The Song of Earth (Children of Earthrise Book 5)

by Daniel Arenson

  He could see them. Nausea rose in him.

  Ugly bastards, he thought.

  Seven races had invaded Earth, but the Upidians were the ugliest. They looked like caterpillars the size of pythons. Their bodies were naturally armored and bristly with spikes and hooks. Human heads were impaled upon these cruel horns. The aliens' own heads were bloated, black around the edges, flowing into red maws. Three red eyes stared from each face, filled with bloodlust. Around their massive heads, the caterpillars grew rings of seven arms tipped with claws. With these limbs, they could grab prey and pull it toward the hungry jaws.

  The Upidians were not only hideous, deadly, and hungry. They were also fiercely intelligent. They built starships. They colonized worlds. And they loved nothing more than devouring human flesh.

  Now they were crawling across the wilderness, heading toward Port Addison.

  Emet had been fighting for two weeks now, barely sleeping or eating. Xerka, he knew, had imagined she could conquer Earth within a day. But for two weeks, humanity was resisting. Driven into a corner, humans fought with desperate courage.

  Emet wasn't sure how many humans had died in the battles so far. Thousands. But the survivors fought on. Men, women, children. The healthy and wounded. They fought with their last few bullets. They fought with spears and arrows. With sticks. With stones. Sometimes with nothing but bare hands and bravery.

  "Wait," Emet whispered, watching the creatures crawl closer … closer …

  One of the Upidians sniffed. The monstrous caterpillar swung its massive head around and stared directly at the periscope. Directly into Emet's eyes.

  "Now!" Emet shouted.

  He grabbed a rope and pulled. Across the tunnel, soldiers pulled a dozen more ropes.

  Hatches opened across the ceiling.

  Soil, grass, and Upidians tumbled into the tunnel.

  The carnivorous caterpillars slammed onto spikes that rose from the floor. The metal drove through their armor, pumped their body full of poison. The giant aliens screeched and writhed. Human heads fell from their spikes and rolled across the trench.

  "Fire!" Emet cried.

  Standing against the far wall, the soldiers fired their guns. Bullets slammed into the flailing aliens. The monsters' screams were even louder than the rifles.

  Yet even pierced with bullets, impaled with spikes, and full of poison, the Upidians still lived. The beasts tore themselves off the spikes, leaving globs of flesh, and advanced into the gunfire.

  One Upidian lunged. The ring of arms around its head extended, blooming like a fleshy flower. The claws grabbed a soldier. The arms folded inward, pulling the young private toward the alien jaws. Teeth ripped through the flesh. The private screamed as the alien devoured him alive.

  Another Upidian leaped onto two corporals and tore them apart, digging with claws like daggers. More of the flesh-eating aliens were crawling into the tunnel, undeterred by the hailstorm of bullets.

  "Fall back!" Emet cried. "Back!"

  The troops retreated into deeper tunnels, then pulled down iron portcullises, trapping the Upidians ahead.

  "Burn them!" Emet shouted.

  Across the tunnels, the soldiers grabbed flamethrowers—and filled the upper tunnels with fire.

  The Upidians screeched.

  The demonic caterpillars slammed themselves against the bars, desperate to reach the soldiers. But the humans kept firing. Emet stood before them, roaring, holding a flamethrower, filling the chamber ahead with an inferno.

  The Upidians burned. Their armor peeled back, their flesh sizzled, and their eyes melted. They could have retreated. But Upidians knew no such concept. They kept slamming themselves against the bars again and again, desperate to break through, to reach the humans. And still they burned. They burned until they fell and screamed no more.

  Emet lowered his flamethrower, arms shaking. Around him, wounded soldiers twitched, screamed, wept. This battle was over. Soon a new battle would begin.

  Emet returned that night to his bunker, bearing new wounds, a new weariness in his bones and soul.

  His bunker was small, and he shared it with several war orphans. The young ones were sleeping, even as explosions still sounded above, as the booms rocked the tunnels. Emet stood for a moment, looking at the sleeping children, wondering what sort of damage this war was doing to them. Wondering if they would grow up broken, haunted, forever suffering the nightmares. These children were not only surviving this war on Earth. They had survived the horrors of the gulocks, had seen their families skinned and burned.

