The Star Cross: The Forever War

by Raymond L. Weil

  “This wasn’t easy to build,” commented Private Donly. “This has to lead to something more than just a small research facility.”

  Sergeant Anderson looked over at Captain Reynolds. She had said very little since they’d entered the vehicle. “Still no idea what’s going on, Captain?”

  “Possibly,” she admitted, glancing over at the sergeant. “If my suspicions are correct, we’re all due for a major surprise shortly.”

  “You’re not just a military analyst, are you?” asked Mark as he looked over at the captain.

  “No,” she admitted, looking briefly down at the floor and then back up at Mark. “It was important that I see one of the Trellixian battlecruisers up close and take readings with some special equipment I brought along. If we hope to survive, what we learned from observing that battle might be crucial.”

  Mark nodded. He was right about something more going on. Now he just wanted to find out what it was.

  At last the car slowed. Mark sat up straighter, curious to see their destination. The car came to a stop in front of a small platform, and a section of rock wall slid open. With surprise, Mark saw his immediate superior, Colonel Branson, standing there with several other men, as well as a squad of heavily armed marines.

  Mark climbed from the car, followed by the others—all with confusion on their faces except for Captain Reynolds. They stopped and gave a quick salute in front of the colonel. Maybe now they would hear some explanations.

  “At ease, Major Dolan,” Colonel Branson commanded. “Welcome to your new home!”

  “Lisa, we’re glad you made it,” said one of the other men with the colonel. “We were very worried about your safety.”

  “I was in good hands, Professor Wilkins,” Lisa responded, surprised to see her old friend and mentor. “Major Dolan carried out his assignment very professionally.”

  Mark turned to gaze at Captain Reynolds questioningly.

  “I guess I owe you an explanation,” Lisa said, her eyes focusing on Mark. “I’m not only a captain in the reserves. I’m actually a nuclear physicist with a number of advanced degrees in space sciences. Professor Wilkins and I have worked together on many projects over the years, though I’m not quite certain what’s going on now. I haven’t seen him in months.”

  “I think you’ll find this very interesting,” Professor Wilkins said with a mysterious smile. “Why don’t you come with me while the colonel debriefs the others? We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

  -

  Hours later Captain Dolan sat in front of Colonel Branson, preparing to undergo his debriefing. The others were being questioned by another officer. Mark had been shown to a small set of comfortable quarters and allowed to clean up and rest before eating a decent meal and being brought in front of the colonel.

  “I suppose you have a lot of questions,” began Branson, giving Mark a measuring look.

  “Some,” answered Mark, shifting his weight in the well-padded chair he was seated in. “Where am I, and what exactly is going on? Why was it so important to observe that battle? It was gruesome, and we lost a lot of good people at that base. Our forces never stood a chance once that battlecruiser showed up.”

  Branson nodded and looked over at Mark from across his desk. “Those are the very questions I would start with, if I were in your place. First off, you’re in a highly secret complex deep beneath the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Special shielding and the tremendous depth of this installation should protect us from Trellixian detection. One very large civilian complex and two smaller military complexes are all connected by deep underground tunnels.”

  “How did this get built?” Mark interrupted. He’d thought, after everything he had witnessed above over the last three months, that the human race was all but finished. The big military complex he’d watched being destroyed only a couple days earlier was the last one he knew of that contained any type of advanced military technology.

  Colonel Branson took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “Back in early July 1947, a UFO crashed on a ranch northwest of Roswell, New Mexico.”

  “Roswell!” Mark said, feeling even more confused. “I thought that was just a weather balloon.”

  “That’s what everyone was told,” Branson responded. “In reality it was a small interstellar spacecraft from a star system the Trellixians had only recently attacked. The ship was never designed for trips of more than a few light-years, and its systems were taxed to the limit just to make it to Earth. Their life support was failing, and the ship was experiencing numerous mechanical problems when it tried to land. Unfortunately for the crew, it crashed, killing all but two.”

  “Two survived?” Mark could scarcely believe what he was hearing.

  “Yes, two did. One died within a week of the crash, and the other lived at Area 51 for twenty-two years.”

  “We had a real live alien for all that time, and no one knew about it?” Mark remained dumbfounded.

  “We kept it a secret, after we learned what happened to their home world. Can you imagine the panic such a revelation would have caused?”

