Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3)

by Daniel Arenson

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tens of thousands of starships streamed through hyperspace, charging the last few light-years toward the homeworld of the scum.

  Marco stood with his platoon on the bridge of the Urchin, staring through the viewport, ready for war.

  This is it, Marco thought. In a few moments we'll be at Abaddon. The planet of the scum. The great battle of our generation. In a few moments the gates of Hell will open, and we'll face the greatest victory or the worst defeat in human history.

  Around him, the others were nervous, he saw. A few soldiers gulped. One was mouthing silent prayers. Most just stared ahead, eyes hard, hands clutching their guns. Waiting for the blood, for the screams, for the terror.

  We're strong, Marco told himself. We can do this. We can win.

  Through the viewport, he could see much of the fleet. Most of the starships were human vessels, ranging from massive jet carriers to small Firebirds that zipped back and forth in battle formations, defending their larger brethren. Thousands of cargo ships, huge metal boxes, carried millions of human marines from both Earth and Space Territorial Commands. In this battle, both corps would fight side by side. Not just warriors were here but also medics and doctors and nurses, priests and clerics and monks, cooks and janitors, mechanics and engineers, computer programmers, pilots and navigators, warehouse workers, intelligence officers, singers and comedians to entertain the troops, and countless other professionals the military relied on. Millions of people. It was impossible for Marco to grasp the sheer size of this army. Here before him—the Human Defense Force, the largest organization in human history. Here was a flying nation dedicated to one purpose: victory.

  And among the human ships flew thousands of other vessels, the starships gathered from across the galaxy. The aquatic Guramis in their elongated, silvery ships with scaly wings, their hulls full of water. The forest-dwelling Silvans, furry disks with a ring of tails, who flew in vessels made from crystal and amber. A dozen other species flying in great spheres, in serpentine tubes, in blobs of shimmering light like mobile suns, in pulsing balls of metal that spun madly like pulsars, and some ships that were barely more than flecks of lightning and shadows against the stars.

  The day was here.

  They were about to reach Abaddon.

  Lieutenant Ben-Ari walked to the head of the bridge and faced the platoon, her back to the viewport.

  "You have all trained for this," she said. "You have all fought in simulations of Abaddon. You have all fought in scum colonies across the galaxy. You're ready for this. Once we arrive, we expect opposition in space. We expect a battle with a scum fleet. But we will break through. We will enter our exoframes, and we will jump down to the planet in our landing craft. Once there, de la Rosa, you will lead the way. Can you feel the hive?"

  Lailani nodded, fists clenched. "A little. It's hard to sense it from hyperspace. But it's there. He's there. The emperor." She winced. "I can feel him, hear him calling me, even now. He knows we're here. He is angry. He is cruel." She sucked in air. "I can find him. I can lead you to him. We will kill him."

  Marco looked at her. She looked back. He gave her the smallest of nods and smiled. The hint of a smile touched her lips too.

  I'm with you, Marco told her, and he didn't need to speak.

  I know, Lailani replied without words.

  "I've known some of you since basic training," Ben-Ari said. "I've met others only a couple of months ago. But I want you to know this: I am proud of every one of you. I believe in every soldier here. I am honored to fight among you. I believe that this is the best platoon in the military. Our enemy is determined. He is ruthless. He is strong. But we will defeat him." She raised two fingers. "For victory."

  The rest of the platoon raised two fingers too, forming Vs. "For victory!" they cried.

  Osiris sat at the controls, facing the viewport. The android turned her head toward them. "Arrival in ten minutes."

  Ben-Ari nodded. "Fireteams, go man the gun turrets. The fleet will emerge three hundred thousand kilometers away from Abaddon. That's as close to a planetary body as we can get in hyperspace. We expect that scum fleets will defend that entire distance. We'll have to fight for every one of those kilometers. I want everyone in their exoframes. We might be breached, we might be boarded, and we must be ready to fight hand-to-claw aboard the Urchin if it comes to that. When we're ready to invade the planet, I'll give the order, and we'll race into the landing craft. Understood?"

  "Yes, ma'am!" they replied.

  "Now go. Into your exoframes and to the cannons!"

