Invasion (Contact Book 1)

by David Ryker

  Once, Hess tried to explore the rooms beneath the Alcázar filled with ledgers and books and everything old. There, he’d seen the team of scribes, men with outdated titles who scoured every single document going back thousands of years. They collected together the language and cherry-picked the words and phrases and sentiments and idioms they liked. Those of the old world. Those of the ancient Earth. This was the language of the Federation, cultivated carefully.

  Acton Hess had never picked a cherry, but he knew the phrase. He had never considered a god or envisaged a hell, but he knew how to curse. Every word of colony life was overseen by the Senate. What difference would a war make?

  Only this time, Hess allowed himself a brief moment of optimism and a smile, I’ve got a plan.

  The tube of basa sat reassuringly in his pocket. Saito would come searching later. When he came fiending, Hess would have suggestions, ideas, a way to build a new world.

  It felt so strange, to know they were no longer alone. The words filtered over the crowd from the stage. Loreto’s warnings about evil out there in the unknown reaches of space. Life, in all its forms. Unimaginable power. The admiral thumped a burly fist into the Federation lectern.

  “We must prepare to face evil hereon,” Loreto demanded. “We must not bury our heads in the sand.”

  The man lived on a spaceship, Hess thought. He probably hasn’t seen sand in thirty years. But he knows the saying. Surely he understands how much the Senate controls.

  Even if he didn’t, it was typical soldier talk. The launching of a forever war when humanity’s own house was hardly in order. Always thinking of the next fight, rather than the people fighting. It wasn’t hard to respect Loreto, Hess knew, but he couldn’t listen any longer. He slipped out of the square and left the crowd behind.

  He wanted to find Alison. The girl who had come to him and asked for a job, who had given him a new lease on life when he was at his lowest ebb. His muse for an opera he was yet to write. She has a great deal to be proud of, Hess thought. She’s guided me. Changed me.

  The throngs of Spartans were thick and tightly packed. Everyone was outside. They seemed delighted to be able to stare up at an empty sky. The defenses remained in place. People partied around them, desperately, because they had nothing else to do. If they slowed down, they might have to think about what they’d lost.

  Hess pushed through, an inconsequential cell of a larger being. Music was playing from high up on the concrete towers, calling down to the crowds and encouraging them to dance and delight and be merry in all sorts of ways. He had never seen anything sadder than the Spartans, their buzzcut hair and their white overalls. They didn’t know what came next.

  He searched for a while and then found her, at the edge of a shallow and wide pond littered with water lilies. She spotted him quickly and ran across, sweat beaded on her brow. Caught up in a rapture in the hours after the battle, she’d shaved the her hair from her head, caught up in the local delirium. Now, she fit more closely into the crowd, marked out only by her darker skin.

  “Acton.” She smiled wide. “Come on, you’re not celebrating?”

  She spoke with a breathless and humorous indignation and tried to drag him into the dance. He smiled.

  “You have to celebrate,” she chided him. “When else are you going to have a moment like this?”

  Hess sucked in a deep drag of air through his nose and blew up his lungs like bellows and looked around at the Spartan city and those left behind by the dead.

  “What if there’s worse to come?” he said at last. “What if there’s more out there?”

  “Then it doesn’t matter, Acton. You have to enjoy right now.”

  She tried to tug on his arm again and he refused. Alison stood up as tall as she could, her skinny shoulders still buoying up and down as she recovered her breath. The crown-shaped birthmark on her brown neck almost glowed rose-colored.

  “What more could you possibly do?” she asked. “You’re a trusted advisor to the president, an essential part of the Federation you want to bring down, right at the weakest point in its history. We’re about to be flooded with the bounties of alien technology, peace on Sparta, and an enemy which could unite us all. The future is bright, Acton. I think.”

  Hess smiled. She was developing quite a way with words; he was almost convinced.

  “You certainly have a way of seeing the positives in everything,” he told her.

  “Oh, come on.” She stamped her foot. “You’ve even got that recording. Release that and the generals will be chased out beyond the Pale. You could destroy them right now!”

  “I could,” he agreed, though he was less certain.

  “So?” She tilted her head to the side. “Why not celebrate?”

  “Nothing will change,” he said bluntly. “Not until I’ve torn the whole thing down. Then we’ll celebrate.”

