The Hive Invasion- The Complete Trilogy

by Jake Elwood

  "Stand down," Hammett said softly. "The war against the Hive needs all of us. It needs me, and it needs the colonists you'll kill before they gun you down. It needs you and your men. Don't get all of us killed."

  The marine said, "I …"

  Hammett, suddenly sick of the whole standoff, snarled, "Holster that weapon, Marine! I'm bloody tired of looking at your ugly face. Put it away."

  The man gulped and holstered the pistol. Hammett let go of the rifle barrel, hiding a wince as he lowered his arm and pain flared in his shoulder. The last marine gave a quick glance over his shoulder, then tilted the barrel of his laser rifle toward the ceiling. In an instant every rifle was in the hands of a colonist.

  Behind the colonists Colonel Holmes came out of the bridge, a pair of colonists behind him, one big man with a hand on the colonel's collar. Hammett couldn't see the gun in Holmes' back, but the terror on the man's face told him everything he needed to know.

  "Well, that was exciting. Careful with those rifles." Ron stood with a commandeered rifle in one hand, barrel pointed at the ceiling, and a rail pistol in the other. He took charge effortlessly. "Some of you get back down the stairs. We need some room to move." Several colonists retreated down the steps. "The rest of you back up." Ron made a gesture, herding the colonists around him against the railing of the catwalk. That cleared a path to the airlock.

  "All right. Everyone who answers to the EDF, get the hell off my ship."

  Beside him, a colonist stepped back from O'Hare, allowing the man to finally straighten up. O'Hare, white-faced and wide-eyed, had no chance to recover his composure. The man who'd pressed him to the bulkhead now holstered his pistol, put a hand on each of O'Hare's shoulders from behind, and lined him up with the opening of the airlock. A quick shove sent the EDF man stumbling forward, and a hard kick to the seat of his pants drove him through the hatch.

  No one quite had the nerve to be so rough with the marines. The colonists stayed back, and the four marines, stripped of their rifles but still wearing holstered sidearms, marched to the hatch and into the lock. Holmes hung back, looking terrified, then scuttled after the marines as the last man stepped through the hatch.

  Ron followed Holmes into the hatch. A moment later, Hammett heard a clang as the outer hatch closed. Ron returned, looking satisfied. He grinned at Hammett and said, "Let's return to the bridge, shall we? I daresay this isn't over."

  The other colonists moved aside, clearing a path. Hammett nodded his thanks, then followed Ron along the catwalk. Ron was murmuring as he walked, talking to someone via his implants. Hammett walked with him, glad to be spared the need to make conversation. Should he thank the man? Or tell him off for making a bad situation worse?

  Eddie stood on the catwalk in front of the bridge, eyes wide. He hurried into the bridge as they approached. Hammett stepped through the doorway and took a position along one bulkhead. The mission was complete, after all. He was no longer in command. Sanjari came over to stand beside him, giving him an inquiring look. He shrugged. It was all too much to explain quickly.

  The two ships were still docked together. Hammett could see the gleaming hull of the Assegai, latched to the nose of the Theseus. Other ships filled the sky around them, some from the relief fleet, some from the EDF fleet. It was an alarming amount of firepower when tensions were running so high.

  Ron moved to the middle of the bridge, then hesitated. He looked at Hammett. "I'll borrow your chair if I may, Captain. It's the simplest way to take a call."

  Hal promptly spoke. "Message from the Assegai." He looked uncertainly from Hammett to Ron. Hammett made a "go ahead" gesture and Ron sat in the captain's chair.

  "This is Ronald Faraday, military commander of colonial forces."

  That made Hammett raise his eyebrows. By the glance Hal and Eddie exchanged, the title was news to them too. They didn't look displeased, though.

  "This is Colonel O'Hare of the Earth Defense Force." The man's voice shook with anger. It sounded as if he'd spent the last couple of minutes working himself into a rage. "The colony on Ariadne is a member of the United Worlds. You are subject to the laws of the republic and under the military jurisdiction of Spacecom."

  Ron spoke, sounding unimpressed. "We'll declare ourselves an independent world if we must. And it appears we must. After all, you alternate between abandoning us and bullying us."