  The platoon raced toward the warehouse where they kept the Exoframe W78b Hardsuits. They climbed into the hulking wearable robots. When Marco flexed his fingers, the metallic plates slammed shut around his limbs and torso, and the helmet closed around his head. He was now encased in metal, a passenger inside a bulky robot. Sensors within the suit picked up every movement of his muscles. As he walked, the suit's legs moved in tandem. He was six inches taller this way, far heavier, and many times stronger. In this suit, he was a superman. He could run fast enough to chase a car, could lift that car over his head. His Fyre plasma gun snapped into place at his side. He raced through the ship, his suit whooshing and clanking. The others ran with him.

  Marco and Lailani leaped into one gun turret, a pillbox that thrust out from the hull of the Urchin, affording a view of the fleet. Several other gun turrets rose across the ship, cannons thrusting out like spikes on a sea urchin.

  Osiris's voice emerged from the speakers in the platoon's helmets.

  "Thirty seconds until we leave hyperspace," the android said. "Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven. We have time for a joke, I think—"

  "No jokes!" Ben-Ari said.

  "Sorry, ma'am! Twenty-three, twenty-two . . ."

  Marco inhaled deeply and steeled himself. He looked over at Lailani. Through the helmet of her exoframe, she met his gaze. She nodded and raised two fingers gloved in metal.

  "Victory," she said.

  "Seventeen," rose the android's voice. "Sixteen . . ."

  Through the viewport, Marco could see the blue azoth engines across the fleet turning off. The curving starlight began to straighten.

  "Thirteen. Twelve . . ."

  The streams of light outside gathered into smudges. Nausea rose in Marco. He felt as if he were floating outside the gun turret.

  "Eight. Seven . . ."

  The world seemed too small, minuscule. His consciousness lived in the emptiness. There were infinite dimensions, not just three, and suddenly he was very young, lying in bed at home, afraid of ghosts in the closet, and he was very old, ancient, alone in another bed. Time and space all swirled inside him and around him. He watched himself from afar.

  "Three," said Osiris, and he saw her face in his mind. "Two. One. Emerging into normal spacetime."

  With a long whooshing sound, they dived out of hyperspace and into the solar system of the scum.

  In the distance—a yellow planet.

  With fire and endless malice, the fury of countless enemy ships charged toward them.

  * * * * *

  Marco stared, frozen.

  Death.

  He stared at death.

  He had seen war, had been born into war. Throughout his childhood, he had run from the scum, leaping into bomb shelters, fleeing the monsters. He had fought in battles, had faced armies of aliens. In Fort Djemila. In the mines of Corpus. On the border of the empire. He had known terror, had seen friends fall, had seen evil rise from the abyss.

  But he had never seen anything like this.

  Staring through the viewport, Marco couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Tears filled his eyes.

  "Death," he whispered.

  He had thought humanity's fleet, with its hundred thousand starships, large and powerful. They were, he now realized, nothing but a toy army. Before him in space, hiding Abaddon behind them, rose true power. True cruelty. Before this enemy, he knew, there could be no victory. There could be no hope.
Only pain. Only death.

  Streaming through the darkness toward them came the enemy—a million scum ships, covering space.

  Many were small, no larger than the Firebirds, globs of hardened flesh wreathed in purple fire. Thousands were larger, as large as humanity's greatest jet carriers. Some were larger still, flying scum hives the size of mountains, pustules opening on their surface to spurt out yellow pus.

  Through his helmet's communicator, he heard Addy scream. "Die, bastards!"

  From the cannon next to his, only a few meters away along the hull of the Urchin, a shell blasted out toward the enemy.

  Thousands of other ships in the Alliance joined Addy. The firepower of humanity and her allies flamed forth.

  With both hands, Marco pulled his cannon's cord.

  There was no need to aim. Wherever he fired, he would hit an enemy. With an ear-shattering explosion, the shell blasted out into space. Myriads of other weapons fired from the Alliance's fleet. The great warships blasted shells. The thousands of Firebirds flew forth, firing both bullets and missiles. The alien Alliance ships fired their weapons too: laser beams, lightning bolts, metal rounds, streams of plasma, and crystal shards. Before the massive bombardments, thousands of scum ships fell. Pods shattered. Several of the larger, bloated ships—they looked like floating organs—broke open, spilling out yellow liquid and thousands of centipedes. Flames raced across the shards of pods great and small and consumed the scum who hurtled through the darkness.

