But she could still send that signal.
"I can still warn Earth," she whispered. "Even at the price of my life."
She ignored the tears in her eyes. She had always thought she would die in battle. Instead, she would die of asphyxiation, maybe of thirst, lost alone in the darkness.
But she would die nobly.
She hit buttons on her remote control, aiming the dish on her shuttle's roof.
She hit another button—the one to create the wormhole.
She leaned forward, gazing up through the windshield.
Professor Isaac's dish dilated. Lights flashed across it. A luminous ring appeared in space, hovering just above Ben-Ari's eyes. It was beautiful. Even with all this terror, it was beautiful, a little nebula above her. The ring began contracting, glowing brighter, extending outward like a funnel.
"It's working," Ben-Ari whispered, tasting her tears. "It's working, professor. My professor. I wish you could see it. Your invention is working."
A single red light bleeped on the shuttle's control panel.
She glanced at it.
Four more red lights joined it.
Saucers—charging her way.
She ignored them.
She would send the signal.
The wormhole began to form—a thin tendril, stretching out, a rift through spacetime. She checked the progress on her monitor.
Wormhole 50% complete. 60%. 70% . . .
She prepared to open a communication channel, to transmit her warning.
80% . . . 90% . . .
"Come on, come on," she whispered.
96% . . .
Red light flared, bathing the cabin.
A second later, an explosion rocked the shuttle.
Ben-Ari screamed.
The shuttle careened through space. The hull tore open. The wormhole fizzled away. Ben-Ari slammed down her helmet's visor. The air shrieked out from the cabin, and more lights flashed, and another blast hit the shuttle. Fire raged.
Ben-Ari hit the ejection.
She blasted out into space.
She saw them ahead: a large black saucer and several small red ones. Their cannons heated up again.
She hovered in the darkness. Her starship gone. Her shuttle burning. The enemy approaching.
Ben-Ari reached down, grabbed the wormhole generator, and ripped it off the crumbling roof of the shuttle.
A second later, a blast hit the shuttle, and it shattered into countless pieces.
Ben-Ari floated through space, a single woman in a spacesuit, a jet pack on her back, the hope of humanity in her hands.
She slung the wormhole generator across her back, using a loose cable as a strap.
She drew her plasma rifle.
As the saucers flew toward her, she sneered.
"I am still an officer of the HDF," she hissed. "I am still a captain of HOPE. I am still a soldier of Earth. I still fight."
She activated her jet pack and charged toward the saucers. She fired her plasma rifle.
The enemy missiles flew toward her. She zigzagged through space, tugging her jet pack's controls. Blasts exploded around her. She kept firing her rifle, screaming as she charged forward.
Her plasma bolts hit one of the small red saucers.
The enemy ship exploded.
Ben-Ari shot upward, dodging the shrapnel. The other saucers loomed before her, several small reds and one massive black mothership. She fired again. She stormed toward them, dodging their blasts. Their missiles streamed around her. She flew onward, taking them head on. She aimed. She fired a bolt into a spinning red saucer, and another, and another, punching holes into it. The small saucer shattered. She flew through the wreckage and soared.
The mothership was lumbering toward her, blasting weapons her way. Ben-Ari kept dodging the blasts. She was a furious wasp flying among eagles. And her stinger was hot. She fired again, and blasts hit the mothership. Fire raged across the dark hull.
She was doing what none had ever done. A single human in a spacesuit taking on a dozen enemy ships.
But I will not die now. Not before sending that signal!
She shoved down the throttle on her jet pack. She flew higher, faster, rising away from the saucers. They flew below her, cannons firing, and she zipped from side to side, dodging the blasts. As she flew, she gripped the wormhole generator. She reactivated it.
Again a ring of light grew.
Again the wormhole began taking form.
The funnel began extending to Earth.
Enemy fire tore through the luminous tube.
Oh for God's sake.
She spun down toward the saucers, prepared to launch another assault, and saw a hatch open on the mothership.
A beam of light blasted out from the hatch. The glow engulfed her.
A tractor beam. And it was pulling her in.