  "I'm done negotiating," O'Hare snapped. "You will surrender your vessel immediately and unconditionally. All of your personnel will lay down their arms. Marines will board your vessel and collect weapons. All crew and passengers will be placed under arrest. Any resistance will be met with lethal force." His voice rose, an unmistakable tremor distorting his words. "If you refuse to surrender, the fleet will fire on your vessel. You will be destroyed." He stopped speaking for a moment, the noisy rasp of his breathing echoing from the bridge speakers. "Well? Do you surrender?"

  Ron put a hand over the microphone on the arm of his chair and murmured, "Did you catch that?" He paused, then said, "Yes. Do it now."

  A line of white fire blazed up from the planet below. It made a shaft of dazzling light, as thick as a man's waist, and it lanced through the void directly beside the hull of the Assegai. In fact, it left a black streak on the corvette's bridge window.

  O'Hare, his voice a screech, said, "What the hell was that?"

  "That," said Ron, "was my response to your little ultimatum." He chuckled, sounding altogether too pleased with himself. "It's your move."

  When O'Hare spoke again it was clear he'd forgotten his microphone was on. His voice, barely audible, said, "What was that? Where did it come from?" After a moment of silence he said, "Well, can we destroy it?"

  Ron said, "If you fire on the city of Harlequin your ship will be the first one destroyed, Mr. O'Hare. Your forces may win this battle, but I can guarantee you will not survive."

  The bridge speakers went silent. Long seconds crawled past, and the tension in the air stretched tighter and tighter. Finally O'Hare spoke again, with the tone of a parent making a reluctant concession to an unruly child. "Fine. You can keep your freighter. You will, however, deliver Captain Hammett to the Assegai."

  "No chance," Ron said promptly.

  O'Hare said, "Can you hear me, Hammett? I'm giving you a direct order. Deliver yourself immediately to the Assegai to face court-martial. If I don't see you at that airlock in two minutes, you'll be tried in absentia, with desertion added to your other charges."

  Hammett felt his skin go cold.

  "Get over here, Captain," said O'Hare. "It's your last chance to avoid hanging."

  Ron made a gesture and Hal cut the radio connection. Ron stood and turned. "Don’t worry. You don't have to go."

  Hammett said, "Yes, I do."

  Sanjari clutched his arm, squeezing hard enough that it hurt through the sleeve of his vac suit. "Captain, you can't!"

  "I'm an officer in Spacecom," he said. "It's my duty."

  Ron said, "You don't have a bloody duty to report to a prison cell."

  "You don't understand," Hammett said. "You've never worn this uniform."

  Sanjari shook him. "And you've never worn a uniform with a damned black armband. Neither have I, and I never will. I'll let them execute me for dereliction of duty before I'll do it."

  He stared at her, startled.

  "It's not the same Navy we joined," she said, staring up at him with anguish in her eyes. "You know that. You never would have joined a Navy run by the EDF. You never would have given your oath to a man like O'Hare."

  Hammett lifted his hands helplessly. "But I DID join the Navy. I did give my oath."

  "What was your oath, exactly?" she demanded. "What part of your oath allows for firing on the city of Harlequin?"

  He squirmed.

  "How about ordering your marines to fire on colonists?" she said. "What happens if Carruthers decides he won't stand for it? What happens when I refuse to put on the armband?" She let go of his arm and put her hands on her hips. "Will yo
u command my firing squad?"

  He said, "Sanjari …"

  "It will come to that," she said. "I won't serve the EDF." She brought a hand up and thumped it on his chest. "I won't do it, do you understand me? If you keep serving them, maybe you'll be the one they send after me."

  "I doubt it."

  She nodded. "I know. They won't give you any responsibility. Not after today. They'll stick you in a cell and leave you to rot. You won't have to make any tough choices." She glared at him, and he flinched. She'd always been the perfect subordinate. He'd never seen her so fierce.

  "I'll still stand up to them," she said. "I'll still fight them. And they'll come after me. And you'll be no help at all."

  There was a long silence. He said helplessly, "I've worn this uniform since I was twenty years old."

  "You're done with that uniform," she said. "Get it through your head. It's over. You get a prison jumpsuit now. That's if you're lucky."