  “What did we do?”

  “We started to prepare,” Colonel Branson replied. “We formed a secret military alliance with a number of key countries across the globe, to do everything we could to prepare Earth for the coming of the Trellixians. Unfortunately our science was so far behind that we couldn’t do much initially. With the help of the alien survivor, we were able to reverse engineer some of their systems, particularly their computers.”

  “That explains the rapid advancement of our computer technology in the late twentieth century,” Mark said in sudden realization.

  “Yes, that and several other areas as well,” Branson added.

  Getting up, Colonel Branson walked across the small office, putting his hands behind his back before turning around to face Mark once again. “We knew we didn’t have time to adequately prepare Earth to mount an effective defense to hold back the coming Trellixian invasion. The science and technology just weren’t there. We did manage to improve some weapon systems and build the big base up above that the Trellixians smashed so thoroughly, but we didn’t put all our eggs in just one basket.”

  Mark leaned forward, his curiosity piqued.

  “The civilian complex here is truly amazing. It’s a cylinder nearly fourteen kilometers long and three wide with a ceiling nearly a kilometer above. It’s located beneath a chain of rugged mountains and lies nearly seven kilometers beneath the ground. It was built with technology we gleaned from the crashed Roswell ship. We used massive heat beams to vaporize the rocks and create the chambers we needed to build our facilities in. Also a series of labs, living quarters, and recreation areas were set in the walls of the complex, providing us the maximum amount of living space. The huge open spaces of the complex were determined to be needed, in case we had to spend much time underground. Some of the world’s best scientists and technicians have been gathered into this complex, as has a select group of other civilians. We have nearly two hundred and eighty thousand nonmilitary personnel in the civilian complex.”

  Mark leaned back in his chair, surprised and amazed at what Colonel Branson was describing. The work done was breathtaking and that so many people had been safeguarded here was unbelievable. He could hardly wait to see this habitat, this underground world. For the first time in a number of days, he began to feel hope.

  “There are also two smaller military complexes. We plan to continue harassing operations against the Trellixians from the two bases. We’ve built a number of deep underground subway tunnels, shielded from Trellixian detection, to allow us to move about large parts of the country virtually undetected. We’ll be supplying new weapons we’ve developed to surviving civilian populations on the surface. When the Trellixians attacked, we were nearly ready to put a new rifle into production—the scientists call it a pulse rifle. It fires a thin stream of energy which will cut through a solid sheet of steel like it’s butter. We have an assembly line set
up in the civilian complex, and the first one thousand pulse rifles should be ready within four weeks.”

  “Sounds like something our troops could have used,” Mark replied bitterly, remembering how they had been unable to penetrate the suits of armor the Trellixian ground troops wore with their conventional weapons.

  “If we’d been given more time…” replied Branson, nodding his head in agreement. “The two military complexes are located short distances from the civilian complex. Each contains six thousand highly trained troops plus support personnel. The troops will be used for quick surgical strikes against the Trellixians, once our forces are equipped and trained with the new weapons.”

  “What are our chances against the Trellixians?” Mark asked. They would still be facing almost insurmountable odds.

  “If we can arm the civilian population and disperse it as much as possible, we can wage a guerrilla war against the Trellixians for years. Some of our troops will be assigned to training civilian militias. With the resources of our three complexes, we can make our world untenable for them. Our scientists are the best the world has to offer and are working intently on finding something we can use against our enemy. Given time, we may find what we need, but our job will be to disrupt the enemy as much as possible and to ensure that as large a section of the civilian population survives as possible.”

  Mark was silent for a long moment. “That may be all well and good, sir, but the Trellixians have their battlecruisers, and as long as those are in orbit around Earth, I don’t see what we can do. They also have that new weapon they used, and I’m not sure even these complexes you have been telling me about would be safe from it. Captain Reynolds thought it might be an antimatter weapon.”

  “Come over here, Major,” ordered Colonel Branson.

  Mark did as ordered, wondering what the colonel wanted.

  “I’m about to show you our biggest secret, something we’ve been working on for years.” Colonel Branson then turned and pressed a button on the wall. Instantly part of the wall slid open, revealing a large window. “Look.”

  Mark stepped forward and glanced out the window. He stood frozen scarcely believing what he was seeing. “Are those what I think they are?”