Caught in the light, Ben-Ari aimed her rifle and fired.
Plasma bolt after plasma bolt flew and entered the saucer's hatch. Explosions blasted inside the enemy ship.
But the beam kept tugging her.
Ben-Ari screamed, kept shooting, and more fire blazed in the enemy ship, but the tractor beam kept her in its grip.
She cursed and shoved the throttle on her jet pack. It sputtered. She flew up two meters, but the beam grabbed her again, pulled her with more strength. Her pack rattled.
She yowled in frustration, unable to free herself. The beam intensified, yanking her toward the hatch like a reptile's tongue pulling in a fly.
She tumbled into the saucer.
She landed inside a hangar, leaped to her feet, and fired her rifle.
Her plasma slammed into several grays. The towering, slender aliens were everywhere. They raised prods, and electricity blasted toward her.
Bolts slammed into Ben-Ari, and she screamed.
She fell to her knees. Her teeth knocked together, cutting her tongue. Blood filled her mouth. Electricity crackled across her.
Even through the agony, she kept firing her rifle. She hit another gray, blasting a hole through the wretched creature's chest.
More grays approached. More electrical bolts hit her. Ben-Ari fell onto her side, screaming, banging her hip and ribs and broken arm. The pain was terrifying. Overwhelming. Impossible pain. She nearly passed out.
The hatch slammed shut behind her, sealing her in this hangar.
The grays surrounded her. They loomed like vultures over prey. Their claws grabbed her, dug into her. Their black eyes stared, pitiless, cutting her as surely as their claws.
They grabbed her rifle, her jet pack, and her wormhole generator. They yanked off her helmet and spacesuit, and their claws cut her bare skin. She yowled, kicking, scratching, and managed to hit one in the shin. Her arm was screaming in agony. She ignored it. More electricity slammed into her, and she fell again, losing control of her bladder.
I go down fighting. For Earth.
Smoke wafted across her, and she rose to her knees, panting, prepared to launch into another assault.
I won't be taken alive.
The grays spoke to one another in their harsh, guttural language. When Ben-Ari leaped back toward them, they tossed small pods against her. The spheres burst across her spacesuit and spilled ooze like shattered eggs. The slime bound her, tightening, a sticky cocoon. The grays tossed more pods. More ooze covered Ben-Ari, coating her hair, her face, her limbs, drying, forming membranes around her. It burned. She could barely see through the translucent material. She screamed, unable to breathe, until a gray sliced a hole in the coating.
They lifted her—this dripping, shouting bundle. She was like a fly caught in their spiderweb.
They carried her through their ship.
They left the wormhole generator—the hope of Earth—behind.
The corridors were coiling, dark, almost organic, like the arteries of a fossilized giant. Ben-Ari struggled as the grays carried her, but she could barely move, barely breathe. The sticky membranes held her as tightly as a python.
She forced herself to stop screaming. She was panting. Her heart was lashing. She was panicking.
Stop, she told herself. Stop! Focus. Breathe. Think!
She forced a deep breath.
They want you alive, she told herself. If you're alive, there is hope. You can still fight. Wait. Bide your time. Think!
The terror lurked within her, screaming, howling, begging to erupt in panic. Ben-Ari forced it down. She was a soldier. She was a leader. She had faced horror before and overcome it. She would face this too.
They carried her through the bowels of this dark ship. Their claws dug deep. Several of the grays were gripping her, hunched over, their bodies bare, the torsos wrinkled and coated with liver spots, their spines prominent.
They took her into a stone chamber. A surgical table lay in a beam of light. No, not a surgical table—an altar. An altar engraved with ancient glyphs. An altar to a dark goddess.
They slammed Ben-Ari onto the table so hard her spine nearly cracked. They cut through the membranes binding her, tugged out her limbs, and bound them onto the altar with fleshy cords. She did not bother trying to flee. She knew it was pointless. She shoved down the panic.
Wait. Bide your time. Save your strength. Think.
The grays stepped back, vanishing into shadows. She remained alone, bound to the altar, the light from above shining upon her.
