SEEDS OF EARTH
BOOK 1 OF
HUMANITY'S FIRE
MICHAEL COBLEY
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First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Orbit
This edition published in 2010 by Orbit
Reprinted 2010 (twice)
Copyright © Michael Cobley 2009
Excerpt from Dark Space by Marianne de Pierres
Copyright © 2007 by Marianne de Pierres
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clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance
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PROLOGUE
DARIEN INSTITUTE: HYPERION DATA
RECOVERY PROJECT
Cluster Location - Subsidiary Hardmem Substrate Deck
9 quarters)
Tranche - 298
Decryption Status - 9th pass, 26 video files recovered
File 15 - The Battle of Mars (Swarm War)
Veracity - Virtual Re-enactment
Original Time Log - 16:09:24, 23 November 2126
»»» «««
FADE IN:
CAPTION:
MARS
THE CRATER PLAIN: OLYMPUS MONS
19 MARCH 2126
The Sergeant was on the carrier's command deck,
checking and rechecking the engineering console's mod-
ifications, when voices began clamouring over his
helmet comm.
'Marine force stragglers incoming with enemy units
in pursuit . . .'
'. . . eight, nine Swarmers, maybe ten . .
The Sergeant cursed, grabbed his heavy carbine and
left the command deck as quickly as his combat armour
would allow. The clatter of his boots echoed down the
vessel's spinal corridor while he issued a string of terse
orders. By the time he reached the wrecked and gaping
doors of the rear deployment hold, the stragglers had
arrived. Five wounded and unconscious, all from the
Indonesia regiment, going by their helmet flashes. As
the last was being carried up the ramp, the leading
Swarmers came into view over the brow of a rocky ridge
about 80 metres away.
A first glimpse revealed a nightmare jumble of claws,
spikes and gleaming black eye-clusters. Swarm biology
had many reptilian similarities yet their appearance was
unavoidably insectoid. With six, eight, ten or more
limbs, they could be as small as a pony or as big as a
whale, depending on their specialisation. These were
bull-sized skirmishers, eleven black-and-green monsters
that were unlimbering tine-snouted weapons as they
rushed down towards the crippled carrier.
'Hold your fire,' the Sergeant said, glancing at the six
marines crouched behind the improvised barricade of
ammo cases and deck plating. These were all that were left
to him after the Colonel and the rest had left in the hov-
ermags a few hours ago, heading for the caldera and the
Swarm's main hive. One of them hunched his shoulders a
little, head tilting to aim down his carbine's sights ...
'I said wait,' said the Sergeant, gauging the diminishing
distance. 'Ready aft turrets ... acquire targets ... fire!'
Streams of heavy-calibre shells converged on the lead-
ing Swarmers, knocking them off their spidery legs.
Then the Sergeant cursed when he saw them right them-
selves, protected by the bio-armour which had
confounded Earth's military ever since the beginning of
the invasion two years ago.
'Pulse rounds,' the Sergeant shouted. 'Now!'
Bright bolts began to pound the Swarmers, dense
knots of energised matter designed to simultaneously
heat and corrode their armour. The enemy returned
fire, their weapons delivering repeating arcs of long,
thin black rounds, but as the turret jockeys focused
their targeting the Swarmers broke off and scattered.
The Sergeant then ordered his men to open up, joining
in with his own carbine, and the withering crossfire
tore into the weakened, confused enemies. In less than
a minute, nothing was left alive or in one piece out on
the rocky slope.
The defending marines exchanged laughs and grins,
and knocked gauntleted knuckles together. The Sergeant
barely had time to draw breath and reload his carbine
when the consoleman's urgent voice came over the comm:
'Sergeant! - airborne contact, three klicks and closing!'
Immediately, he swung round and made for the star-
board companionway, shouldering his carbine as he
climbed. 'What's their profile, soldier?'
'Hard to tell - half the sensor suite is junk
'Get me something and quick!'
He then ordered all four turrets to target the
approaching craft and was clambering out of the car -
rier's topside hatch when the consoleman came back to
him.
'IFF confirms it's a friendly, Sergeant - it's a vorti-
wing, and the pilot is asking for you.'
'Patch him through.'
