The Heirs of Earth

by Daniel Arenson

  In the game of civilizations, ours is but a small part, she thought. A great fire will soon burn. I pray that we can survive it.

  They had flown for several hours when Leona saw it ahead.

  A black, rocky world.

  The gulock.

  Leona wasn't sure who had invented the word gulock, a portmanteau of gulag and rock, but it fit. The world ahead looked like a frozen lump of stone, orbiting far from its small star. She saw no vegetation, only rocky plains, deep canyons, and black ice. There was no color here, only black and gray. No life had emerged here. No civilization would colonize such a world. But if you wanted to send somebody to hell, here was the place.

  Hell is not hot, she thought. It must be frozen like this place.

  "Our sensors are picking up a settlement near the equator," Duncan said.

  "Not a settlement, Doc." She stared ahead, eyes narrowed, jaw tight. "A slaughterhouse."

  The convoy of deathcars flew closer. Leona drew her telescope from her belt. She gazed at the slaughterhouse below.

  A brick wall surrounded the complex, topped with spikes shaped like scorpion stingers. Round concrete huts spread in rows like soldiers. There were four guard towers, crude structures built of stone and soil like giant termite mounds. Larger domed buildings rose in the camp too, perhaps barracks or abattoirs.

  And there were humans.

  Leona inhaled sharply.

  She saw them in a courtyard, a hundred or more. Naked. Some were walking, others crawling. They were holding pickaxes, chiseling at stones. A few scorpions stood guard.

  The deathcar's control panel—a sphere embedded into the dashboard like an eye—shone and crackled.

  "The gulock is hailing us," Duncan said.

  Clicks and hisses emerged from a hidden speaker—scorpion language. Leona tossed her jacket over the translucent sphere, hiding her from view, and pulled out her translator. She held the electronic device to her ear. It picked up the clicks and hisses, translating them.

  "Late as usual!" a scorpion was saying, speaking from the planet. "What the abyss happened to you? Your ships are dented and full of holes like the hive of a rotting drone queen!"

  Leona spoke through the translator. Her voice emerged as clatters and clicks. "Rawdigger scum attacked us on the way. We destroyed them. Our video feed is broken, but the humans are still ripe for the harvest."

  The gulock answered. "Bloody Rawdiggers! The traitors cannot be trusted. Land the humans in the port. Hurry up! We've got quotas to fill, damn it. Bring them down now or we'll blast you out of the sky."

  Leona looked down. She could now see cannons extending from the guard towers, nasty surface-to-air guns. There were also several strikers parked at a spaceport.

  I was definitely wise not to fly here with the Inheritor fleet, she thought.

  "I'm bringing them down to harvest," Leona said.

  The transmission died.

  She looked at Duncan. "The scorpions are nasty buggers, but thankfully, they're not particularly bright."

  "They make up for that with meanness," the doc replied. "Let's be careful down there."

  "If I were careful, I'd have stayed home." Leona allowed herself a shaky smile. "The time for caution is over. It's time for bloodshed."

  "You sound like your father," Duncan said. "At least when he was young and full of piss and poison."

  Her smile widened. "I'm his girl."

  As they entered the thin atmosphere, the deathcars rattled, and fire blazed around them. Soon they were flying through the dark sky, heading toward the camp. As Leona descended toward the port, she glimpsed a pile of skinned human bodies, red and dripping. The pile twitched, and she realized that some of the flayed humans were still alive, left to perish in the night.

  She struggled not to gag.

  No terror now. Right now focus on your mission.

  "Sick bastards," Duncan said, clenching his massive fists.

  "They'll pay, Doc," she said. "Get ready."

  She flew toward the spaceport, a rocky field that lay within the camp's walls. Her deathcar thumped down by several strikers. A guard tower rose nearby, topped with cannons the size of oak trees. Scorpions stood atop the tower, and more scorpions crawled across the ground. The other deathcars landed behind Leona, raising clouds of dust.

  A scorpion clattered across the field toward Leona's deathcar. Red spirals were drawn onto his shell, denoting him an overseer.

  "Come on, come on, you lazy scum!" the alien said. "Unload the vermin. We've got skins to harvest!"

  The scorpion grabbed the deathcar's hatch and yanked it open.