A deep, gravelly breath sounded in the shadows. Footsteps shuffled. In the darkness, red lights kindled, deep, glowing, crimson. They materialized into a chain of hearts, pulsing and dripping blood. He stepped toward her—a gray alien, wrinkled and desiccated yet still strong, his eyes narrowed and cruel.
He spoke. His voice was like old death. Like snapping bones. It dripped cruelty like a wolf's jaws dripped blood.
"Hello, ape. I am Abyzou. Son of Nefitis. Prince of the Sanctified Sons." He leaned above her, and his mouth twisted into a grin, revealing teeth like rusty needles. He placed a claw on her collarbone. "I am your agony."
She stared into his black, pitiless eyes.
So there he is. The Prince of Grays himself. Ugly son of a bitch.
"I am Captain Einav Ben-Ari of HOPE," she said. "Commander of the Lodestar. That is the only information I will give you."
The creature laughed—a sickly sound like consumption. Saliva dripped from his teeth.
"We know who you are, Captain, and you have no information that we need." Abyzou traced his claw between her breasts. "We know all. All your secrets. We know of Earth's defenses. We know the name and location of every human ship. We know of your life, Einav. Of the bitter, frightened girl, growing up on military bases. Of the scared youth, rebelling against her father, fleeing from her home time and time again. We know of the fear deep inside you, the weakness that you hide there, that ever keeps you from greatness. We know that deep inside, you are still that scared little girl. No, Einav. I do not seek information. I seek only your pain. And after you suffer that pain, Einav, after you have soaked up so much agony, your heart too will beat on my chain."
She stared up into his black eyes.
No fear. You are a soldier. You are human.
"Then let us begin," she said.
Abyzou drew an ugly, serrated blade. He pierced her skin.
Ben-Ari arched her back, gritting her teeth against the pain. Her blood dipped. Abyzou smiled.
"Yes, you welcome it," he hissed. "Savor it!"
He pulled the blade downward, etching a line.
Ben-Ari thrashed in her bonds.
He cut again, carving a cross into her skin.
She lashed her body from side to side.
Under her back, it tore free from the webbing—the electrical prod she had grabbed from a dead gray in the hangar.
Abyzou took a hook and sank it into her skin.
Ben-Ari flailed and the prod rolled across the altar. She stretched out her fingers, her arm still bound, and caught the prod before it could fall to the floor.
Abyzou carved her with blade and hook, smiling.
Ben-Ari switched on the prod.
Electricity raced along the prod, across her body, and into Abyzou.
The creature shrieked.
He dropped his blade and hook.
The hook clanged onto the floor. But Ben-Ari caught the blade.
"Wretched ape!" Abyzou cried. He lunged toward her. He grabbed her with his claws. "How you will scream!"
She turned on the prod again.
They both screamed.
As Abyzou fell back, electricity racing across him, Ben-Ari worked with the knife. She freed one arm. When Abyzou lunged back toward her, she drove the prod into his gut and pulsed out more electricity.
As he howled, as he burned, Ben-Ari freed her other arm.
She stumbled off the altar, bleeding, burnt, gasping for breath. Blood and sticky membranes coated her.
Abyzou loomed before her. He rose to his full height, seven feet of fury. He was burning. The hearts around his chest blazed like comets. He reached his claws toward her, a demon risen from Hell, shrieking.
Ben-Ari thrust her blade into the inferno and pierced his chest.
He screamed—a high-pitched, deafening cry—and fell back.
A door banged open. Three more grays entered the room.
Ben-Ari ran toward them and blasted electricity from her prod.
Two grays fell back, crackling. She leaped onto the third, delivering a punch to his chin, knocking back his head. As the beast fell, she vaulted over the creature and ran down the corridor.
The shadowy pathway coiled before her. She ran, ignoring the pain. The grays emerged from doorways at her sides. Ben-Ari grabbed one of the grenades on her belt, pulled out the pin, and dropped it. She raced onward as the grenade exploded behind her. The grays screamed.