  I don't know if they can ever know joy, Emet thought. I don't know if I can still save their souls. And maybe their own children, someday, will be broken too, will grow up in homes of secrets and tragedy. But maybe the third generation can find some joy, some healing. Or the fourth. Or the fifth. Even if we survive this war, it might be generations before we outlive the trauma. But for that future generation, I fight.

  The door opened. Cindy entered the bunker. She was still wearing her scrubs, and deep weariness filled her eyes. Her shoulders were slumped, her head lowered, and the weight of the world seemed to crush her. Yet when she saw Emet, she straightened, and the fire returned to her eyes.

  "You're wounded!" she whispered.

  "It's nothing serious," Emet said, but he winced in sudden pain, and his blood trickled.

  Cindy pulled him into the washrooms, and she tended to his wounds. Cleaning. Stitching. Bandaging.

  The nurse Emet had fallen in love with was now a doctor. For the past two weeks of war, she had barely slept, had been tending to the wounded, the dying. She commanded five hundred medical professionals, perhaps the hardest working soldiers in this war.

  As she bandaged his wounds, Emet looked into her blue eyes.

  And what damage is this war doing to you, Cindy? he thought. You have tended to soldiers torn apart. Their limbs ripped off. Their bodies sliced open. Their skin burnt. You guided hundreds into death. Some only children. And I know that every wound, every death, is another scar on your soul.

  She slapped on the last bandage.

  "You're done," she said. She looked away, tightened her lips, and took a deep breath. Then she looked back at him, eyes damp. "You can't keep doing this, Emet."

  He stroked her smooth black hair. "I must. I must fight for Earth."

  She shoved his hand away. "You are no longer our admiral! You are no longer commander of the Heirs of Earth. You are now the President of Earth. A president, not a soldier! You should be leading from bunkers, not fighting in the battlefield. You should be wearing a suit, not a uniform. You …" She lowered her head. "You shouldn't keep getting hurt. I can't bear to see you come home to me every day, bleeding and torn. Because I know that someday, you won't come home at all. And I can keep healing our boys and girls, Emet. I can keep healing even as I watch thousands die. But I couldn't bear to lose you."

  Emet held her hands. "Cindy, you are beautiful."

  She rolled her eyes. "Don't try smooth talking your way out of this."

  He stroked her hair. "I love you, Cindy. And I would never do anything that hurts you. Other than this. This war …" He shook his head sadly. "This is no ordinary war. In the old days of Earth, the leaders would sit in palaces, wearing fineries, while civilians sought shelter behind the walls, while youths died on the battlefields. But this is different. Today, our entire species is an army. Every last human must fight, from the youngest child to me, this old president."

  She embraced him. Her tears wet his chest. "Emet, I love you too. But Ramses and Tom are back on Earth now. You have capable officers who can go out there and lead the troops. Please, Emet. Be careful. If we lose you … If I lose you …" She let out a sob. "I've dedicated my life to my work. I'm almost fifty, and I've never married, never had children. Our soldiers have always been my children. But now, an old woman, I am finally in love. And I finally know true fear."

  Emet smiled. "Cindy! You're not an old woman. Wait until you're fifty-nine lik
e me." He frowned. "What date is it?"

  "May fourteenth," she said.

  Emet nodded. "By Ra. I turned sixty yesterday."

  She let out a weak laugh. "Old man." She kissed him. "Old Lion. You're still the strongest man I know."

  An explosion rocked the bunker. The children stirred but fell back asleep. Emet lay down by the wall, and Cindy curled up against him. They slept embraced. But Emet found no rest, and in his sleep, the aliens still screamed and burned.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "All right, Nerd Squad!" Rowan said, pacing the bunker. "We've got ships to bring home. The Exodus Fleet is back in our solar system, carrying fifty thousand human refugees—many of them of fighting age. Bay and Luther contacted us from the heliosphere. They're only hours away, flying a freighter full of rifles and ammunition. We need those humans and those guns here on Earth, fighting the goddamn aliens. Thousands of enemy warships are still blockading Earth! How do we bring our guys home?"

  Fifty people filled the room—scientists, engineers, or simply geeks with more brain than brawn. The nerds had been toiling day and night, working on Project Talaria, the mission to solve the embargo.

  One man stood up—a slender, balding engineer. "The best plan is what we've already done. We fire rockets into the sky. We form a corridor of artillery fire. It worked for the Porter Evacuation."

