Martian Quadrilogy Box Set

by Brandon Ellis

He hung his head and shook it to gather himself. He glanced at the vid screen and narrowed his eyes. Earth’s white-and-gray, crater-pocked moon was in full view, and Earth’s brilliant blue-and-green aura glowed behind it.

  A small Dunrakee warship had been parked next to a crater on the dark side of the moon below them and unaware of their presence. Until now.

  The ship sent a thrust of fire through its rear boosters, kicking up moon dust and ice particles.

  It was heading their way.

  The warship’s small wings were tipped with photon cannons, and heavy warheads were attached underneath its wing pits. Bulky missiles were racked in between the ship’s wing tips and the pit. It was definitely a Dunrakee military craft, perhaps doing some type of military training on the moon.

  And right now, their training was over.

  Ozzy glanced over his shoulder, his heart racing several beats faster than only a few seconds ago. “Jozi, do you see any other bubble-headed assholes on the radar?”

  Jozi frantically pressed several buttons.

  Ozzy veered away from the oncoming bandit. “Jozi,” yelled Ozzy. “Do you see any more Dunrakee on the radar?”

  Jozi didn’t take her eyes off of her holodisplay. “I heard you. I’m doing something a little more important here, Ozzy. Graviton shields aren’t coming online. I told you we should have checked it before we left.” She was sweating, and her face was reddening.

  The Eagle was a new ship to Ozzy, and he didn’t know where the graviton shields initiator was located. She was right. That may have been something rather important to check before they left.

  Jozi gasped, her hands coming to her chest with her fingers splayed. “Dammit. We have incoming.”

  The bridge’s lights dimmed from soft white to red and accompanied by several horn alerts.

  The ship’s vid screen, which spanned the entire front portion of the Eagle’s bridge, zeroed in on several missiles coming from the enemy’s underwings.

  “Not good,” Ozzy said under his breath. He pushed boosters to full and banked right.

  The door to the bridge opened, and Sonya Zeld hurried in. She wore a tight, sleek black-leather outfit snug to her body and a photon pistol holstered at her hip.

  “What’s the commotion?” She dropped her hands by her side when she locked eyes on the vid screen. “You imbeciles.”

  “Eight seconds to impact,” roared Jozi, ignoring Zeld. “And I can’t get these damned graviton shields to work.” She brought her shaky hands to her forehead.

  Zeld dashed toward Jozi and pushed her off of the station’s nav seat. Jozi tumbled to the floor, her arms flailing about.

  Ozzy stood, his hand coming to his sidearm. “What are—”

  He relaxed when he saw what Zeld was doing.

  “Three seconds to impact,” growled Zeld. She swiped her hand over a few holoscreens and pressed a button. “Graviton shields activated.”

  A loud bang reverberated against the walls, and the Eagle bounced up and down. Ozzy plopped into his seat from the missile’s impact, his legs flinging into the air and then slamming down on the floor.

  “Stern graviton shields took a direct hit,” shouted Zeld. “But they held steady.” She slumped into the nav chair, wiping her pink hair out of her eyes. Another warning blared, and she straightened up. “That craft is firing at us again.” The sound of Zeld’s voice was like a snake about to lunge at its victim. She glared at Ozzy. “I told you to wait on your approach to the moon, you jackass. I’m the expert on this space rig, not you.”

  “We didn’t have time to wait,” replied Ozzy. “Waiting on your beauty sleep wasn’t on today’s docket.”

  What was on the docket for the day was the crystal sphere and on the docket every day until they found where it was hidden on Earth. Jonas Moon wanted it in his hands sooner rather than later.

  The craft shuddered as another missile blast absorbed into the ship’s shields and obliterating into nothing. Electric-blue lightning bolts shot outward from the shield’s energetic exterior, grabbing at the oncoming Dunrakee vehicle.

  “We have to down him, Ozzy,” said Jozi.

  “You read my mind.” Ozzy jumped to his feet. “Zeld, you steer. Jozi and I will blow this bastard into stardust.”

  “Fine.” Zeld stood and hurried onto Ozzy’s chair. “If you would have listened—”

  “Enough,” growled Ozzy, even though she was right. He motioned for Jozi to follow him, and they rushed out of the bridge.

