Earth Shadows (Earthrise Book 5)

by Daniel Arenson

  For hours they stood here, flesh against flesh. Sweat, blood, and urine formed a foul miasma, and one prisoner vomited. Finally, it seemed, the marauders had filled the ship to capacity.

  A cattle car, Addy thought. That's all this is. We're meat in a can.

  She suddenly felt guilty for eating all that Spam.

  "Where are they taking us?" whispered a girl nearby.

  "To a good place," her mother answered, her arms pinned to her sides.

  A graying man chuckled nearby, madness in his rheumy eyes. "To the slaughter!" He cackled. "To the slaughter, to the slaughter!"

  "Silence!" rumbled a marauder that clung to the ceiling, and claws lashed down, ripping the man's lips. The prisoner kept cackling, blood spurting from his mouth.

  A child by Addy collapsed, eyes rolling back. Addy managed to free an arm, grab the girl, and hoist her up. The child gasped for breath.

  "Help me!" Addy whispered to those beside her. "Get her on my shoulders!"

  The prisoners worked together, finally managing to squeeze the girl out from the mass of human flesh, to place her on Addy's shoulders. The child clutched Addy's head, trembling, ducking whenever the scum scuttled above. A woman nearby was swooning, and Addy wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close, forming a pocket of air—only two or three centimeters wide—for the woman to breathe.

  I can't kill these marauders yet, Addy thought. But maybe I can save a life or two. That's all I can do now. She cringed. Oh, Marco, where are you?

  Metallic booms sounded deep in the ship. The vessel jolted. Engines rumbled. The child on Addy's shoulders clutched her, weeping. The transport ship shook, tilted, and people fell. At the edges of the deck, some prisoners hit the wall, and others slammed into them, crushing them. Blood spilled. Another person vomited. The engines roared, louder, louder, and the deck trembled, and the air grew hotter, scorching. Sweat soaked Addy. Sitting on her shoulders, the girl lost control of her bladder, and the piss dripped across Addy's body, mingling with her sweat, sizzling against her brand.

  With thrumming metal and roaring fury, the massive ship began to rise.

  There were no viewports here, no portholes, no way to see the outside world. But there was no mistaking the immense pressure shoving the prisoners down. Many collapsed, others falling atop them. Addy fell to one knee, and the girl on her shoulders suddenly felt as heavy as a sumo wrestler. They struggled for air. Prisoners fell around Addy, knocked against her, and an elbow hit her teeth. Addy tasted blood.

  Finally—weightlessness.

  They floated up from the ground, hit the walls, hit the sticky ceiling, hovered in the cramped deck.

  "We're in space," somebody said. "Where are they taking us?"

  "To Earth?" somebody asked. "Are we going home?"

  The old man with the lacerated lips laughed again, and his voice echoed through the ship.

  "To the slaughter! To the slaughter!"

  Floating upward, Addy grabbed a strand of web. Other prisoners bumped into her and one another. She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

  No, she thought. Not to the slaughter. She sneered, struggling for air. To war.

  CHAPTER TWO

  They trundled through space, two limping ships. Inside them—four battered refugees, the hope of humanity on their shoulders. Behind them—relentless, endlessly cruel, the enemy followed.

  "Fuck me, this is boring." Lailani yawned. "I wanna fight! Captain, if I may make a suggestion? Let's turn around, charge at those bastards, and take them head on."

  Marco cringed. "If I may make a suggestion—shush, Lailani."

  The slender Filipina swiveled her chair toward him and placed her hands on her hips. "I was talking to the captain, not to you, gunner. Unless you plan a mutiny, that means Ben-Ari." Lailani furrowed her brow and tapped her cheek. "Are you planning a mutiny? Because that would totally alleviate my boredom. Yes." She nodded. "Let's mutiny! First order of the day: pizza night every night!"

  Sitting in the commander's seat, Ben-Ari ignored the two sergeants. She kept checking the instruments, hitting keys, adjusting dials, and frowning at the controls. The captain still hadn't changed out of her prison jumpsuit, and the handcuffs still dangled from her left wrist. Marco had never dared asked what had happened to the prison guard on the other end.

  "They're gaining on us," Ben-Ari mumbled under her breath. "How can they be gaining on us?"