  But countless more enemy ships still charged toward the Alliance. All the dead scum—thousands of dead—were barely noticeable in this horrible swarm.

  The weapons of the enemy fired.

  Sizzling globs of acid streamed forth. Tiny pods the size of human heads raced forth, moving at many times the speed of sound, ringed in fire. With sound and fury and flame, the weapons slammed into the Alliance fleet.

  The cosmos seemed to shatter.

  Firebirds tore apart. Transport vessels cracked open, spilling out marines. A jet carrier listed and slammed into a cargo hull, and both ships exploded, taking down a hundred nearby Firebirds. A Gurami ship tore open, spilling water and finned aliens.

  "Incoming!" Lailani shouted, pointed, and—

  Fire.

  Searing metal.

  The Urchin rocked madly. Pods slammed into her, denting the hull, spilling out centipedes. The scum raced across the ship, wrapped around the cannons, and slammed their claws against the hull.

  "Fuck!" Lailani said. "Marco, help me, the Gatling guns!"

  They left the cannon, leaped up ladders, and grabbed the controls for the .50-caliber machine guns that rose above the main cannon. They pulled the triggers, and bullets streamed out, cutting into the scum that crawled over the ship. More pods came racing forward. Marco leaped back down, grabbed a shell, and loaded it into the cannon. Lailani hopped down beside him and yanked the cannon's cord like kick-starting a chainsaw. The shell flew and slammed into an enemy vessel the size of a school bus.

  Fire, shards of ships, and corpses filled space.

  Marco and Lailani fired shell after shell. Across the Urchin, the other fireteams were firing their own cannons. Throughout the sky, across thousands of kilometers, the battle raged. The warships blasted massive cannons. Tens of thousands of Firebirds streamed through space, firing missiles. Pods swarmed everywhere like clouds of insects, shattering, burning, firing, crashing into Alliance ships.

  Not only the humans fought here, but their alien allies too. Two balls of spinning metal, each the size of a building, rolled forth, tearing into the scum meatsacks. A Silvan ship, built of crystals and amber, shot beams of light but shattered as scum landed onto it, ripping out its crystals. Gurami vessels sprouted flowery cannons, firing laser beams. Ghostly ships, composed of pure energy, spun madly, burning scum pods.

  Yet everywhere, even these mighty aliens were falling. Their strange corpses—furred, scaled, metallic, liquid, gaseous, some just waves of light—floated through space among the human bodies. The dead thumped against ship hulls, got sucked into engines, and burned in cannon fire. Thousands of centipedes floated through space, expelled from shattered pods, still alive and feeding upon the dead.

  "HDFS Urchin!" rose a voice through the speakers. Marco recognized Admiral Bryan's voice speaking from the HDFS Terra. "You're too exposed out there. Bring yourself into our wake! We'll protect you."

  "Happy to comply!" rose Osiris's voice.

  "Keep those cannons firing!" Now it was Ben-Ari speaking. "We're carving a path toward you, Terra."

  The Urchin turned in the sky and began flying toward the far larger HDFS Terra, the flagship of the fleet. Marco understood.

  We're the most valuable platoon here, he thought. We're the team tasked with killing the scum emperor. They don't want us aboard the main ships—those are prime targets for scum—but they want us near enough for some protection. We'll be like a true sea urchin swimming between whales.

  They fired shell after shell, tearing into the scum, but the enemy kept flying in from all sides. A pod slammed into the hull of the Urchin. The ship jolted and moaned in protest. Another pod crashed into the ship's stern, and through the gun turret's viewport, Marco saw fire blazing from their engines.

  "One engine down!" Osiris cried through the speakers.

  "Get us closer to the Terra!" said Ben-Ari. "Gunners, keep those shells flying."

  They lurched forward, swaying, dipping. Hundreds of scum pods came flying toward them. The shells weren't enough. Another pod slammed into the ship. Another. Bullets flew as a squadron of Firebirds raced toward the Urchin, knocking back scum. A second Firebird squadron swooped from above, raining missiles. But the scum were too many. Pods tore into the single-pilot jets, shattering them. Hot metal shards flew and peppered the Urchin. A pilot tumbled through space and thumped into the hull. A pulsing blob, a giant scum ship, came wobbling toward them, and Marco fired another shell, ripping into it.