  Ozzy ran down a corridor lined with blinking red lights and blaster- and radiation-proof windows. He turned a corner with Jozi hot on his tail.

  He pointed to a port door labeled weapons room. Another room with the same name was on the other side of the corridor. “I’ll take starboard, and you take the port side.”

  Jozi nodded and punched in a code on a panel next to the port side room. The door opened, and Jozi disappeared inside.

  Ozzy punched his code into the starboard weapons room and rushed inside. He swiped across a holopad attached above a small, round door. The door opened, zipping into the side wall and revealing a tube.

  Ozzy held the hand grips above the door and thrust his feet into the tube, sliding down it a few meters and landing onto a seat inside a round pod.

  The Eagle jostled from another direct hit.

  Shit. This was the last thing he wanted. Hell, the last thing he needed.

  Why did Jonas assign him to this mission? That son of a Mars. There was a time Ozzy could trust Jonas. That had all but faded when the asshole became the new High Judge, which the prick bought and paid for and how he pretty much forced Ozzy to fly into this pack of wolves. Jonas figured he could tell people to bark and they would.

  To top it off, Jozi convinced Ozzy to go on this ridiculous mission because she claimed he needed to do something right for humanity.

  He shook his head as the tube’s door closed. He wrapped his fingers around a control stick and rested his thumb on the trigger. He brought up the com line. “You hear me, Jozi?”

  “I hear you loud and clear.”

  Ozzy grinned. He abhorred violence unless it kept him safe. Today, it would keep his ass in one piece.

  He hoped.

  “Initiating photon cannons.” He swiped his finger across a holodisplay, pulling up the weapon’s array. An energy gauge for photon power appeared along with a missile count. A big smile spread across his face. “Space-to-Space G-114 Missiles. We got Grizzlies, Jozi. Yep, we got the big boys. Oooey!”

  “Great. I’m ejecting the pod, readying to fire,” replied Jozi.

  Ozzy pressed a button, and his pod ejected out of the starboard side, making a whoosh sound. Ozzy shook when the pod stopped via an energy cord connecting the pod to the ship. If the cord malfunctioned, he and the pod would shoot out into deep space, twirling end over end until it hit a big flying rock or something else to bring it to a halt—something Ozzy wasn’t too keen on experiencing.

  Ozzy pulled back on the control stick. The pod lifted above the Eagle, bringing the energy cord to its full stretching capacity.

  He pushed a button next to his holodisplay, and a large, five barrel gatling cannon extended from the pod’s underbelly. The cannon barrel rotated in place.

  It was ready for action.

  And so was Ozzy.

  The Dunrakee warship rounded the Eagle on its port side, most likely wanting to find another way to blast through the Eagle’s graviton shields.

  “Zeld, send all gravitons to the port side,” ordered Ozzy.

  “Already on it,” Zeld responded. “Now, get that flying piece of scrap metal out of my sight.”

  Ozzy pulled up his targeting holoscreen and moved the pod to his left, panning around and zeroing in on the warship.

  Ozzy activated the Grizzlies.

  A rack full of missiles larger and wider than his body extended out of the pod’s sides.

  “Damn, this pod’s thick,” mumbled Ozzy, realizing how wide the pod’s side walls must
be in order to house this many G-114’s.

  He steered the pod, lifting it above the Eagle’s roof, and spun it around to face the stern. The Dunrakee warship was in range.

  A beep sounded—target lock.

  Ozzy pulled the trigger. The pod’s windows automatically tinted a dark black as orange fire blanketed both sides of the pod. His pod rumbled, shaking up and down.

  Kavoom! Kavoom!

  One missile shot forth like a bat out of hell. Then more followed.

  The missiles zipped onward, heading over the Eagle and right for the Dunrakee.

  The warship rotated, facing Ozzy’s oncoming missiles. The tips of its wings flashed, sending a barrage of photon cannon fire. Blue streaks shot through space, slicing through the G-114’s like a hot knife through butter.

  An explosion lit up the area, momentarily turning the black cosmos into explosive, shiny colors of yellows and reds.

  It died down a moment later.

  “Crap,” hollered Ozzy.

