravity of the situation.”
“How could he not be aware?” one of the Cartel asked. “These are his studies.”
“I have my ways,” Lucien replied without elaborating. “I assure you the data sent to government offices has been alte
red.”
“For what purpose?”
“To keep the president believing his own foolish hope: that this planet has a future. To keep him passive while we act.”
Lucien reached forward and pressed a switch. A holographic image appeared in the center of the table, displaying a graph. Various lines crossed it, moving from the bottom left to the upper right. The scale of years was marked across the bottom.
“We’ve crossed the threshold,” Lucien said. “The glaciers are long gone, the ice caps have melted. And now, the seas are beginning to boil. In the next twelve months they will release more carbon and methane than man has released in the last hundred years. No amount of human engineering can possibly counteract what the Earth is giving off in her dying gasps.”
“Are you sure?” one of them asked.
“How do you know this for certain?”
They were leaning forward now. Concerned with what Lucien might say next. He was not some environmental do-gooder, nor a politician or preacher. He was one of them. The richest and most powerful of them. He was the unspoken head of the Cartel. He might have been the president in Collins’s place, had Collins not controlled the military with an iron fist.
“Beyond a doubt,” Lucien replied.
“What will happen?”
“In six months the dark clouds that never part will become so thick that even genetically engineered plants and algae will no longer produce meaningful amounts of photosynthesis. The food chain will collapse and the twenty billion inhabitants of this planet will go from wretched and sedentary to starving and desperate. So many of them at once will be starving and angry that neither our forces or the armies Collins commands will be able to stop them.”
The suggestions began to fly.
“We’ll have to convince Collins of a greater solution,” one the twelve said. “A purge. A culling of the herd. If we reduce the population drastically, culling ninety percent of humanity, the rest would survive. Those who are spared might even thank us.”
“Yes,” another voice said.
“It’s time. We’ve all known this day would come,” another called out.
Lucien sat down, rested his arms on the edge of the table and tented his hands together. He’d considered such an option himself, years ago. He’d never suggested it aloud because President Collins and his armies saw themselves as defenders of the downtrodden. Or perhaps guardians of the collective human soul, if there was one. They would never allow it.
Humanity must rise or fall together. The president’s favorite quote. How wrong he was.
“You misunderstand the nature of our peril,” Lucien said, returning his attention to the Cartel. “We’ve passed the point of no return. The world will continue to get darker and hotter. The seas will boil dry and skies will become thick with poison, too heavy to breathe, too dark to see through. This planet will die whether we exterminate the masses or not. Killing them to the last will only mean we die here alone.”
“So what can we do?”
“The solution is simple,” Lucien told them. “If all who remain here are going to die, then we have no choice but to leave.”
“And go where?”
“To Mars,” Lucien said bluntly. “Our president’s other pet project.”
The group fell silent, perhaps appreciating the irony of the situation. Collins had forced them, under the gravest of threats, to contribute massive levels of funding to the Terra-forming of Mars.
New technologies had been developed; a fleet of massive transports larger than the great tankers that plied the ocean had been built in orbit. New fuels and engines designed and tested, to allow faster transits. Even the development of a rudimentary artificial gravity system.
The costs had been astronomical, most of it borne by those who could pay. In other words, the families represented at this table.
Lucien had been the easiest to persuade because his corporations were given many of the contracts, but the others gave in only kicking and screaming. Now, the very project they railed against would be their lifeboat, their salvation.
Lucien tapped the screen in front of him and the holographic image of the graph vanished. It was replaced by a spherical image in red, partially see-through and marked by a great canyon, several large volcanoes and a smattering of craters.
“Mars was supposed to be an agricultural colony,” Lucien said. “Supposed to feed half of the earth’s population in twenty years. A wildly optimistic dream of our glassy-eyed president, of course, but at the very least it will be self-sustaining. It will survive even as the Earth goes dark. And we will survive on it: the pinnacle of humanity, leaving the dregs of society behind.”
“I’m not interested in living in a hole in the ground,” one of them said.
“Cities are being built,” Lucien insisted. “Crops are being harvested. Livestock raised.”
“My people tell me the whole project is way behind schedule,” another one said.
“It is,” Lucien admitted. “There have been difficulties. Primarily the president’s mismanagement of the project and the fine dust of Mars that destroys machinery without mercy. But I’ve found a solution to get things back on track and even speed up the timetable. It’s already in place.”
