Earth Shadows (Earthrise Book 5)

by Daniel Arenson

  "Hang on." Marco paced the galley—at least, as much as the cramped room allowed. "I'm no Noodles, but after Abaddon, I spent three years as a computer technician in the army. I installed and fixed computers on starships too. Kemi, you already have one computer on the Anansi."

  "Just this simple tablet," she said. "All it can do is talk to you. And play the odd game of Snake or Goblin Bowling."

  "But we can move more computers over," Marco said. "The computers on the Saint Brendan are actually quite small. And every computer is redundant. The way humans have a backup lung and a backup kidney, we build our warships to have backup computers. I can uninstall half the Brendan's computers and move them over. We can bring batteries to power them. And the Anansi must have some power generator; before the batteries die, we can figure out how to plug into it."

  Ben-Ari frowned and stared around the galley. "We'll need more than computers. The Brendan has sensors too. Telescopes. Radio dishes. Lots of hardware. We might be able to move some of it over. The navigational systems I can probably move. We might have to duct tape them onto the Anansi's hull, but . . ." She nodded. "We might just be able to navigate on that thing."

  "And we'll move the oxygen tanks too," Lailani said. "And all our food and water—and coffee! And some mattresses and seats. It'll be comfy. And roomier than this dump."

  "My ship is not a dump." Ben-Ari ran her hand against the bulkhead. "My first ship. I'll miss her . . ." The captain took a deep breath and stood up. "I was hoping for a shower and a proper meal, but there's no time. Let's get to work. De la Rosa, you work with me. We'll collect whatever hardware we can. Emery, you start unplugging the backup computers. We'll empty the ammo crates and pack everything in there, then take a few space walks to move it over." The captain turned to the monitor. "Lieutenant, how are you holding up? Can you keep flying for another couple hours?"

  Kemi nodded. "Yes, but make sure the first crate you ship over has all the caffeine."

  They got to work.

  Ben-Ari and Lailani began unscrewing hardware from the Saint Brendan, inside and out, most of which Marco didn't recognize. They loaded sensors, lenses, and heavy navigational machines into crates. Piece by piece, they removed the Saint Brendan's eyes and ears. One by one, the monitors went dark around them. As the women toiled at their task, Marco worked at the computers, moving system after system to one set of computers, then removing the idling machines and adding them to the crates. Blessedly, the critical systems on the Saint Brendan were redundant, allowing them to keep flying as they worked.

  "All right, boys and girls," Lailani said at one point. "I'm deactivating our last sensor. We won't be able to detect our marauder friends until we reinstall everything on the Anansi. By my estimates, we have about an hour before they reach us, maybe less." She winced. "Better get a leg up!"

  They all sped up their efforts. Marco loaded the last computer into the bin, then got to packing the food. The rations were all seal-packed in white packages: lasagna, fish and rice, chicken and peas, spaghetti bolognese, and something called Mexican fiesta. From what Marco had seen so far, they all looked the same on the inside. He dumped the rations into a crate, then began moving the water and oxygen tanks into several other crates.

  As Marco was loading a crate full of cables and batteries, he glanced at Lailani. She was working nearby, unscrewing a box of navigational sensors. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, but still she toiled.

  She lost so much, Marco thought. I can't even imagine her pain.

  As he kept working, a new thought popped into his mind: Yet right now, I myself feel no pain.

  For two years in Haven, pain had been his constant companion. Endlessly, that demon on his shoulder had whispered into his ear, spewing its venom of guilt, memory, despair. Days on end, that demon would crush him, often so heavy that Marco could only lie down, praying for death.

  Yet now that demon, that creature the doctors had called shell shock, was silent.

  Marco thought back to boot camp seven years ago. Despite the physical difficulties, he had rarely found time for despair at Fort Djemila. He had just been too damn busy. At war again, caught in another gauntlet, struggling to survive, that demon drowned.

  It lives off time and silence, Marco thought. The two things I had most in Haven. The two things I'm missing now. Time. No time!

  "How long do we have?" he called across the ship, sweat on his forehead.

  "Maybe half an hour?" Lailani said from inside the engine room. "It's all just an estimate." Her head popped through a hatch, smeared with grease, and she grinned at him. "Could be five minutes!"