  Plus, he knew, Saito had the real dirt. And he had Saito. Files on everything. Information he could only image. Earth was still at the center of the universe and the Earthbound elites still held everything in a tight grip. There was nothing to celebrate. Not yet. I haven’t even had my revenge, he told himself and pictured Saito’s smiling face. Not while he’s still president.

  He felt the bag of basa in his pocket, right next to the knife. Well, he thought, maybe there’s some fates worse than death. Alison stood staring at him.

  “So?” she asked.

  “You should celebrate,” he told her. “Enjoy yourself.”

  As soon as he said it, Alison’s demeanor changed. The smile dropped from her face, her shoulders slumped.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “I think I’ll go back to my quarters. I should talk to my father.”

  Hess flashed her a smile as she left, pushing through the sweaty crowds who danced as though they wouldn’t see tomorrow. She wanted to talk to her father. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that her message would likely never leave this system. The Senate kept things locked down at times like this.

  He turned back to the city and began to walk. He pushed through the people, searching for the fringes of the crowd. It felt like everyone had gathered together in a big tight ball. Desperate people searching for humanity where they could. So many lost today, Hess understood, they wanted a community. For friendship, for assurances that things would be all right. They danced until they were delirious.

  The debris crashing from space had hammered into the mountains around them. Satellites and spaceships lay smoldering in the ruins of buildings. But people were happy anyway. They had to be, otherwise they would have to face the reality. Partying like they’d won the battle, Hess sneered as he walked through the edges of the crowd. They didn’t even know about the war. The further he went, the more he felt the cynicism boil up inside him.

  He strolled through an old hangar. Shuttles from the ships in orbit had landed here. It smelled of grease and sweat and blood. The floor was sticky and the space limited. But still there were people, gathered together, drinking and doing anything they could not to think.

  Hess spotted a man sitting alone at a table with a half bottle of liquor. Of all the people on Sparta, he was the only one who had allowed the emotions to take him entirely. He was sad, staring into the bottom of a metal cup.

  The man wore the insignia of the First Fleet, Hess noticed as he walked across. An officer. Maybe I can find out what really happened up there, Hess thought. Not the sanitized, anodyne story we’ve all been told.

  Where did the aliens go, he thought? How did Loreto beat them? How many were dead and how many survived? There were still too many questions about the battle. All the admiral’s speeches were heavy on rhetoric and thin on facts, probably prepared for him.

  “Ahh,” Hess said as he approached the table in the corner of the hangar. “Someone who appreciates the gravity of the situation. What’s your name, officer?”

  The man looked up. Red rings circled his exhausted eyes.

  “Cavs,” the man said. “Jimmy Cavs. Who�
�s asking?”

  “Someone who can see the same reality,” Hess said, sitting at the table. “What are we drinking?”

  The officer didn’t reply. He just slid the bottle of liquor across the table. Stretching out for a cup, Hess poured himself a drink. Before he lifted it, he smelled the thickness of the alcohol. Real engine grease. He felt his hairs turning gray.

  “At least,” he said, “tell me who we’re drinking to.”

  Cavs looked up again. His red eyes burned with fury.

  “The dead,” he said quietly. “My friends. And the others.”

  “To the dead.” Hess tilted his cup.

  They drank. The liquor burned the back of Hess’s throat and sat blistering in his belly. He sucked in a lungful of quick air to hide the pain. It helped. He poured more drink in both cups. He wanted to learn more about this officer, the one sad man on Sparta.

  “To the victors,” he tried and raised his cup.

  Cavs looked at his drink, half-heartedly lifted it up and downed the contents. Hess held his cup to his lips and let the liquor burn his skin. He poured another for the officer.

  “To Admiral Loreto,” he tried.

  Cavs shot out a hand and slapped the cup from Hess’s. It clattered against a wall. People turned to stare.

  “Don’t say his name,” Cavs snarled.

  “I won’t have to,” Hess said as he studied the man. “You’ll be reading it in every history book soon enough.”

  Cavs simmered for a moment. Hess thought he was about to stand up and storm off into the crowd. But he poured himself another drink.

  “It’s his fault,” the officer said with words like crumbling stone temples. “He let them through. He let them all through. He gambled on their tech. He took risks and people paid for it. Good people. With their lives. They’d be here if it wasn’t for him.”

  A tear welled in the corner of the officer’s tired eye and he wiped it away with a balled fist and slammed his hand down on the table.