  The alien froze, staring at Leona and a hundred Inheritor warriors inside.

  "Hum—" it began before Leona put a bullet through its brain.

  "For Earth!" she cried, leaping out from the deathcar.

  "For Earth!" cried her warriors.

  Hundreds of Inheritors stormed out from the ten deathcars—the entire marine force of humanity. Their bullets flew, and their cries shook the gulock.

  "For Earth! For Earth!"

  Leona shouted with them, firing Arondight, screaming as she tore through scorpions.

  "For Earth!"

  A planet she had never seen.

  "For Earth!"

  A planet lost in the darkness, its coordinates unknown.

  "For Earth!"

  A world some thought only a myth.

  "For Earth!"

  Her homeworld. The beacon of her heart.

  The scorpions raced toward them. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. The Inheritors stood with their backs to the deathcars, firing their railguns, and bullets slammed into the aliens. A few scorpions braved the barrage, reached the troops, and lashed their pincers. Inheritors fell, shouting, firing their guns even as they died. Hot shards of exoskeleton flew. Blood splattered the field.

  "Release the motorcycles!" Leona shouted. "Charge through them!"

  Three deathcars opened their hatches, and the motorcycles emerged.

  The metal beasts roared forth, fire spurting from their exhausts. Cannons were mounted onto their handlebars, blasting out bullets. Blades were attached to their wheels, spinning madly. Inheritors in black armor rode the machines, howling for war. The scorpions rose to meet them, but the motorcycles tore through the beasts, their scythed wheels ripping off claws.

  A scorpion raced over the corpses and vaulted toward Leona. She raised her rifle and fired. Her bullets slammed into the beast's head, but it kept flying toward her.

  Leona leaped aside, and a claw scraped her side, cracking her body armor. She cried out, swung Arondight, and slammed the barrel against the alien. The scorpion crouched and thrust its stinger.

  Leona howled and swung Arondight again, parrying the lashing stinger. It hit the ground beside her, sputtering venom. Pinning the stinger down with her rifle, Leona drew her sidearm and fired a bullet into the beast's leering jaws. Blood and brain and shell splattered.

  She looked around her. Many Inheritors lay dead already. Doc was fighting at her side, bellowing, swinging a club with one hand and firing a pistol with the other. The motorcycles were still roaring, charging through the lines of scorpions. But as Leona watched, a scorpion leaped onto a motorcycle, tore the rider apart, then tossed the machine into the air. The motorcycle slammed down onto two Inheritors, crushing them.

  Sudden wails rose, deafening, a sound like howling ghosts.

  Leona looked up at the guard towers. Klaxons were blaring.

  "They're calling for reinforcements!" Leona shouted. "Hurry, free the captives! Get them into the ships!"

  She had only moments, perhaps, before more scorpions arrived. She ran, fired Arondight, and tore off a scorpion's legs. She reached a fallen motorcycle, its rider dead. Ignoring the terror, Leona pulled the dead man off, then mounted the motorcycle and roared forth.

  She charged across the spaceport. The whirring blades on her wheels tore through lines of scorpions. She fired the machine guns mounted onto the handle
bars, ripping a path through the enemy. When she rode too close to a guard tower, a scorpion swooped from above. She swerved, fired her rifle, and knocked it aside. She kept roaring forth.

  Another scorpion jumped down from a guard tower. Leona swerved, and the scorpion hit the ground and scuttled after her. She spun around, burning rubber, and fired blast after blast. The creature fell, torn apart.

  Leona raised her eyes toward the guard tower. The cannons rose there, monuments of metal. They were made to fire on invading ships; they could not point downward. But the klaxons were still blaring, and scorpions were still emerging from domes and holes, charging toward the spaceport.

  Leona narrowed her eyes, aimed the motorcycle's machine gun, and fired a barrage at the guard tower's top. Machinery burned, and the alarm died. But she knew it was too late. If there were any more scorpions on this planet, they would soon swarm. If there were more strikers in this star system, they would soon attack.

  Duncan ran toward her, bleeding from a gash on his forehead. "Lass, there are too many scorpions! More than we expected. They knew we were coming. This is a trap!"

  Leona growled. "Then we'll break the trap! Roll out the flamethrowers."

