by Nick Cook
Earth Yell
Book 5 in the Earth Song Series
Nick Cook
About the Author
Somewhere back in the mists of time, Nick was born in the great sprawling metropolis of London. He grew up in a family where art was always a huge influence. Tapping into this, Nick finished college with a fine art degree tucked into his back pocket. Faced with the prospect of actually trying to make a living from his talents, he plunged into the emerging video game industry back in the eighties. It was the start of a long career and he produced graphics for many of the top-selling games on the early home computers, including Aliens and Enduro Racer. Those pioneering games may look crude now, but back then they were considered to be cutting edge. As the industry exploded into the one we know today, Nick’s career went supernova. He worked on titles such as X-Com, and set up two studios, which produced Warzone 2100 and the Conflict: Desert Storm series. He has around forty published titles to his name.
As great as the video game industry is, a little voice kept nagging inside Nick’s head, and at the end of 2006 he was finally ready to pursue his other passion as a full-time career: writing. Many years later, he completed his first trilogy, Cloud Riders. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Nick has many interests, from space exploration and astronomy to travelling the world. He has flown light aircraft and microlights, an experience he used as research for Cloud Riders. He’s always loved to cook, but then you’d expect it with his surname. His writing in many ways reflects his own curiosity about the world around him. He loves to let his imagination run riot to pose the question: What if?
Copyright 2021 © Nicholas P Cook
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published worldwide by Voice from the Clouds Ltd.
www.voicefromtheclouds.com
Contents
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
Links
Other Books By Nick Cook
Author Notes
For dreamers everywhere who imagine how this world can be a better place and do everything they can to make it happen.
Chapter One
I felt like an island in the sea of people gathered together for the launch party. I gazed towards the curved sickle blade of a new moon, lost in the drumbeat of my own thoughts as the murmur of a summer breeze caressed my face. The glowing crescent hung in a bright dusting of stars stretching away over the eastern mountain range.
Perfect. But in reality it was a perfect illusion.
That was because all of this was conjured up on the screens that lined the curving ceiling. Even the wind on my face was the product of air circulation ducts discretely built into the walls. All this effort was designed to fool the senses into believing it was all real, but the reality was that we were actually standing in the middle of a cavern at least a thousand metres underground.
The party was in full swing now round Alice’s log cabin style mansion. Streams of festival lights had been strung up and Leroy and his team were working their usual magic with dozens of large green barbecues. The air was filled with woodsmoke and cooking meat, two of my favourite scents in the whole world. Normally that would have been enough to make me feel ravenous, but I was feeling too wound up to even think about eating at that precise moment.
There were hundreds of us on the select guest list for tonight’s event. A number of knots of people had grown around three dozen men and women, who were all wearing red jumpsuits with an Osprey squadron logo emblazoned on the sleeves. Those people were the VIPs of today’s celebration and would be heading out on one of the three Pangolins that were due to launch the following day, craft that had been fitted with additional shielding to protect their crews from any solar radiation spikes.
Ruby stood nearby with one of the crew, Jane, a pretty redhead with her hair tied back in a scrunchie. Jane was somebody that Ruby was finding every excuse to spend time with every chance she got. She had even noticeably mellowed out a fraction as she’d got serious about the blossoming relationship. Quite how the pair were going to work a long-distance relationship when she was millions of miles away after Jane joined Troy and the others on 16 Psyche, a three hundred and seventy million kilometre distant asteroid, I had no idea.
Everyone else here tonight, including Ruby, might already be celebrating, but as I looked at all the happy faces around me, I knew that the knot of apprehension that had taken up residence in my stomach wouldn’t be going anywhere until this was all over.
‘Hey, what’s with the long face, Lauren?’ Jack said as he approached me with a fresh glass of champagne, Tom in tow just behind him.
‘Sorry, I just won’t have the headspace for this party until we hear back from Troy about how the landing on 16 Psyche has gone.’
’Well you won’t have much longer to wait,’ Tom said, gesturing towards the countdown timer on the ceiling, which was reaching the last couple of minutes. An expectant buzz was already building in the crowd and a lot of gazes kept flicking up towards it.
An image unhelpfully smashed into my mind of freshly smouldering impact craters from where three Pangolins of Falcon squadron had slammed into the surface of the asteroid.
I pulled a face at Tom. ‘But you do all realise that because of the time delay, whatever has happened on 16 Psyche actually happened twelve minutes ago and it could have already gone spectacularly wrong?’
Tom crossed his arms. ‘I have utter faith in Troy’s ability to cope with anything that is thrown at him and his crew, including dealing with last second hitches, and so should you.’