  Rowan rolled her eyes. "But we have no more rockets on Earth! All our new rockets are with Bay—in space!"

  "We can produce more," suggested another man. "Project Hammer and Anvil has been building a munition factory."

  "A factory that won't be ready for weeks!" Rowan said. "We need something to work now."

  A young woman stood up—a wispy little thing with goggles in her hair. Rowan pushed her own goggles farther up her head. She noticed that many in the HDF had been emulating her style.

  Great, I'm a trendsetter, Rowan thought.

  "What if we can harness Bay and Luther's rockets from space?" the woman asked. "They and the Exodus Fleet can fire them from above, forming a reverse corridor."

  Rowan pursed her lips. "That's an option. But I don't like it. First, I don't want any rockets firing at Earth. Even if we fire them at unpopulated areas, it gives me the willies. Also: We lost ten percent of our shuttles during Operating Exodus, which used artillery cover. That's too high for me. Also, warships are more vulnerable than ICBM silos. If the Exodus Fleet hangs around, firing missiles, the aliens will be on them like syrup on pancakes." She turned toward a group of elderly professors. "What about the Talaria cannons? How is that project coming along?"

  The professors shifted uncomfortably. Rowan knew they disliked the project. She had come up with the concept, had been pushing it hard. She would have built the damn contraption herself, but she didn't have the necessary physics. She was a good inventor, a good programmer, and a decent mechanic—but not much of an engineer.

  Professor Eberhardt crossed his arms. "It'll never work. We wasted valuable resources building your ridiculous Talaria cannon. A waste of time! A waste of azoth crystals."

  Rowan glared at the man. "Those azoth crystals came from fallen starships. They were never wasted. We've been over the math." She pointed at her board. "We place the azoth crystals into cannons on Earth. We bend spacetime. And—"

  "And crack open the planet," said Eberhardt. "Damn it, Emery, there's a reason why starfighter pilots are trained to never use azoth drives near Earth. If you bend spacetime near a gravitational well, you also bend everything near you. Including the planet!"

  "Not with my cannon design." Rowan pointed at her board, where she had drawn blueprints of the Talaria cannons. "We can concentrate the warp of spacetime. Normally, pilots bend spacetime into a bubble around their starship. But we can bend spacetime in a beam. We fire the beams upward toward space. And we form a tunnel. A tunnel between outer space and Earth's surface."

  For the past three weeks, Rowan had insisted on building the project. She had commandeered three artillery emplacements, converting the artillery cannons into Talaria cannons—azoth beam generators. Of course, they had never actually tried using them. It was all theoretical. Rowan thought she understood the math, but …

  What if Eberhardt is right? She thought. What if I drill a hole through Earth?

  "Rowan." Eberhardt's voice softened. "I know you mean well. I know you're intelligent. I know you care about Earth. But I'm telling you. This is too dangerous. If this backfires, we could cause an earthquake large enough to devastate the colony. Maybe even the entire continent. Every tunnel will cave in. We'd kill hundreds of thousands of people. I'm sorry, Rowan. It's too risky."

  Rowan's eyes stung. She took a deep breath.

  "But can it work?" she said. "You've seen the math. You've run the numbers. Is there a chance?"

  The professor pursed his lips, then finally nodded. "Yes. But a small chance. Too small."

  Rowan turned toward the board. She stared at her designs. At the mathematical formulas. At a chance to save Earth—or destroy it.

  Another explosion sounded above. The board trembled. Aboveground, more soldiers were dying. The war was everywhere now, spreading across the continent, across the entire globe. Here at Port Addison and at every other colony—humans were dying. Thousands of them.

  Rowan spoke in a low voice, her back to the crowd.

  "Word came in yesterday." Her voice shook. "The basilisks are not only attacking Earth. They're mounting attacks on humans in space too. There are still five hundred million humans out there. Refugees who need to come home. If we can't bring weapons to our army—we're dead. All of us. Half a million humans here on Earth, and the millions still out there." She took a deep, shaky breath. "I've listened to everyone. And I've decided." She turned back toward them. "We need a permanent solution. Not just a way to bring this shipment of refugees and weapons over—but many shipments for months ahead. The Talaria cannons give us our best chance. So we will take this risk."