  "All right, soldiers," Ben-Ari said, rushing down the hall. "Into your spacesuits and take everything into the airlock. Whatever we didn't have time to pack will go down with the Brendan. Move it, soldiers!"

  They moved it.

  Marco zipped up his spacesuit and took a deep breath from his oxygen tank. His eyes stung.

  I will climb out of this hole. I am alive. I have purpose. I am fighting. I will be who I was.

  Still piloting the Anansi, Kemi brought the alien starship as close to the Brendan's airlock as possible. The ravager had its own airlock, operated by tugging strands of web. They stretched a jet bridge between the two airlocks, using plastic sheets to extend it around the Anansi's larger opening.

  "Only a few minutes until they're here!" Lailani said, checking her watch.

  They began shoving crates across the jet bridge and into the Anansi's cavernous hold. On the inside, the marauder ship looked like a cave draped with cobwebs. Crate by crate, they shoved in their supplies.

  "Captain!" Kemi's voice emerged from the ship's bridge. "One of the glass spheres here just lit up like a crystal ball. It's showing me a visual of ravagers flying in fast!"

  Marco raced across the jet bridge, heading back to the Saint Brendan. There was one more crate he needed, the one containing a heavy backup battery. Halfway across the jet bridge, he gazed through a small window.

  His heart seemed to stop in his chest.

  Light flowed around their bubble of warped spacetime like wind around a wing, but these ravagers flew directly behind them, visible now to the naked eye. Dozens of specks, moving fast, growing closer.

  Marco shoved the last crate into the Anansi.

  "All right, we're good to go!" he said.

  Ben-Ari raced by him—back onto the Saint Brendan.

  "Captain!" Marco cried after her. "We need to go—now!"

  He glanced back behind them. The ravagers were even closer. Shards in the darkness, specks of fire. Twenty-two of them, far too many ships to fight.

  "Isn't the captain joining us?" Lailani said, panting beside Marco in the Anansi's airlock. "I'm going after her. I—"

  Ben-Ari came racing back across the jet bridge. "All right, we're good!" She leaped into the Anansi. "Let's reel in the jet bridge!"

  They worked in a fury, tugging the folding bridge into the Anansi. The enemy kept drawing nearer, nearer, soon only a few kilometers away.

  When the last meter of bridge was folded and inside, they slammed the airlock shut, sealing everything inside the Anansi.

  "Captain, they're right on us!" Kemi shouted.

  They raced through the main hold, shoving aside webs, and onto the bridge. Kemi sat there, her chair suspended in the web, tugging on the shower curtain rings. Spheres hung around her, the size of watermelons, displaying views of the outside. In one sphere, Marco could see the ravagers closing in.

  "All right," Ben-Ari said, voice tinged with sadness. "Let's send the Saint Brendan out on her final voyage."

  She flipped open a tablet and typed commands. Through one spherical viewport, Marco could see the stealth ship—small, black, and badly scarred—change course.

  The two vessels—the human Saint Brendan and the alien Anansi—parted ways.

  As the Anansi moved out of the Saint Brendan's warp bubble, they crashed into regular spacetime. The streaks of starlight slammed into points. Marco st
ruggled to hold down his lunch.

  "All right, we're back in regular spacetime," Kemi said. "If we need to, I can activate the Anansi's own warp drive. At least, I think I can." She winced, patting one alien strand. "If we end up as a cloud of atoms, I pulled the wrong strand."

  Still flying in a warp bubble, the Saint Brendan was moving away at incredible speed. It was already millions of kilometers away. Behind them, the ravagers still stormed forth as one unit, as if unable to decide which ship to pursue.

  "I'm letting the Anansi drift like space junk," Kemi said. "With any luck, those ravagers will think we're dead in the water, and they'll all follow the empty Brendan." She took a deep breath. "I hope this works. We'll know in a minute."

  "Captain, what did you have to fetch that was so important?" Lailani said.

  Ben-Ari stared at the departing ship, eyes damp. "I set the Brendan's self-destruct. It'll trigger if anyone steps aboard. Old commander's trick." She smiled sadly. "She was a good ship. My ship. I'll miss her."