One of his helmet's miniscreens blinked suddenly and
showed the vortiwing pilot. He was possibly German,
going by the instructions on the bulkhead behind him.
'Sergeant, I've not much time,' the pilot said in
accented English. 'I'm to evacuate you and your men up
to orbit
'Sorry, Lieutenant, but. . . my commanding officer is
down in that caldera, engaging in combat! Look, the
brink of the caldera is less than half a klick away - you
could airlift m
e and my men over there before returning
to—'
'Request denied. My orders are specific. Besides,
every unit that made it down there has been over-
whelmed and destroyed, whole regiments and brigades,
Sergeant. I'm sorry . . .' The pilot reached up to adjust
controls. 'ETD in less than five minutes, Sergeant. Please
have your men ready.'
The miniscreen went dead. The Sergeant leaned on
the topside rail and stared bitterly at the kilometre-long
furrow which the carrier had gouged in the sloping flank
of Olympus Mons. Then he gave the order to abandon
ship.
In the shroud-like Martian sky overhead, the vorti-
wing transport grew from a speck to a broad-built craft
descending on four gimbal-mounted spinjets. Landing
struts found purchase on the carrier's upper hull, and
amid the howling blast of the engines the walking
wounded and the stretcher cases were lifted into the
transport's belly hold. The turret jockeys, the consoleman
and his half-dozen marines were following suit when the
German pilot's voice spoke suddenly.
'Large number of flying Swarmers heading our way,
Sergeant. Suggest you get aboard fast.'
As the last of his men climbed up into the vortiwing,
the Sergeant turned to face the caldera of Olympus
Mons. Through a haze of windblown dust and the thin
black fumes of battle, he saw a dense cloud of dark
motes rising just a few klicks away. It took only a
moment to realise how quickly they would be here, and
for him to decide what to do.
'Best you button up and get going, Lieutenant,' he
said as he leaped back into the carrier and sealed the
hatch behind him. 'I can keep them busy with our tur-
rets, give you time to make orbit.'
'Nein Sergeant, I order you—'
'Apologies, sir, but you'd never get away otherwise,
so my task is clear.'
He cut the link as he rushed back along to the com-
mand deck, closing hatches as he went. True, the
Colonel's science officer had slaved all four of the turrets
to the engineering console, but that wasn't the only
modification he had carried out . . .
The roar of the vortiwing's spinjets grew to a shriek,
landing struts loosened their grip and the transport
lurched free. Moments later, the fourfold angled thrust
was driving it upwards on a steep trajectory. Some or the
Swarm outriders were already leading the flying host on
an intercept course, until the carrier's turrets opened fire
upon them. Yet they would still have kept on after the
ascending prey, had not the carrier itself now shifted like
a great wounded beast and risen slowly from the long
gouge it had made in the ground. Curtains of dust and
grit fell from its underside, along with shattered frag-
ments of hull plating and exterior sensors, and when the
carrier turned its battered prow towards the centre of the
caldera the Swarm host altered its course.
On the command deck, the Sergeant sweated and
swore as he struggled to coax every last erg from
protesting engines. Damage sustained during the atmos-
pheric descent had left the carrier unable to make a safe
landing on the caldera floor, hence the Colonel's deci-
sion to continue in the hovermags. However, a safe
landing was not what the Sergeant had in mind.
As the ship headed into the caldera, steadily gaining
height, the groan of overloaded substructures came up
through the deck. Even as he glanced at the glowing
panels, red telltales started to flicker, warnings that some
of the port suspensors were close to operational toler-
ance. But most of his attention was focused on the host
of Swarmers now converging on the Earth vessel.
Suddenly the carrier was enfolded in a swirling cloud
of the creatures, some of which landed on the hull,
scrabbling for hold points, seeking entrance. Almost at
the same time, two suspensors failed and the ship listed
to port. The Sergeant boosted power to the port burn-
ers, ignoring the beeping alarms and the crashing,
hammering sounds coming from somewhere amidships.
The carrier straightened up as it reached the zenith of its
trajectory, a huge missile that the Sergeant was aiming
directly at the Swarm Hive.
Ten seconds into the dive the clangorous hammering
came nearer, perhaps a hatch or two away from the
command deck.