  The bridge of the HDFS Saint Brendan was small and cluttered. Here was not a large warship, not like the Miyari which had once transported Marco to the frontier, certainly not like the cavernous Urchin he had served on during Operation Neptune a few years ago. Three seats close together—one for the commander, one for the gunner, one for the navigator. An array of control panels and viewports. There was some room to get up, stretch, and pace, but not much, and not without banging into one control panel or another.

  The three companions had been crammed in here for hours now, watching the enemy slowly gain on them. Marco glanced up at the monitor above Lailani's head. It showed the position of the Saint Brendan, a green dot, traveling through space. Smaller lights showed annotated stars streaming by. Beside the ship appeared a second dot—it symbolized the Anansi, the commandeered ravager that Kemi now flew. Farther back, at the edge of the monitor, Marco saw them. Twenty-two dots, clustered together—the enemy ravagers.

  "Those bastards have been following us all the way from Haven," he muttered. "And I have a feeling they'll follow us to the edge of the universe."

  Ben-Ari finally raised her eyes from her monitor. A loose braid hung across her shoulder, and she gave it a few nervous tugs. "Damn it! Nothing I do seems to work. The stealth engines are busted." She groaned. "I'm putting on my space suit. I'm grabbing my toolbox. And I'm going out there to fix the damn thing."

  "Ma'am, taking a space walk at warp speed is highly dangerous," Marco said. "Spacetime is curved around us. It messes with your sense of dimensions, of reality itself. And if you stray too far out of the bubble, you—"

  "I'm aware, Sergeant," Ben-Ari snapped, but then her voice softened. "If I'm curt, I'm sorry, but I've barely slept since busting out of prison several days ago, I'm still covered in alien blood, I still haven't had five minutes to change into a uniform, and there are twenty-two enemy ships gaining on us. They're only a light-year away now. In warped space, that's nothing. We need that stealth engine working." She rose from her seat. "Emery, de la Rosa, the bridge is yours. Call me on the comm if anything happens. I'll be out there, trying to fix the stealth cloak."

  With that, for the first time since fleeing Haven, Ben-Ari stepped off the bridge.

  For a moment, Marco and Lailani were silent.

  Finally Lailani turned to him and whispered, "Now's our chance to mutiny!"

  Marco sighed. "No."

  Lailani hopped in her seat. "But I'm bored!"

  "Well, load up the stealth engine manuals and learn how to fix them."

  "I tried that already!" Lailani rolled her eyes. "They're busted. They're busted good. They need to be replaced. The captain won't be able to fix them."

  Marco blew out his breath. "Not that they'd do us any good anyway. The Anansi doesn't even have a stealth cloak, and Kemi is sticking out like a sore thumb in that thing."

  He turned to look out the porthole. There it flew, only meters away from the Saint Brendan, staying close enough to fly within their bubble of warped spacetime. The Anansi was twice the size of the Saint Brendan, a dark, jagged ravager, built by and for marauders. It had its own warp drive, but now it was sharing its funnel with the Brendan; left to bend spacetime on its own, a single hiccup from Kemi could send it millions of kilometers off course.

  Marco hit a few buttons, hailing Kemi. Her face appeared on the monitor before him.

  "Hey, Kems, how are you holding up?" Marco said.

  She looked up at him, bleary-eyed. A yawn split her face. A bandanna held back her mane of black curls, and sweat glistened on her dark skin. In each han
d, she held a shower curtain ring which was attached to a strand of marauder webbing. Several more shower curtain rings dangled around her. Her seat, ripped out from the Brendan, hung in the web. Normally, giant space-bugs with six legs piloted the Anansi, but with a few tweaks, they had built a human interface.

  "I'm hot and tired," Kemi said, "but holding up. Wish this ship had a good air conditioner and sound system. A fridge full of cupcakes would be nice too."

  Lailani leaned across Marco and peered into the monitor. She waved. "Hey, Kemi, want to help us mutiny while Ben-Ari is out on her space walk?"

  Kemi's eyes widened. "The captain is out on a space walk? Marco, did you tell her it's dangerous?"

  He nodded. "Yes, but you know our captain. She lives off danger like a grunt lives off Spam."

  At the thought of Spam, he cringed. Addy had loved the stuff. Addy—taken captive by the marauders. Addy—his best friend, the person he loved most in the world. A prisoner of war.

  Kemi seemed to see his pain. "We'll get her back, Marco. We'll find the Ghost Fleet. We'll raise that armada and defeat the marauders. And we'll get Addy back. I promise you."