  "The ravagers are splitting up!" Kemi said. "Look!"

  The crew crowded around one of the spheres. It showed two ravagers breaking off from the larger group, turning to follow the Saint Brendan. The other twenty continued flying together . . . following the Anansi.

  "This can't be happening," Marco said.

  Lailani rushed back into the hold. She rifled through the equipment from the Brendan, plugged sensors together, checked monitors, and cursed.

  "My sensors confirm it—twenty of those bastards are still on our tail." Lailani groaned. "They're close too. Moving fast. Fuck! All this, and we only shook off two of them?"

  Ben-Ari's mouth was a thin line. She inhaled sharply, then turned to Kemi. "Turn on this ship's warp drive. Fly as fast as you can."

  Kemi nodded, pulling one shower curtain. The strand it was attached to creaked. "Engaging warp."

  The Anansi thrummed. Marco grabbed a web for support. Lailani fell to the floor with a grunt. The stars streamed outside, their light curving. The ravager blasted forward, rattling, thrumming, bending space around them. Marco nearly gagged again.

  "Damn these things can fly!" Kemi said, and wonder filled her voice. "I've never gone this fast. No human ship has. Now this is a warp drive."

  Lailani pushed herself up and checked her instruments. "They're keeping up with us. Fuckers! How did they know to follow the Anansi instead of the Brendan? Did they see our jet bridge from afar, even in warp?"

  "Impossible," Kemi said. "They were too far to see such details."

  Marco stared into the sphere. He could see them there. Clawed ships, fire in their centers. Inside them, the marauders. The creatures that had destroyed humanity. That had kidnapped Addy.

  "They're smart," he said.

  "No shit, Sherlock," Lailani said. "They build spaceships."

  Marco narrowed his eyes, watching them. "Not just tech-smart. The scum built spaceships too. But these creatures . . . they're cunning. They saw through our deception. We can't think of them as just bugs, not like the scum were."

  "They must have some way to detect our bodies," Lailani said. "Some heat sensors, maybe?"

  "No." Marco shook his head. "Otherwise, why did they send two ravagers after the Brendan? No, they don't know for sure. They just calculated the odds, hedging their bets. They sent the bulk of their force after the best bet—that we'd be here, inside the ravager, trying to deceive them. They know how we think." He lowered his head. "I never should have suggested this."

  "No, it was a good plan," said Ben-Ari. "Even if we didn't dupe the enemy, it was a worthy swap. We can move faster without the Brendan. Lieutenant, how long can we stay ahead of them?"

  Kemi chewed her lip. "Hard to say, Captain. I can't fly as fast as they do. My piloting just isn't as smooth as theirs. They have six limbs to pull strands with, remember!"

  Lailani checked her instruments. Numbers scrolled by on her tablet. "The distance is still shrinking between us, but slowly. They're still moving faster than us, but not that much faster anymore." She scrunched her lips, hit a few buttons, and ran calculations. "If we can keep flying the Anansi at this speed, we can stay ahead of them . . . for a week. Maybe eight days." She sighed. "Not enough time to reach the Ghost Fleet. Maybe enough time to come up with a new plan."

  Ben-Ari nodded. "All right. That's something. Right now, we need to rest. All of us. We'll all eat a good meal, then sleep, then think more clearly. I'll take a shift flying the Anansi. The rest of you—eat and rest."

  Marco's stomach grumbled. He had not eaten since this ordeal began, and the thought of a meal—even if it was just packaged starship food—already lifted his mood. He would choose the lasagna, maybe the—

  He froze.

  He felt the blood drain from his face.

  "Fuck," he whispered.

  Lailani turned toward him. "What's wrong, Poet? You look like you saw a ghost, and we're still thousands of light-years away from the Ghost Fleet."

  His legs trembled. His head spun.

  "Oh God," he said. "God. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He grimaced. "In the chaos, with the clock counting down, I . . ."

  "What?" Lailani grabbed him. "What happened?"

  "I forgot to bring the crate of food." Marco winced. "I packaged the food in the Brendan's galley and I never brought it into the airlock."

  They all gaped at him.