Twenty seconds into the dive, with the pitted, grey-
brown spires of the Hive looming in the louvred
viewport, the starboard aft burner blew. The Sergeant
cut power to the port aft engine and boosted the star-
board for'ard into the red.
Thirty seconds into the dive, amid the deafening
cacophony of metallic hammering and the roar of the
engines, the hatch to the command deck finally burst
open. A grotesque creature that was half-wasp, half-
alligator, struggled to squeeze through the gap. It froze
for a second when it saw the structures of the Hive rush-
ing up to meet the carrier head-on, then frantically
reversed direction and was gone. The Sergeant tossed a
thermite grenade after it and turned to face the view*
port, arms spread wide, laughing . . .
CUT TO:
VIEW OF OLYMPUS MONS FROM ORBIT
Visible within its attendant cloud of Swarmers, the
brigade carrier leaves a trail of leaking gases and fluids
in its wake as it plummets towards the Hive complex.
The perspective suddenly zooms out, showing much of
the wreckage-strewn, battle-scarred caldera as the car
rier impacts. For a moment there is only an outburst of
debris from the collision, then three bright explosions in
quick succession obscure the outlines of the hive . . .
VOICE OVER:
In the first phase of the Battle of Mars, a number of pur-
pose-built heavy boosters were used to send a flotilla of
asteroids against the Swarm Armada, thus drawing key
vessels away from Mars orbit. The main battle, and
ground offensive, cost Earth over 400,000 dead and the
loss of seventy-nine major warships as well as scores of
support craft. This act of sacrifice did not destroy all the
Overminds of the Swarm or deter them from their pur-
pose. Yet vast stores of bioweapons, like the missiles
that devastated cities in China, Europe and America,
were destroyed along with several hatching chambers,
thus halting the production of fresh Swarm warriors
and delaying the expected assault on Earth.
That battle brought grief and sorrow to all of
Humanity, yet it also bought us a breathing space, five
crucial months during which the construction of three
interstellar colony ships was completed, three out of the
original fifteen. The last of them, the Tenebrosa, was
launched from the high-orbit Poseidon Docks just four
days ago, following its sister ships, the Hyperion and the
Forresta
l, on a trajectory away from the enemy's main
forces. All three vessels are fitted with a revolutionary
new translight drive, allowing them to cross vast dis-
tances via the strange subreality of hyperspace. First to
make the translight jump was the Hyperion, then two
days later the Forrestal, and the Tenebrosa will be the
last. Their journeys will be determined by custodian AIs
programmed to evade pursuit with random course
changes, and thereafter to search for Earthlike worlds
suitable for colonisation.
And so they depart, three arks bearing Humanity's
hope for survival, three seeds of Earth flying out into the
vast and starry night. Now we must turn our attention
and all our strength to the onslaught that will soon be
upon us. In twelve days, spearhead formations of the
Swarm will land on the Moon and at once attack our
civilian and military outposts there. We know what to
expect. The Swarm's strategy of slaughter and obliterate
has never wavered, so we know that there will be no
pity, no mercy and no quarter when, at last, they enter
the skies above Earth.
Yet for all that the Swarm soldiers are regimented
drones, their leaders, the Overminds, must themselves
be sentient and able to learn, otherwise they would not
have developed space travel. So if the Overminds can
learn, let us be their teachers - let us teach them what it
means to attack the cradle of Humanity . . .
»»» «««
END OF FILE . . .
PART ONE
GREG
Dusk was creeping in over the sea from the east as Greg
Cameron walked Chel down to the zep station. The
great mass of Giant's Shoulder loomed on the right side
of the path, its shadowy darkness speckled with the tiny
blue glows of ineka beetles, while a fenced-off sheer
drop fell away to the left. The sky was cloudless, laying
bare the starmist which swirled for ever through the
upper atmosphere of Darien. Tonight it was a soft
purple tinged with threads of roseate, a restful, slow-
shifting ghost sky.
But Greg knew that his companion was anything but
restful. In the light of the pathway lamps, the Uvovo
stalked along with head down and bony, four-fingered
hands gripping the chest straps of his harness. They
were a slender, diminutive race with a bony frame, and
large amber eyes set in a small face. Glancing at him,
Greg smiled.
'Chel, don't worry - you'll be fine.'
Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1 Page 1