  Duncan turned toward the deathcars. "Flamethrowers!"

  Inheritors emerged from within, wearing heavy black armor. They wielded massive flamethrowers and spurted forth an inferno. Scorpions shrieked, falling back. They were apex predators, intelligent and vicious, but they still had animal instincts, and they still feared fire.

  Leona kicked her motorcycle back into gear. She rode across the scorpion lines, firing bullets.

  "Riders, with me!" she cried. "Shove these bastards into the fire!"

  The other motorcycles joined her. They roared back and forth, guns firing, herding the scorpions toward the flamethrowers. The arachnids shrieked, burning. Their exoskeletons withstood the flames, but their inner flesh was melting, dripping from cracks in their armor. A few scorpions tried to flee past the motorcycles, only for the machine guns to mow them down.

  "Good," Leona said. "You're trapped between machine guns and fire. Now die, you mucking bastards."

  Tears of fury burned as she fired her machine gun, as she drove more and more of the beasts into the flame. The scorpions fought hard. Many emerged from the gauntlet, claws lashing, and tore down Inheritors. Even from the flames, they thrust their stingers, spraying venom that melted through armor, skin, and bone. And still more emerged from holes, never ending.

  Leona clenched her jaw.

  Can we not defeat them? Are we not mighty enough?

  She grabbed a grenade from her belt. She hurled it, and three scorpions tore apart, their shards flying. At her side, Duncan swung his electric club, knocking a beast down. Around her, a few Inheritors were running out of bullets. A few flamethrowers were sputtering.

  Icy fear gripped Leona's chest, and she stared at the scorpions that still lived. They were crawling over their own dead, licking their jaws.

  "More humans to harvest," one hissed.

  "More skin pelts!"

  The beasts laughed, shrieked, and lunged into battle.

  Leona fired her last magazine, taking down a scorpion, and then drew her knife.

  We cannot win. Her breath shook. I was wrong to come here. She raised her blade high and bared her teeth. But I will die fighting.

  Suddenly a distant cry rose beyond the smoke.

  "The Heirs of Earth!"

  A second voice rose.

  "The Heirs of Earth are here! The Heirs of Earth rise!"

  Hundreds of voices cried out together. A gust of wind blew the smoke away, and Leona's eyes dampened.

  "The prisoners," she whispered, tears in her eyes. "The prisoners are rising up."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Naked, starving, tortured, the gulock prisoners charged to battle.

  These humans were not Inheritors. They were barely strong enough to walk. They were whipped and bleeding. Many were so thin they looked like skeletons draped with skin. They were bald, ashen, dying.

  But they cried out for Earth. And they fought.

  One woman, skeletal and bald and withered, knelt by a dead Inheritor, lifted the soldier's rifle, and howled as she fired bullets. One man—he was so thin Leona could not determine his age—grabbed a fallen flamethrower and unleashed its fury. Two other survivors, mere children, lifted grenades off dead Inheritors and tossed them. Other survivors, madness in their eyes, leaped into the fray with no weapons. They grabbed fallen claws and swung them as swords.

  "Vengeance!" they cried. "Vengeance!"

  Hundreds of other prisoners joined them, flowing into the space port. Thousands. Most were near death, but still they rose up, desperate and weeping and crying out. For vengeance. For the Heirs of Earth. For their lost home.

  And the scorpions fell back before them.

  They drove the beasts against the brick wall of the camp. They fired their last bullets, blew their last fire, tossed their last grenades. And they slew the scorpions until no more moved.

  Leona stood, bleeding, trembling, cuts on her arms and legs. Her curly hair had torn free from its band, and it flew like a mane in the wind. She stared across the space port. Carnage was everywhere. Scores of dead scorpions. Hundreds of dead humans.

  "Doc," she said, voice hoarse. "Begin loading survivors into our ships." She turned toward a group of ragged Inheritors, their rifles smoking. "Lift more ammo off the dead. Then come with me. We move into the camp."

  The Inheritors followed her. They left the spaceport, passed under an iron archway, and stepped onto a dirt road. Leona walked at the lead, and the others followed her. They moved warily, rifles raised, staring from side to side. The round concrete huts lined the roadside, and Leona saw more human prisoners inside, these ones too weak to move.