  His pod beeped. The Dunrakee ship had his pod on target lock. A missile blasted from under the enemy’s wing, side winding toward him.

  His heart skipped a beat, and his mouth gaped open in surprise.

  Ozzy switched to cannon fire. He pressed down on the lever next to him, sending his pod away and beneath the Eagle’s roof, hiding from the missiles coming his way. He pulled back on his control stick, pointing his nose toward the roof.

  He held his breath.

  The Dunrakee’s missile flew over the roof and past him, its fiery boosters pushing it along at thousands of miles per hour.

  Ozzy let out a sigh of relief. Thank Mars.

  A fast beeping sound engulfed his pod—target lock. “What?” He shook his head, glaring at the holodisplay.

  A missile had turned around. It had homed in on Ozzy a second time and was heading right for him.

  Jozi’s voice crackled over the com line. “This pilot is damn good at deflecting my shots.”

  “I got a problem here, Jozi.” If Ozzy didn’t blow this missile out of the sky, he was a goner.

  He twisted his pod around, facing the oncoming missile.

  “Ozzy? What is it?”

  “Hold on, Jozi. I have incoming in five seconds.”

  “Shoot it down.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s my plan.”

  He pulled the trigger. His pod shuddered, sending out blue photon beam cannon blasts.

  The missile moved. Ozzy’s mouth dropped. Missiles don’t move out of the way of things. Yet, this one was playing dodgeball, and the damned thing sidestepped a barrage of cannon fire.

  The missile continued in its trajectory, heading straight for Ozzy.

  Ozzy swallowed, gulping hard.

  Two seconds until impact.

  He hadn’t even landed on Earth yet, and here he was already about to die.

  2

  Earth • Earth’s Moon

  Ozzy’s pod vibrated as he held down the trigger and sent multiple photon blasts at the enemy. He rotated the pod in a circle to target the incoming missile and shoot its every possible location. He had two seconds to trick the missile’s artificial intelligence if that’s what was actually controlling the thing.

  A bright light punctured the head of the missile, and Ozzy had to squint his eyes.

  The missile cracked in half, sending sparks into the ocean of blackness. The fire diminished a second later, leaving a weaponless and destroyed warhead careening toward his pod.

  “I hit it, Ozzy,” said Jozi.

  Ozzy nodded, but the missile wasn’t stopping. He gripped the controls and tightened his leg muscles, preparing for impact.

  Kapang!

  His head whipped back, slamming against the seat’s headrest. The pod shimmied, and a loud pang rang inside the pod like a fighter’s bell.

  The pod lurched backward, moving quickly toward the Eagle’s starboard exterior.

  Ozzy grabbed the control stick and the control lever at the same time. He pushed down on the stick and pulled back on the lever, slowing the pod.

  He cringed, trying to pull the lever as hard as he could. He had to stop this thing, or he’d risk puncturing a hole in the pod.

  He gritted his teeth, pulling and straining with all his might. The pod lurched and stopped.

  Ozzy blinked several times. He was mere inches from the Eagle.

  “More ships are leaving Earth’s exosphere and heading our way,” yelled Zeld. “Shoot that ship down, and we can hide somewhere on the moon with Indigo’s cloaking mechanism enabled.”

  “Understood,” growled Ozzy. It’s not like he wanted to make this Dunrakee ship his friend. Killing it was pretty much the only plan available to them.

  But she was right, if they could take out this ship, they could hide, and Indigo would keep them invisible to all radar—a technologically advanced rock-like device that Ozzy found on a dig years ago. It was his way of cloaking his ship from radar detection.

  It was only suitable for radar, though. If the Eagle were spotted with the naked eye, as this warship had spotted them, then Ozzy was shit out of luck.

  Ozzy rotated the pod, lifting it above the Eagle’s roof. “Jozi, how are you doing?”

  “All I can do is hit the missiles these Dunrakee bastards are firing. Other than that, I can’t do much else.”

  Lights were flashing, but Jozi’s pod and the enemy craft weren’t in his sites. The Dunrakee had shifted lower, hiding level with the Eagle’s port side.

  “Jozi, is there any way you can get that bubble-headed pilot to steer his craft higher? I can’t get off a shot if I can’t see him.”