  Eberhardt's face flushed. "And if we destroy Earth?"

  "Then we die sooner rather than later," Rowan said. "Either way, if it fails—we're dead. So it will work. Because it has to work."

  That night, Rowan and her team stepped into the cannon battery.

  Their gear was set up. Normally, such a project could take months, even years. Yet within three weeks, under constant assault, Antikythera had built this installation in the heart of Port Addison. The cannon rose through an underground silo, as tall as an oak, into the night sky. Gears, winches, and levers rose across it, recycled from crashed starships and shuttles. Computers filled the room, their cables running toward the cannon.

  In other locations in Port Addison, two more cannons were similarly modified. The three would triangulate, forming a single corridor of warped space.

  Rowan grabbed rungs screwed into the cannon's bore. She climbed to the top, then peered into the muzzle.

  Calibrators and lenses filled the bore, running all the way down. At the bottom, arranged into a ring, the azoth crystals shone.

  Crystals that could refract spacetime itself. Rowan gulped. That could crack Earth like an egg.

  She suddenly felt dizzy and nearly fell into the cannon.

  She climbed back down with shaky hands. At the bottom, her team took position at their computer stations. Rowan turned on her minicom, then plugged it into a cable.

  "Exodus Fleet, do you read me?" she said.

  Her minicom connected to the ansible under Port Addison—via cable, protecting it from eavesdroppers over the airways. The second ansible was aboard the Byzantium, serving the Exodus Fleet.

  She was expecting the voice of Mary Sage—once the captain of the HSS Porter, today the commander of the entire Exodus Fleet. But a different, younger voice answered.

  "We read ya, hobbit! How's it going?"

  Tears leaped into Rowan's eyes. "Pancake!"

  "It's me!" Bay said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "All snug and cozy with the Exodus Fleet. The Porter's got
a bunch of refugees anxious to see Earth. And Luther and I, well—we come bearing gifts."

  Rowan's tears flowed. "Muck, I love you, Pancake. We're gonna try something new to get you guys home, all right? No more artillery fire. I'm going to open a sort of wormhole for you. This gets technical, so you'll want to grab a pen."

  She began explaining how the Talaria cannon worked. Once she fired it up, it should—in theory—form a tunnel of warped spacetime. The wormhole would stretch between Earth's sky and Pluto's orbit, where the Exodus Fleet awaited.

  If all went well, the fleet would be able to send shuttles through the tunnel—and be inside Earth's atmosphere within minutes.

  "Uhm, babe?" Bay said. "It sounds great, but … what if the basilisks blast the tunnel apart?"

  "They can't," she said. "The wormhole will exist in another plane of reality. You'd have to be inside the tunnel to destroy it. It's like communicating with ansibles, completely secure. Trust me."

  "Famous last words," Bay muttered. He sighed. "All right, fine! I've followed your crazy schemes so far. No point in quitting now. We'll begin loading up our shuttles. We'll need a few trips. We've got a lot of weapons to deliver. We'll have the first batch ready in a few minutes."

  "Love you, Bay. Can't wait to see you and squeeze you and kiss you."

  "Love you too, my little hobbit. Can't wait."

  She heard Luther speaking in the background. "Aww, you two little lovebirds melt an old man's heart."

  Rowan grinned. "Can't wait to see you too, Big Blue. Now let's rock and roll."

  Gunfire sounded nearby. Aliens screeched. A fresh battle was raging aboveground. Trying to ignore the sounds, Rowan ran last-minute calculations, then nodded. She was ready.

  "Let's take her up!" she said.

  She turned a winch. The cannon began to rise, meter by meter. Below, her team was working on their computers, calibrating the crystals. Within a few minutes, the cannon was aboveground.

  Rowan stood at its base, standing unprotected in the night. The ruins of Port Addison spread around her, a field of fallen buildings and shattered walls. Scattered fires burned, and battles still raged on the colony's borders. Soldiers were firing from inside trenches, pounding an advancing line of basilisks. An armored troop carrier rumbled forth, shaking the Earth, and plowed into a line of the serpents. In the northern quarter, Rowan could make out a group of Esporians. The foul mushrooms were casting their spores into a trench. Soldiers rose from below, wearing gas masks and wielding flamethrowers, and the Esporians screeched as they burned.