  A scorpion leaped from around a hut. Leona fired a burst of bullets, tearing it down. They kept advancing.

  As they walked, more prisoners limped or crawled out of their huts. These ones were too weak to fight. There were elderly men and women. Amputees. Prisoners coughing blood, feverish, covered with boils. Skeletal children crawled through the dirt, ribs visible, begging for food. An old woman fell to her knees in front of Leona, weeping, reaching out to her.

  "Thank you. Thank you." She hugged Leona's legs. "Thank you, Leona Ben-Ari, the young lioness."

  "How do you know my name?" Leona asked.

  "All know you here," whispered an old man, limping toward her. Tears flowed down his cheeks. "You are descended from Queen Einav. You are our savior."

  Leona turned toward Ramses. The tall, dark captain was among her most loyal and confident warriors.

  "Pharaoh," Leona said. "Accompany these prisoners back to Doc and get them into the ships. Then prepare to launch our surprise weapon. Pharaoh! You with me?"

  Ramses looked at her, snapping out of a dream. The captain normally loved smiling, joking, playing pranks. Often he could be found playing poker with his fellow pilots, spending most of the game telling bad jokes. Today his eyes were haunted. But he nodded, face hardening.

  "I'm with you, Commodore," Ramses said. "I'm on it."

  The Pharaoh turned to leave, taking the prisoners with him.

  Leona turned toward other Inheritors. "You continue with me. Through the camp."

  The marines kept walking, firing at the odd scorpion that still scuttled. Soon they reached the center of the camp, and nausea rose in Leona.

  Here, in the dirt, rose the pile of flayed corpses she had seen from the air. There were hundreds. Flies bustled over the skinned bodies, feeding on the flesh. Behind the pile rose a large concrete dome. Through the doorway, she saw human skins hanging on ropes to dry. A tannery.

  And Leona couldn't help it. She doubled over and vomited.

  "My Ra," one of her Inheritors whispered. "Some of them are alive. There are live people in there!"

  Leona straightened and stared. Her eyes burned. Some of the flayed bodies were moving. They we
re reaching out. Whispering. Begging.

  Tears streamed down Leona's cheeks.

  "Burn them," she whispered.

  "Commodore, we—"

  "Burn them," she said again. "Now!"

  She raised Arondight. Weeping, she fired at the flayed bodies. The other Inheritors joined her. Those with rifles fired bullets. Those with flamethrowers unleashed torrents of fire. The pile of bodies burned, and humans screamed. Screams of agony. Of relief. Of gratitude. And Leona knew that she would never stop hearing them.

  They ceased fire. The corpses burned.

  And through the smoke, a figure emerged.

  She walked toward the Inheritors, wreathed in ashes, and the flames did not touch her. She wore a cloak of human skin, its edges charred. She paused before the Inheritors, the corpses behind her, and doffed her ghastly cloak. A smile stretched across her face, and her blue hair billowed in the wind.

  Leona's heart nearly stopped.

  "Jade," she whispered. "You're alive."

  The woman nodded. Like at Hacksaw Cove, she wore an outfit of black wires and heavy boots tipped with steel. She held out her arms, and claws extended from her fingertips.

  "Hello, Leona!" Jade said. "Did you truly think I died at Hacksaw Cove? No, pest. I left that world before you destroyed it. And I knew how to find you. I knew you would come here. I've been waiting for you."

  Around Leona, her fellow Inheritors aimed their rifles and fired.

  Bullets slammed into Jade. The woman only smiled, brushed off the flattened bullets, and took a few steps closer.

  "You cannot hurt me," Jade said. "I cannot die. I am the daughter of Emperor Sin Kra himself, lord of the Skra-Shen."

  Leona shook her head. "You're my friend!" she cried. "You're the daughter of David Emery! You are human!"

  Jade's smile vanished. Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes blazed. "You will not call me a pest."

  Leona stared in disbelief. "What did they do to you, Jade? What did they turn you into? You're not one of them! You're not a scorpion! I knew you as a child. You're one of us. Look at yourself, Jade! You are human."

  "Lies!" Jade shrieked. She leaped up, soared through the air, and landed before Leona. Her boots cracked the ground. "I am Skra-Shen! You cannot deceive me with your trickery, pest."