‘Yes, yes, I know, but still…’ I took a sip of champagne to try and distract me from my growing anxiety attack as I caught Jack and Tom raising their eyebrows at each other. They needed to try living in my headspace sometime, where my brain always rushed to the worst-case scenario.
The swing jazz that had been playing from the speaker system around the house was suddenly muted.
Alice appeared on the veranda in her wheelchair, holding a wireless microphone in her hand. ‘Okay, everyone, the big moment is nearly with us,’ she said, her voice amplified by the speakers.
A hush fell over the audience as all our gazes turned up towards the time on the virtual display – now down to the last ten seconds.
Then the crowd began joining in like this was a New Year’s Day celebration ticking down towards midnight.
‘Five, four, three, two, one,’ they called out, but I couldn’t join in and instead just chewed my lip.
There was a moment of absolute silence that felt like it lasted several lifetimes, but in reality was probably only a split second.
Then a crackle of static echoed around the cavern and a large video window opened up on the virtual sky dome just over the mountain range. Troy’s face was suddenly gazing out at us
from the bridge of his Pangolin, his crew busy at their work stations behind him.
‘Eden, this is Falcon One, we are in the final descent stage,’ he said, his voice all professional, steel-forged calm. ‘And you should see what we’re seeing because it’s quite the view.’
My pulse sped up as the camera changed to an external one facing down towards the asteroid’s surface. An overlaid altitude indicator counted down past a thousand feet. Short puffs of plasma came from the craft’s manoeuvring jets as the Pangolin descended towards a massive crater directly below it. Mountain ranges stretched away to either side, the landscape a pale monochrome palette of greys and blacks.
This was 16 Psyche in all its glory, an M-type asteroid. Two hundred kilometres wide, it was a protoplanet rich in metals that sat between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. And if this mission was the success that everyone was praying it would be, then Troy would establish Serenity Base on it. This would be the start of an automated factory, planned to manufacture a large fleet of X-craft from the abundance of raw materials mined directly from the asteroid’s surface.
Of course all of this was necessary for our ever-developing plan to help defend the Earth from the coming Kimprak invasion. Even now, the mechanised alien scavenger race was hurtling through the interstellar expanse between the stars towards our solar system to harvest all of its useful materials and wipe out all life in the process.
‘Landing legs have been lowered, radar computer has detected a valid landing solution and all systems are still showing nominal,’ Troy’s voice said over the video feed.
An absolute silence had now descended over the crowd; the tension that I’d been holding inside now visible in so many faces around me. Then despite his reassuring tone of a moment before, Jack’s hand sought mine out.
‘Slight lateral drift detected and compensating,’ Troy’s voice said calmly, as though the fate of the whole world wasn’t potentially resting on his Falcon squadron pulling this off.
The altitude indicator ticked down past two hundred feet, close enough to the ground to now make out individual boulders casting stark shadows across the asteroid’s surface.
‘Increasing REV drive lift to slow our rate of descent,’ Troy’s voice said.
The indicator dropped past a hundred feet and the giant flying saucer extended its four large hydraulic landing legs.
‘Eden, we are go for an attempted landing,’ Troy said.
I swear that in that moment not a person in the cavern was even daring to breathe, especially me. And Jack was now squeezing my hand so hard that I was sure I was going to be left with a few bruises. Tom looked just as pensive, standing next to us as he watched.
A smooth area among the rocks was opening up on the video as Falcon One dropped towards it. A circular shadow cast by the enormous craft was growing larger fast as its manoeuvring plasma jets started to kick up little swirls of dust on the surface.
‘Twenty feet…’ Troy said, still totally calm.
The X104’s shadow grew to fill the screen. Then there was a slight shudder as the view went black.
My heart crunched into a ball…
‘Eden, I can confirm that Falcon One has successfully just touched down,’ Troy said.
I let out a huge gasp, my legs turning to jelly as everyone whooped and cheered around me.
Jack drew me into a tight hug and then held my face between his hands to make me look at him. ‘You see, we all told you it would be okay.’
I managed a vague nod as he let me go, finally daring to believe his optimism now that the landing had actually happened.
Everyone’s attention returned to the feed as it switched from the cockpit to an external view of the other two Pangolins in the Falcon Squadron. They touched down one after the other in a choreographed dance of expanding dust clouds.
‘And the whole Falcon squadron team has just made a home run,’ Troy said. ‘So to paraphrase my namesake’s most famous speech, this is one small step for Eden, one giant leap towards mining this huge lump of space metal to help defend our own precious world.’
At last I felt the weeks of tension starting to drain away as my neck muscles started to loosen. Troy and his squadron had actually done it – although now the really hard work would begin for them.