  “Yes,” replied Branson, looking down at the busy scene below.

  He and the colonel were high up, overlooking a large cavern. It held a huge construction facility with five large objects lying in their berths. Each was a massive cylinder with a curved bow and flared stern.

  “Those are spaceships, one thousand meters in length and two hundred meters in diameter,” Branson informed Mark with a large smile on his face.

  Mark was speechless as he gazed at the huge constructions. It was obvious they still had a ways to go before they were finished. Several of the vessels had armor missing on their hulls, and each was covered in a spiderweb lattice of scaffolding. Construction workers swarmed over the vessels, and the bright arcs of welders flashed everywhere.

  “How?” he finally managed to blurt out.

  “As I told you earlier, we reverse engineered many of the systems from the ship in the Roswell crash and had the help of the one survivor, Catelli, the ship’s engineer.”

  “How soon before they’re done?” Mark still felt stunned at what he was seeing. It was hard to believe that, very shortly, the human race might have its own interstellar spaceships.

  “Two more years,” Branson replied. “We’d hoped to have them finished before the Trellixians showed up, but that didn’t happen.”

  “What’s to become of me, sir?” Mark asked. “What’s my next assignment?”

  “I’m going to assign you to one of those ships,” Branson answered with a slight smile. “I want you to learn how they function from bow to stern, and, in two years, you’ll be helping to drive the Trellixians from our world.”

  “What if we can’t?”

  Branson was quiet for a moment, as he gazed out at the ships. “We leave,” he replied in a steadfast voice. “We load the ships with our most able and brightest people and send them out into the galaxy to find a new world to start over on. Perhaps someday they can return to Earth and set it free.”

  Mark felt his heart quicken at the thought of searching the galaxy for a new world. It would be a great experience finding one and starting human civilization on a virgin planet. It would also be sad, as it would signify the loss of humanity’s home world, perhaps forever.

  Mark’s eyes returned to the ships in the construction facility. He was amazed at what had been accomplished here. When the big military base had been destroyed, he’d thought Earth was finished and that the human race would fade away to extinction. Now they had hope and the possibility of a future. Someday the humans would rise from the ashes, and the Trellixians would learn what they had awakened by attacking Earth.

  Other Books by Raymond L. Weil

  Available on Amazon

  Moon Wreck (The Slaver Wars Book 1)

  The Slaver Wars: Alien Contact (The Slaver Wars Book 2)

  Moon Wreck: Fleet Academy (The Slaver Wars Book 3)

  The Slaver Wars: First Strike (The Slaver Wars Book 4)

  The Slaver Wars: Retaliation (The Slaver Wars Book 5)

  The Slaver Wars: Galactic Conflict (The Slaver Wars Book 6)

  The Slaver Wars: Endgame (The Slaver Wars Book 7)

  The Slaver Wars: Books 1-3

  -

  Dragon Dreams

  Dragon Dreams: Dragon Wars

  Dragon Dreams: Gilmreth the Awakening

  Dragon Dreams: Snowden the White Dragon

  -

  Star One: Tycho City: Survival

  Star One: Neutron Star

  Star One: Dark Star

  Star One

  -

  Galactic Empire Wars: Destruction (Book 1)

  Galactic Empire Wars: Emergence (Book 2)

  Galactic Empire Wars: Rebellion (Book 3)

  Galactic Empire Wars: The Alliance (Book 4)

  Galactic Empire Wars: Insurrection (Book 5)

  Galactic Empire Wars: The Beginning (Books 1-3)

  -

  The Lost Fleet: Galactic Search (Book 1)

  The Lost Fleet: Into the Darkness (Book 2)

  The Lost Fleet: Oblivion’s Light (Book 3)

  The Lost Fleet: Genesis (Book 4)

  The Lost Fleet: Search for the Originators (Book 5)

  -

  The Star Cross (Book 1)

  The Star Cross: The Dark Invaders (Book 2)

  The Star Cross: Galaxy in Peril (Book 3)

  The Star Cross: The Forever War (Book 4)

  -

  The Originator War: Universe in Danger

  (All dates are tentative)

  The Originator Wars: Search for the Lost (Book 2) July 2017

  The Star Cross: The Vorn! (Book 5) October 2017

  Table of Contents

  http://raymondlweil.com/

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

 

 

 
grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share