  He said, "They won't …" He let his voice trail off. No, they wouldn't execute him. That wasn't what she meant. The fate she meant, the fate worse than prison, was wearing an armband and serving the EDF.

  "Call from the Assegai," said Hal.

  Hammett made a curt gesture and O'Hare's smug voice filled the bridge. "Hammett. You're running out of time. Are you coming, or not?"

  Hammett looked down at his vac suit with the three horizontal stripes of a captain across the chest. He remembered how he'd felt when he received the promotion. His feet had barely touched the deck plates for a week. Even his lieutenant's uniform had been an enormous source of pride. Hell, even the ill-fitting cadet jumpsuit he'd worn during training had made him feel like a knight in shining armor.

  Keep it bright. The words swam up out of his memory. Three long decades had passed since a grizzled sergeant had spoken those words to a starry-eyed cadet in the halls of the Naval academy. You're proud of your shiny new uniform. Keep it bright. Stay proud. If you disgrace that uniform, it all means nothing.

  For three decades those words had rattled around in the back of his mind, guiding his decisions. Even more than his vows, more than the uniform itself, that offhand little speech had shaped him. He was proud of his uniform. Intensely proud.

  If he gave in to the EDF, he realized, he would be proud of the uniform no longer.

  O'Hare said, "Well?"

  "Go to hell," Hammett said. "I’m done with you."

  Hal cut the connection. A long moment of silence passed. Then, with a metallic clatter, the Assegai uncoupled from the Theseus and floated backward. When several dozen meters separated the two ships the nose of the corvette swung around. With a flare of light from their engines the EDF fleet moved away from Ariadne, leaving the Theseus and the nine ships of the relief fleet drifting quietly in orbit.

  Hammett took a deep breath, held it for as long as he could, then let air dribble out through his nose. He felt dizzy, disoriented, drunk. He felt as if reality itself had just torn.

  Ron stood and stepped away from the captain's chair. He walked up to Hammett and said, "Welcome to the armed forces of the Independent Republic of Naxos."

  STARSHIP THESEUS

  CHAPTER 1 - HAMMETT

  Richard Hammett stood in the bathroom of his villa on Ariadne, rubbing No-Beard carefully into his cheeks and trying to figure out who the hell was looking back at him from the mirror. The weathered face was the same, but he no longer knew who that weary-looking man was.

  Washing carefully, he dried his hands and returned to the villa's tiny bedroom where the single biggest source of his disorientation lay draped across the narrow bed. It was a uniform, which was nothing unusual. Hammett had worn a uniform almost every day of his adult life. It had always been a Spacecom uniform, though.

  This uniform was not the sober dark blue of Spacecom. It was green, the green of lush forests and the countless trees that filled Harlequin, the city that had become Hammett's new home. They'd promised him a jacket and cap, but for now his uniform consisted of a shirt and a pair of trousers.

  He dressed reluctantly, fidgeting at the touch of unfamiliar fabric. Spacecom uniforms were made from a sophisticated synthetic. They were nearly impossible to tear, and you could wear them for weeks if you had to, day and night, without odor or much in the way of wrinkles.

  This uniform was made of cotton grown not fifteen kilometers from the villa. The tailoring was hurried, the shirt looser than he was used to. Which might not be entirely a bad thing, he reflected as he buttoned the shirt across a stomach that was larger than it once was.

  Instead of rank bars across the chest, the shirt had three fat stripes running the length of each sleeve. It marked him as an admiral, and he shook his head as he tucked in his shirttails. Never in his most grandiose dreams had he expected to reach the rank of Admiral.

  No more than he'd imagined serving anywhere but in the Spacecom navy.

  He checked his appearance in a wall mirror, decided he looked respectable, then turned away before the strangeness could overwhelm him. He buckled on a gunbelt, checked the safety on his rail pistol, tucked a small bundle under his arm, and headed outside.

  "Good morning, Richard." Sinda Leitch, his next-door neighbor, could never seem to look at him without sadness in her eyes. She'd been friends with the villa's former resident, a man who'd died fighting the Hive invaders in the long weeks before Hammett's tiny fleet had arrived. All the Navy personnel were taking the places of the dead.