  "Somebody tell me they brought over the food," Ben-Ari finally said.

  One by one, they shook their heads.

  If Addy were here, she'd be punching me now, Marco thought. Somehow, the silent looks the others gave him were far worse.

  "My beloved lasagna," Lailani whispered.

  "My salmon and rice!" Kemi said.

  Lailani gasped. "You even forgot the Mexican fiesta! The fiesta, Marco!"

  He stared at them, silent. "I'm sorry. I . . . I have some gum in my pocket." He offered it to them.

  Lailani let out something halfway between a groan and a howl, then stomped off.

  Ben-Ari inhaled deeply. "Lieutenant Abasi, go rest. That's an order. I'll fly the ship for an hour. Sergeant Emery, you go set up our equipment. And try to find a power source you can connect to on this ship; our batteries won't last forever. Sergeant de la Rosa will help you. And set up an alarm. I want sirens to blare if those enemy ships get within two hours of us." She stared into Marco's eyes. "It takes the human body two weeks to starve to death. By then, you better find us a space takeout."

  "A Mexican takeout!" rose Lailani's voice from outside the bridge.

  Marco stepped into the hold, shoulders slumped. As he worked at unpacking and assembling their supplies, he could only wonder what would kill them first: the marauders or starvation.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The galactic cattle car rattled on, and the thousands cried out in despair.

  "I never thought I'd say this," Addy muttered. "But I miss the rush hour subway."

  Thousands of prisoners were crammed onto the deck, floating in zero gravity. Thousands filled the decks above and below them. There was no room to stretch out their limbs. The naked bodies pressed together, damp with sweat, covered with filth. They had no toilets. Human waste floated with them, coated them. Sweat, piss, shit, vomit, blood, the stench of fear—all hovered in the sweltering air. Addy wasn't sure how hot it was, but it was worse than the desert, worse than the hottest day at Fort Djemila among the African dunes.

  Marco, she thought, if you left without me, I forgive you. Nobody deserves this shit. Literally. She winced and ducked, dodging a floating blob.

  Worse than all, though, were the floating dead. Several people had died back on Haven before the ship had even taken off, trampled in the chaos. Many more had perished over the past few days, succumbing to exhaustion and heat. The survivors had tried to move the corpses aside, to keep them in the corner, but whenever the ship jolted, the dead tore free. And they were starting to stink, a stench worse than any of the other fetid aromas here.

  In this sea
of humanity, a woman screamed, a hoarse cry of pure agony. A moment later, a baby squealed, and blood floated across the deck. Addy caught sight of the newborn, had to look away. She had dived into the mines of Corpus. She had seen millions perish on Abaddon. But she had never seen such misery, such malice.

  "Sergeant!" A voice rose in the distance, barely audible beyond the weeping, the screaming, the din of brutalized human cattle. "Sergeant Linden! Is that you?"

  Addy turned toward the voice. She narrowed her eyes. She could barely see in these shadows. The entire ship was a writhing mass of filth and shadows, a sea of flesh.

  "Addy!"

  The voice was closer now. Prisoners cried out in protest, and a one-eyed man came elbowing between them, barely squeezing through. Addy's eyes widened.

  "Grant!"

  The superintendent of her old apartment building, grizzled and coughing, floated toward her. Sweat coated his naked body. The bastards had even taken his eye patch, revealing his empty socket.

  "I thought I heard you in here, Addy," Grant said, then hacked, shivering, feverish. "Fuckers, these spiders, aren't they? Worse than the goddamn scum, they are."

  "They're not spiders," Addy said. "Spiders have eight legs. These ones have six. They're more like insects, and—oh fuck me, I sound like Poet now."

  "Is Marco here?" Grant said.

  Addy shook her head. "We were fighting the marauders outside the city. We had a ship. The fuckers got me. I think Poet got away."

  Grant nodded. "Good. Then he's out there. Fighting for us." Suddenly the veteran's eyes were damp. "He'll save us."

  Addy snorted and rolled her eyes. "Grant, I know you think Marco and I are some heroes, just because we killed the scum emperor. But we're not. We're just bozos. We're just regular people, like all the other poor suckers in here."