She rounded a corner. She dropped another grenade. An explosion rocked the ship. The corridor caved in behind her, crushing grays.
Ahead, she saw the path to the hangar. To freedom.
At her side—another path, sloping downward. Rumbles and heat from below.
She nodded. She chose the second path.
Three grays leaped toward her. She fired her electricity, knocking them back.
She burst through a doorway and beheld a chasm. Engines roiled and boomed and fumed below, churning heat and molten fire. Here was the heart of the mothership.
Ben-Ari smiled thinly.
She lifted her last two grenades and tossed them into the smoldering engines.
She turned and ran.
Fire.
Heat.
Blinding light and deafening noise.
The ship crumbled around her. The walls cracked. The ceiling collapsed. Everywhere—the inferno.
She ran through it.
She burst into the hangar. Several grays were still here. They leaped toward her, firing their weapons. She fired back. She took a bolt to the shoulder, nearly passed out from the pain, but kept firing. She knocked them back.
There—on the floor. Her things were still there. Her spacesuit. Her jet pack. More importantly—her wormhole generator.
She was running toward the items when the floor cracked open. She fell to her knees. Explosions were still sounding deep in the mothership. The entire saucer was crumbling.
Ben-Ari managed to push herself up. The walls fell away around her. Air was shrieking out into space. The floor cracked open, and the last few grays fell into gaping pits. Ben-Ari stumbled onward.
She grabbed her spacesuit and helmet. Ignoring her dripping blood, she pulled them on in a frenzy. She snapped on her jet pack and grabbed the wormhole generator. Her plasma rifle was on the other side of the hangar. She had no time to grab it.
The hangar shattered around her.
The roof caved in.
The hull collapsed.
Ben-Ari ignited her jet pack and roared out into space.
She soared upward. Below her, explosions rocked the gray mothership. The dark saucer split in half. Fire rage
d from within. A few escape pods were trying to flee, only for the flames and shrapnel to catch them. Shrapnel tore into the red fighter saucers, ripping through them.
Ben-Ari gritted her teeth, soaring as fast as she could, her jet pack thrumming and roaring out fire. All around her, the shrapnel flew, shards of metal and stone streaming faster than her. She kept flying. The stars shone above. The holocaust blazed below.
She soared into the darkness.
She soared into silence.
Below her, the fire died.
The millions of shattered pieces floated.
She switched off her jet pack. She hovered in silence.
She gazed down. Below her, they were gone. The enemy saucers—a gray mothership and her fighters—gone.
I did it. One woman. One rifle. One jet pack. I defeated their ships.
She raised her communication dish. It was charred and cracked, but it still turned on. She calibrated it. She positioned the dish. And she created the wormhole.
A tunnel opened through spacetime, only several atoms wide. Large enough for her to speak through it. To President Petty. To Earth. To all humanity.
She spoke, eyes damp.
"This is Einav Ben-Ari, captain of the ESS Lodestar. I am speaking to you from several light-years away. The Lodestar is racing back to Earth; it will be home in two days. Fast on her heel are ten thousand enemy ships. Rouse Earth's defenses! Ready humanity's fleet! In two days, the enemy will strike—and strike hard. Across the solar system, rally all human starships to battle! Fight for Earth!"
She closed her eyes and cut off the signal.
She hovered in space.
She breathed deeply.
A lone woman in a spacesuit. Lost in the depths of interstellar space. Millions of years away from any world.
She nodded, a thin smile on her lips.
"So this is how I die," she whispered. "With honor. I did my duty. I raised the alarm. I only wish I could fight there with you, Earth." A tear streamed down her cheek. "I only wish I could see you again, Marco, Addy, Lailani. I miss you. I love you."
She gazed at the stars. They were beautiful. They were so beautiful. She would die, at least, surrounded by beauty. She remembered herself as a little girl, gazing up at the stars with her father. He had told her once, when she was very small, that the starlight was millions of years old, that she was gazing upon the past. The fact still astounded her. Even as the scum rained from the sky, she had seen the stars as magical, had always longed to fly among them.
Earth Honor (Earthrise Book 8) Page 2