  He gave her a distracted nod and moved past her, heading for Garibaldi Plaza. Once a lovely park in the heart of the city, the plaza now held a massive gun emplacement and an outdoor market where the colonists swapped or shared everything from bolts of cloth to electronics. Hammett passed a table with heaps of plums and cherries and a sign that said, 'Free'. Cooperation came as naturally as breathing to the people of Ariadne. Even before the alien invasion life had been tough here. They pulled together and helped one another when they could, and Hammett felt a familiar mix of pride and frustration that he was now one of them.

  It was ten days since the showdown with the EDF when he'd renounced his rank in Spacecom and accepted a new role in the brand-new Colonial Forces. Ten days, but he still felt shocked, dislocated, like he was dreaming and waiting impatiently to wake up. He wondered if he'd ever get used to this new reality.

  Ahead of him a plume of smoke rose skyward, and instinct made his arm tighten protectively on the bundle he held. He caught his first whiff of synthetic fibers reluctantly burning. I can't do this. This is wrong. I can't-

  A circle of solemn figures stood around the perimeter of a dry fountain. It made a great site for a bonfire, he realized. The low concrete wall and tiled bottom would keep the fire from spreading. He recognized shipmates and fellow displaced officers in the circle, familiar figures made strange by their new green uniforms. Hayat Sanjari turned and gave him a smile as he approached.

  She had family back on Earth, he remembered. Dozens of them, apparently. She could go on at length about siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins … His own discomfort was suddenly trivial as he realized how much more difficult this must be for her. For most of them.

  Hammett had no real ties left in his former home. A younger brother he traded messages with once a year at Christmas, and visited every five years or so if he found himself planetside during December. Some old friends he hadn't seen in more years than he cared to remember. His life was the Navy, had been for years. If he couldn't go back to Earth, he'd barely notice the difference. What must it be like for the others?

  Sanjari edged sideways, making room for him in the circle. Dozens of people ringed the fire. Scores. Even in the bright morning sunlight, firelight made flickering patterns on a wall of green uniforms. A pyramid of wood burned ferociously, the bones of a ruined building by the look of it. All over the timbers and scraps of lumber, dark blotches smoked and smoldered, burning only reluctantly.

  Uniforms.

  Ken Hardy, the fighter pilot who'd come over from the EDF fleet,
stepped into a gap on the far side of the fountain. Hardy held a shirt in each hand. One shirt, impeccably tailored, featured a black band around one arm. That shirt had barely been worn, and Hardy chucked it on the flames without a pause.

  He hesitated with the next shirt. Hammett had seen him wearing it, a baggy thing too short in the sleeves that Hardy had mooched from some other crewman. It lacked the damning stripe of the EDF. Hardy clearly saw it as a symbol of his inclusion in the rebellious fleet. He sighed, then tossed the second shirt after the first one. It landed on a burning timber, arms flung wide like a martyr, and the blue fabric slowly began to blacken.

  A pair of dark blue uniform trousers lay draped over Hardy's shoulder. He balled up the trousers and tossed them after the shirts, then retreated.

  A boy stepped into the gap. His name was Vicente Ramona, and he was all of sixteen years old. He wore a green uniform with self-conscious pride, and he squared his shoulders as he stepped up to the edge of the fountain.

  Instead of a Naval uniform, Vicente held a set of coveralls in his hands, rust-colored fabric bright with reflective strips. By the look on his face, this ceremony was as significant to him as it was to anyone present. He hesitated, fingering the coarse fabric, then took a deep breath and consigned the coveralls to the flames.

  Vicente was from Dryad, a much less hospitable planet sharing the Naxos system with Ariadne, the only planet in the system with breathable air—at least within one deep crater. A week earlier, the Colonial fleet had evacuated several hundred people from Dryad, where they had survived the invasion of the system in perfect serenity, ignored by the Hive. Now the boy was in the Naxos military, and he wasn't even the youngest new recruit.

  Hammett pushed that unsettling thought from his mind as Sanjari nudged him with her elbow. He took his old uniform from under his arm. He'd worn it with pride, used it to define himself, and he desperately wanted to pause a moment, maybe unroll the shirt and look at the Captain's stripes one last time. His people were watching him, however, and he needed to send a clear message.