  Marco nodded, his throat too tight for words. His eyes stung. He hadn't stopped thinking about Addy since losing her. He kept seeing it over and over—the marauders wrapping her in a web, carrying her into their ship.

  I'm sorry, Addy. I'm so sorry we left without you. I'm coming back for you—with help. I won't rest until you're back with me.

  "Let me know when you're ready to switch, Kemi," Marco said. "I'll take a shift."

  Kemi nodded. "Soon. I'll fly for another hour." She yawned again. "We just need to figure out the autopilot on this thing."

  Marco glanced back at the monitor above Lailani's head. The enemy was closer now. He didn't know if they even had an hour.

  "Fuckers," Lailani said, staring at the green dots with him.

  "So this Ghost Fleet is still far, huh?" Marco said.

  Lailani nodded. "Far. Very far. Farther than any human has ever flown. It'll take us months to reach the Cat's Eye Nebula where the fleet should be. And those marauders will catch us sometime today, if they keep moving this fast." She nodded. "We take 'em on. Only way. We blast 'em apart."

  "Two ships against twenty?" Marco said.

  Lailani shrugged. "We faced worse odds against the scum."

  "I'd rather face a million scum than one marauder." Marco shuddered. "Lailani, those creatures . . . they're smart. Smarter than the scum. Maybe smarter than humans. Big and strong as bulls. The scum spent fifty years trying to defeat us and failed. The marauders conquered Earth within a few days. No." He shook his head. "We can't face them. Not without help. Not without the Ghost Fleet."

  "We might not have a choice, unless Ben-Ari can fix the stealth cloak." Lailani drew her pistol. "I won't go down without a fight, though. You can be sure of that." Suddenly tears were flowing down her cheeks. "Those buggers killed Sofia, the woman I loved. They kidnapped Addy, my best friend. They destroyed Manila, my hometown, and they conquered my planet. I hate them, Marco. I fucking hate them. I will kill as many as I can before they take me down."

  Marco reached across a control panel and clasped her hand. Lailani was fierce, brave, deadly, and yet her hand was so slender, so small in his.

  "Not all is lost," Marco said. "I might have an idea." He winced. "Ben-Ari might not like it, but—"

  "Is it mutiny?" Lailani's eyes lit up, and she wiped her tears away.

  Marco smiled grimly. "Worse. Ben-Ari would prefer mutiny, I think."

  A voice crackled to life from the speakers. Ben-Ari's voice. "I can hear you, you know."

  A tap sounded beside him. Marco glanced outside the porthole. Ben-Ari was outside the ship now, clinging to its hull. She nodded at him through the porthole, then kept pulling herself across the hull. The starlight streamed around the captain, stretched along the curve of spacetime. A toolbox dangled from her hip. Marco switched the view on his monitor, watching her work. She held tools in one hand, a manual in the other, and her tongue stuck out in concentration.

  As Ben-Ari toiled, cursing and grumbling, Marco kept considering his plan. It was crazy. Ben-Ari would hate it, but . . .

  "The damn thing is busted," Ben-Ari finally said, her voice crackling through the speakers. "The hull is too dented. The light-reflector coating is all scraped off. The gears and controls are fried. We ain't getting back stealth without a visit to a shipyard, and there's no shipyard for light-years around. I'm coming back aboard. Emery, de la Rosa, meeting in the galley in ten minutes. I want to hear Emery's plan."

  "See you there, ma'am," Marco said.

  Like every cabin on the Saint Brendan, the galley—the ship's kitchen—was cramped, barely larger than a closet. Marco was wondering why Ben-Ari had called the meeting here, rather than the larger crew quarters, when he saw the captain stumble in and make a beeline to the coffee machine. During the First Galactic War, commonly known as the Scum War, Marco had often thought Einav Ben-Ari to be inhuman—remarkably calm under fire, wise, all-knowing, the exemplary officer. For the first time, perhaps, he was seeing her human frailty. Bags hung under her eyes, her cheeks were pale, and when she sipped the coffee, she let out the smallest of grateful sighs.

  "They never gave me coffee in prison," she said softly. "I missed coffee."

  She spent two years in a prison cell, Marco remembered. All because she had warned humanity about the marauders. And as soon as she had escaped, she landed in this mess. Marco could barely imagine the fortitude Ben-Ari needed just to keep functioning, let alone lead them to hope.

  That is why she leads us, he thought. Because she is the strongest among us.