  A glob of sizzling pus slammed into the gun turret where Marco and Lailani were standing, and the viewport shattered. The acid spilled into the chamber, and the air shrieked out into space. If it weren't for their exoframes, they'd have suffocated.

  "We're breached!" Marco said.

  "Scum!" Lailani shouted, pointing.

  The centipedes scuttled through the crack in the viewport, entering the Urchin.

  "Bugs on board!" rose Addy's voice from deeper in the ship.

  "They're everywhere!" cried another soldier.

  "Keep us flying, Osiris!" Ben-Ari shouted. "Get us to the Terra! Soldiers, kill those scum!"

  A centipede reared before Marco, claws gleaming. He fired his rifle, drenching it with plasma. Two more scum widened the crack in the hull, raced in, and leaped forward. One slammed into Lailani, knocking the gun from her hands. Another hit Marco, and he fired, missed. With hydraulic hisses, he swung his metal arm and drove his gauntleted fist into the scum. The exoskeleton dented. He swung again, again. Claws drove into his exoframe, nicking the metal, cracking a gear. The scum's head leered before his helmet, mandibles clattering. The alien's mouth opened, revealing a dozen clacking claws within. Those claws reached toward Marco's visor, ready to shatter the hard fused silica. Marco tried to shove the creature off, could not, even with the added strength of his exoframe. More bugs kept crawling through the cracked hull, and more pods came racing toward them.

  Marco steeled himself.

  A pod slammed into the Urchin, and the ship jolted, raising him and the scum into the air.

  Not wasting an instant, Marco grabbed the creature and swung it across his shoulder. The centipede hit the ground, and Marco raised his gun and bathed it with white-hot plasma. The alien curled up, exoskeleton melting, wailing pathetically. Lailani was busy firing her gun at other scum who were invading through the breach. When one alien dodged her plasma and leaped toward her, a swing of her robotic arm cracked its exoskeleton and severed a claw. Marco finished the job with his Fyre.

  "Scum o
n the bridge!" rose Osiris's voice through the speakers. "Require assistance!"

  "Damn," Marco said. "Lailani, can you handle the cannon?"

  She nodded. "Got it. Go help Osiris."

  Marco ran through the lurching ship.

  He ran through the corridor in his exoframe, his metal boots thudding against the floor. Another breach was open here, and scum were crawling in from a pod that clung to the Urchin's hull. Marco sprayed them with plasma. As he raced past the breach, he could see the battle outside. A fresh squadron of Firebirds was escorting the Urchin on its flight toward the jet carriers. Beyond them, the battle spread out for many kilometers, thousands of Alliance ships and scum pods firing their weapons, slamming together, burning, killing. Planet Abaddon was still a distant sphere, countless pods defending it.

  He reached the bridge. Osiris was standing in the corner, firing a plasma rifle at a group of scum that were crawling toward her. Marco sprayed out his plasma with hers. A few of the scum turned toward him. One of the creatures made it past the inferno and slammed into him, claws cracking the metal of his exoframe. Blood spurted from Marco's leg. He fell down hard, managed to slam the scum onto the floor, then pounded down his metal fists, again and again, crushing the alien, breaking its shell, and he wanted to hurt it. He wanted these creatures to suffer. For what they had done to his mother. To his country. To his friends. For Elvis, Jackass, Beast, the rest of them. For how they had tortured Kemi. He was still beating the alien's lifeless corpse for long moments when Osiris touched his shoulder.

  "Master?"

  He took a shuddering breath and rose to his feet, metal fists dripping yellow blood.

  "I'm fine," he said. "They're gone."

  But he wasn't fine. Because the scum had done more than hurt him. They had invaded him, had changed him from the inside, just as surely as they had infected Kemi and Lailani. They had turned him into a man he didn't know.

  Other warriors of the platoon burst onto the bridge, wearing their exoframes, their fists dripping scum innards. Marco no longer heard the aliens' screeches. For now, it seemed the Urchin was clear of invaders.