  “Would we be alive though?” Hess asked, wondering how far he could push this young officer.

  “He’s a villain,” Cavs muttered and looked down into his drink. “They’re all treating him like a hero.”

  “Some of us,” Hess said as he reached for the liquor bottle, “think the world is not quite so binary.”

  “Oh yeah?” Cavs asked and sunk his drink. “What do you know?”

  Hess held the bottle and looked the man in his tired eyes.

  “I know how to hold a grudge,” he said. “I know how much it can take over your life, how much it can stop you seeing the bigger picture.”

  “Yeah?” Cavs was losing interest. He watched the bottle and the bottle alone.

  “I know that venom and hate will get you nowhere, Jimmy Cavs. Hold the people you hate close. Let them trust you. Let them depend on you. Make the whole system rely on you and only you.”

  The man was shaking his head. Hess took a slug from the bottle. It burned again.

  “And then,” he said, “they won’t notice when you slide a knife between their shoulders.”

  Cavs huffed a laugh.

  “Sounds like you’ve got murder on your mind,” he said sarcastically, and took the bottle from Hess’s hand. “Anyone in particular?”

  Saito. Van Liden. A hundred faces passed through Hess’s mind.

  “No,” he said and grabbed the bottle back and drank again. The burn kissed the back of his throat. He smiled. “Not so much a person.”

  “Then who?”

  “A whole damn Federation.”

  Become a reviewer!

  If you enjoyed Invasion, and love free books, then stick around… I’m looking to build up a review team - a crack team of ninjas who can read and review a book within a week or so of receiving it. In return, you’ll get a free copy of every book I publish - which is a lot (see below!) Reviews make a huge difference to the success of an independently published book, and I have twenty or thirty spots available. It’s first come first served…

  To join, visit www.DavidRyker.com/Reviews and fill out the form - I just need a couple of bits of information like your email address so I can send you your free books!

  Currently available for review:

  Invasion - Contact One

  Downfall - Contact Two

  Breakout - Fugitive Marines One

  Wanted - Fugitive Marines Two

  Coming Late September:

  Untitled - Iron Legion One

  Untitled - Fugitive Marines Two

  Author’s Note

  Thanks so much for making it to the end of Invasion. Hopefully that means that I did at least some things right. Invasion is far from my first novel, but even so it is a story that I’ve wanted to tell for a very long time. A few false starts later, I guess I finally made it!

  Reviews mean everything to the success or failure of an independently published novel. I would be grateful if you could take thirty seconds to leave one here when you finish this book. I am also building a team of reviewers who will receive all of my books, absolutely free. To sign up, click here, or type www.geni.us/reviewer into your browser. It’ll take you to a short form that will only take 20 seconds to fill out!

  Downfall, the second book in the Contact series, will be released in early September. If you’re reading this after that date, then I’d like to say hello from the past - it’s not every day you get to be a time traveller, after all.

  I’ve also got a pretty exciting September coming up. I’ve been working on two different series in addition to Contact over the past few months: Fugitive Marines, an epic Space Marines series, and Iron Legion, a mech series. The books will be released with two different co-authors, and I’m loving where we’re taking both storylines. Both will be debuting in September.

  If you want my latest release updates, as well as access to novellas in both the upcoming Fugitive Marines and Iron Legion worlds, the best place is probably my brand new Facebook group, which I have pretentiously called Ryker’s Rogues. I will also be running a weekly competition inside the group, with a grand prize of a print of the artwork on the cover of this book, delivered to your home. You can see the full version on www.DavidRyker.com.

  Finally, to sign up for email updates, and for those who hate Facebook, click here to subscribe. I launch at $0.99 for the first 24 hours, and I’ll email to let you know. After that, unfortunately, the discount window slams shut…

  N.B. I hate spam as much as the next guy, so barring your joining emails, you’ll only ever hear from me when I’ve got a new release, or if I’m running a sale. (Scout’s honor).

  Happy Hunting,

  David Ryker, Aug 2018.

  Upcoming Releases:

  Sept 2nd: Downfall - Contact Book Two

  Sept 4th: Breakout - Fugitive Marines One

  Sept 4th: Wanted -- Fugitive Marines Two

  Sept 18th: *Untitled* - Iron Legion One

  Sept 25th: *Untitled* - Contact Three