They sat back quietly contemplating the scenario. “How much time do we have?” one of them asked.
“Less than a year.”
They took a collective breath. Lucien understood. It was a dark reality. One not easily faced by those used to getting their way.
“What do you need?” the rotund man offered.
“Very little,” Lucien replied. “Unity among us… and Collins out of the way.”
This was a dangerous request. Each of them would have killed Collins a dozen times if they could have guaranteed that Collins would go quietly and that his military would not turn on them in a violent response. But Collins was a career soldier. Unlike previous generals, he’d protected the military from being used wastefully. He’d cultivated an esprit de corps and an almost cult like following among those in armed forces. If there was a hierarchy on Earth, and there certainly was, the Cartel and their family members topped it, but the military came in just below them, a place of honor and of special rights. And while the masses despised both organizations, the Cartel was hated more passionately. As such Collins couldn’t be deposed easily.
“You’d better have a good plan,” the rotund man said, speaking for the rest. “If you fail Collins will show no mercy.”
“I’m aware of the risk,” Lucien said. “You should have more faith. When have I ever steered you wrong?”
Lucien looked around, his eyes traveling from one face to the next, staring at each of them until they nodded their agreement.
“Mars was meant to be a giant bread basket,” a silver haired woman noted. “A new start for humanity.”
“And so it shall be,” Lucien replied. “For us.”
CHAPTER 1
Central United States, 2137
Dark clouds churned above the barren, dusty plain, mixing together in a colored pallet of purple and yellow like a painful, fading bruise.
Far below, Major James Collins stood on the bulwark of a steel-reinforced battlement. Sweat, grime and three days of stubble covered his face. He wore dusty, camouflaged fatigues with a simple flak jacket over the top. His wavy black hair was uncovered but mussed from the helmet he’d discarded earlier, and his brown eyes were hidden by the reflective orange shield of the blade-like sunglasses he wore.
A well-worn patch on his shoulder displayed a giant, metallic claw grasping three lightning bolts. Writing beneath the powerful image read: 41st Armored, Numquam Numquam Cedere. Never, never, surrender.
At thirty-seven, Major Collins had spent more than half his life in the military. Scars on his face, chest and back attested to that. He’d spilled blood on every continent around the globe in battles no monument had ever been erected to. In a way he was like every other lifer in the military, and yet he was also the
only surviving child of President Jackson Collins, a designation that had always bothered him.
Barred from entering the military because his older sister and brother had been killed in the War of Unification, James had run away from home and enlisted in the military under an assumed name at age seventeen. He’d come up through the ranks starting as a grunt like everyone else. He’d fought in two long campaigns, earning a sleeve full of medals, before the brass actually figured out who he was.
By that point, battlefield promotions had him in charge of a full company at age twenty, and despite expecting he’d end up in the stockade or at least be drummed out of the service, he was promoted to lieutenant and allowed to stay. Far from pissing the old man off, it seemed like the only thing he’d ever done that made his father proud. Eleven years on he was still in the service. He carried a colonel’s responsibility, commanding the 41st, but his rank never rose above major as he rejected every cushy promotion that he’d been offered.
Many in the unit and across the military admired his choices. Most of the military billets were filled by those from the lower classes, who saw it as a way out. They signed ten-year contracts and their families had a chance to move from utter poverty to something resembling normal living.
James obviously didn’t need that, and was often asked: What the hell he was doing here?
He never answered. Just smiled and laughed. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe the reasons changed. But as he stared out at the current surroundings, the question seemed more valid than ever.
They were in the middle of nowhere, a section of the old United States that had been written off after waves of nuclear fallout. When illegal squatters set up shop and found a way to survive, someone up high thought it must be time to reclaim the land. Millions of legitimate settlers were relocated to the plains only to have their numbers decimated year after year by disease, terrorist raids and radiation poisoning.
The only hope was to find clean water, and to that end James and part of his brigade were watching over a sprawling complex built to bring water from one of the deepest aquifers ever found and bring life to a choking land. The only problem was they hadn’t found any yet.
As the drilling went on and the water hid from them, a crowd began to gather and watch. Each day there were more of them. Each day they seemed to grow more restless. As James looked out over the crowd from behind the orange shield of his sunglasses, he saw thousands, tens of thousands. They now surrounded the complex in a crowd twenty or thirty deep, lining the concrete walls and electric fencing that surrounded the installation. More could be seen approaching, trudging across the wasteland like long streams of ants.