  “No problem. I’ll just patch into his com line and tell him where I want him to fly so you to get a clean shot. He’ll be cool with that.”

  “ETA ten minutes, Ozzy,” said Zeld, her snake-like voice coming out smooth, even during this intense attack. “The arriving fleet is big. Hurry your asses up.”

  “Zeld, lower the Eagle. It’ll give me a clean shot.”

  “Already on it,” she responded.

  The Eagle lowered, and the Dunrakee ship came into view, shooting what seemed to be an unlimited supply of small missiles at Jozi and their ship. Jozi pulverized the missiles into dust soon after they were fired.

  She was indeed a crackshot.

  Another missile blasted outward, and Jozi’s cannon beam went to meet it. This enemy missile also moved out of the way, like the one Ozzy had experienced, and it zoomed forward, smashing into the Eagle’s graviton shields. Electrical currents shot outward in every direction like lightning desperately trying to find something to hit.

  The Eagle shook, but the shield held.

  Ozzy brought the pod in range and targeted the Dunrakee. “Here we go, Jozi. And, you’re welcome.”

  He pulled the trigger, sending a handful of Grizzlies the warship’s way. He switched to cannons and pressed down on the trigger, lighting the darkness with a blue shine.

  The enemy craft bucked backward to avoid the incoming assault.

  Too late.

  Two missiles found their mark, piercing the Dunrakee shields and crashing into the cockpit. An inferno went through the ship and out its bow like a dragon spewing fire.

  Space killed the explosion in seconds, but the damage was already done.

  The Dunrakee warship’s lights blinked off, and it slowly twirled away from the moon and toward the depths of the cosmos.

  Either the Dunrakee shields weren’t a match for the Grizzlies or that craft’s shield wasn’t fully allocated to the bow. It was probably the latter.

  “Ozzy,” said Zeld. “I’m going to locate a cave on the dark side of the moon. Or something else to hide in. Then we go by my orders from this point forward, do you understand?”

  Did he understand? Hell no. “Not a chance.”

  “You don’t have any capacity to lead, handsome,” Zeld said. “I’m the leader now.”

  He never thought of himself as a leader, especially for this mission, but
he’d rather cut his own throat than to have Zeld tell him what to do.

  He’d have a little chat with her after they found a place to hide the Eagle.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow and unstrapped. He pulled the pod back into the starboard wall. It clicked and jostled. “Jozi, do you read?”

  No response.

  “Jozi?”

  He tapped his com line panel. Perhaps it was offline. It wasn’t.

  “Ozzy,” Zeld said. “There is damage on the port side.”

  “What’s the damage report?”

  “Well, sorry to say, but the pod is gone.”

  Ozzy’s chest about compacted in on itself. What did she mean gone? Maybe he heard wrong. “Repeat, please.”

  “Jozi’s pod, Ozzy, is no longer attached to the Eagle. A missile hit it right before the warship blew into pieces. In fact, Jozi’s pod must have disintegrated. I don’t see it anywhere.”

  3

  Earth • Earth’s Moon

  Ozzy left the weapons room and rushed down the hallway, heading for the port side where Jozi should have been. Not only was he being forced on this mission against his will to retrieve a crystal sphere, now Jozi was most likely dead.

  He bit his bottom lip. There was no way she could be dead. It was Jozi. She was a survivor.

  “Don’t go in there, Ozzy,” Zeld’s voice sounded over the intercom. “I’m not showing any oxygen readings in the port weapons room. In fact, a giant hole appears to make up the biggest portion of the wall.”

  Zeld’s tone was cold and emotionless. She didn’t care about Jozi’s life, and why would she? She didn’t know Jozi as Ozzy did. She didn’t see the pain Jozi had gone through by helping Ozzy, or how the dead ex-High Judge, Robert Baldwin, single-handedly ruined her career because of Ozzy. To top it all off, Robert was Jozi’s family—her uncle.

  Hell, Jozi almost died for Ozzy several times, and, in a way, she’d become family to him too.

  Yet, here she was again helping him with his bullshit mission to get a damned crystal sphere for Jonas so that prick could run the government and steer the will of the people.