Tom gazed at me with a told you so expression on his face. ‘You see, that mission was always in good hands.’
‘It always was,’ I replied, now able to smile at him. Then much to his and even to my own surprise, I leant in and hugged him. Tom managed a few gentle taps on my back with his palms before I pulled away. Any show of affection so wasn’t his thing.
Troy’s face, now grinning, appeared on the video feed again. ‘So this is a message for the Osprey squadron, who’ll be joining us shortly. Haul your asses out here, because the space weather is mighty fine and the view of the stars is to die for.’ He held up a thumb and everyone burst out cheering again, especially the Pangolin flight crews scattered across the crowd. Then the video finished with Troy snapping a salute to the camera.
My gaze flicked across to Jane and Ruby, who were also hugging each other. I just hoped that Ruby, ever the party girl, wouldn’t keep the engineer up too late tonight celebrating. Jane really needed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for her ride to the stars tomorrow.
Alice picked up her mic again. ‘Okay everyone, we better get our reply ready to send because it will be another twelve minutes until they receive it. So I’d like you all to raise a glass to Commander Troy and his intrepid team further out in the solar system than any human being has ever travelled before. I’d also like to toast the incredible men and women of the Osprey squadron who are here with us tonight, who will be heading out to join Commander Troy and his team at this new frontier for our species.’ She raised her champagne glass. ‘We salute all of you.’
Everyone in the cavern raised their glasses, including the flight team members, who were beaming at each other.
‘We salute you,’ we all echoed.
Then Alice gestured towards the barbeque. ‘And with that message recorded and now winging its way back to Troy and the rest of Osprey squadron, let’s get eating.’
Leroy nodded and his team started opening up the smokers. As soon as the rich scents of cooked meat hit my nostrils my appetite rushed back in with a vengeance.
We grabbed one of the picnic tables with Tom and before long I was tucking into the most succulent ribs that I swear I’d ever eaten in my life. Next to me, Jack had a completely blissed out expression as he devoured some smoked brisket with a side of sweetcorn and red slaw.
Jack wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as Leroy headed in our direction. ‘Damn this is some of best barbeque I’ve had in a long time,’ he said, raising a glass of champagne to the great man himself.
Leroy winked at him. ‘It’s all down to my grandmother’s secret rub. It makes all the difference.’
I raised my own glass. ‘Then here’s to her too.’
He grinned at us and headed past with his tray of sliders to the raucous table next door, filled with Niki and several members of his security team.
But then Jack’s expression tensed as he looked at them.
‘Oh great, here we go again,’ he said.
I turned to see a young blonde woman and a guy with spiky gelled hair squeezing their way through the crowd straight towards our table. Both were wearing white flight suits, identifying them as some of the latest pilots to graduate from the flight training programme.
‘Just remember to be polite,’ Tom said, giving me a pointed look.
Before I could reply, they arrived and the young woman snapped a salute towards me. ‘We just wanted to introduce ourselves to you, ma’am.’
I pulled a face at her. ‘Ma’am? You do realise that you just made me feel like a hundred and eighty.’
A slightly terrified look filled the woman’s face as Jack laughed.
She lowered her hand. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
The guy shook his head at his companion, followed by a bit of an eye roll. ‘Hush now before you put your foot in there too, Erin,’ he said. Then he stuck out a hand to shake mine. ‘The name’s Daryl and it’s good to meet you all. But please excuse my pilot. She has a bit of a fangirl crush on you, Captain Stelleck.’
Erin’s cheeks were now flaming. She pulled away from Daryl and gently punched him in the arm. ‘I do not!’ Then she turned back to me and took a deep breath. ‘Okay maybe a little bit. But I just wanted to say that you and the rest of your team have been a real inspiration to all of the cadets. Thank you for everything that you’ve done.’
‘Um, thanks,’ I said, feeling my own face heat up. I so hated this sort of attention. Then I caught the amused look that Jack was giving me and had to resist the temptation to punch him in the arm a lot harder than Erin had just done to Daryl.
Cadet school was one of the new programmes that Alice had set up to make sure we had enough skilled pilots to fly our ever-expanding fleet of X103s and Pangolins. But this wasn’t the first time that some of them had sought us out; they looked up to us, especially me for some reason.
Daryl gave me a far more relaxed salute. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Captain. We’ll let you enjoy your food in peace.’ Then he hooked his hand under Erin’s arm and steered her away as quickly as he could before she could begin to protest.
‘Give me strength,’ I muttered.
‘You all deserve the attention you’re getting round here,’ Tom said.