  When everyone had their coffee, they connected the galley's monitor to the Anansi. Kemi's face appeared on the screen, looking even wearier than before. Sitting in the marauder web inside the ravager, she gazed at their coffee in envy.

  "Anyone want to do a little space walk and bring me a mocha latte?" the pilot said.

  "You mean ravagers don't come equipped with coffee bars?" Marco said. "What has the galaxy come to?"

  Ben-Ari frowned. "Enough jokes." She turned to Lailani. "De la Rosa, give me your latest report."

  Lailani swallowed her mouthful of coffee. "Captain, it's hard to estimate the ravagers' speed in warped space. They're traveling in a different warp than ours, and things get screwy when you bend the laws of physics. I'm no physicist, but I learned a thing or two while in the Oort Cloud. I know how to look at distant lights. One thing I know for sure: They're moving faster than we are. Not much faster, but sooner or later, they'll catch us. If we're lucky, we have five hours. If we're unlucky, we have two hours, maybe even one. Then we'll have a good ol' fashioned space battle on our hands."

  Ben-Ari nodded. "And it'll be months before we can reach any help." She turned toward Marco. "Sergeant, about your plan?"

  Marco suddenly felt silly. "It's . . . a bad idea." He stared into his cup of coffee. "It won't work."

  "Emery, right now, unless you have a working stealth engine in your pocket, I'm open to any ideas. Even bad ones." The captain stared into his eyes, her gaze penetrating. "Talk to me."

  He nodded and gulped. "All right, here goes. We have two ships here, right? The Saint Brendan we're in and the Anansi which Kemi is flying. The marauders, I imagine, are mostly interested in the Brendan—a human ship, our ship. So we all join Kemi. We climb aboard the Anansi. And we release the ravager into regular spacetime like a piece of junk. Meanwhile, we set the empty Brendan on autopilot. With any luck, the marauders will keep following the Brendan, thinking we're still inside. At most, they might send a couple ravagers after the Anansi. We can even let the Anansi drift like a piece of space debris, making it look abandoned. That makes our odds much better if it comes to a fight. Also, I bet anything the Anansi can beat the Brendan for speed, once we improve its rig. We already know ravagers are faster than human ships."

  Both Ben-Ari and Lailani were staring at hi
m, silent.

  "Let me get this clear, Sergeant," Ben-Ari said. "Are you suggesting that we discard my ship—my beloved, beautiful ship?"

  "Let me get this clear, Poet," Lailani said. "Are you suggesting that we spend months seeking the Ghost Fleet flying inside an alien deathtrap?"

  Marco cleared his throat. "As I said, it's not a very good plan."

  For another long moment, the two women were silent.

  Finally Ben-Ari spoke. "Emery, your plan is the most reckless, stupid, and insane plan I have ever heard from any soldier. Ever." She sighed. "Unfortunately, it's also the best plan we have right now."

  Lailani groaned, leaned back, and crossed her arms behind her head. "Ditch the best human spaceship still flying? Rattle around for thousands of light-years in a box of spider webs?" She sighed. "Fine! Fuck it. I'm game."

  Kemi's voice emerged through the speakers, grainy. "Captain, I'm not so sure about this. I've been flying this machine for hours now, but I'm just flying visually. My portable computer here doesn't let me do much more than talk to the Saint Brendan. If the marauders have any computer system of their own installed here, I can't figure it out. All I can really control is the steering and thrust. Tracking, navigation, sensors, all that good stuff . . ." Kemi shook her head. "Nothing."

  "Is there no way we can learn how to operate the ravager's own computers?" Ben-Ari said.

  Kemi exhaled wearily, blowing back a strand of hair. "I'm not even sure this ship has computers, Captain. The whole thing is weird. The marauders might look like hideous zombie spiders, but they're more similar to humans than the scum were. Like us humans, they think individually rather than using hive intelligence. Like us humans, they communicate with words and facial expressions, rather than with pheromones like the scum. So in a sense, we're lucky. Their ships are a lot more similar to ours than scum pods. But they're also pretty damn alien. The screens are spherical, for one. And the controls are a network of strands I can barely figure out. Imagine playing the most complex guitar in the world, one with hundreds of strings, controlling software written in a language you don't speak. Captain, without the Brendan nearby for me to interface into, I'd be flying the ravager blind. In short, we can fly the Anansi, but not navigate." Through the monitor, she made eye contact with Marco. "I don't think your plan will work."