Ben-Ari fired her rifle, hitting the alien's head. Bullets shattered and whizzed. A fragment of bullet hit Ben-Ari's thigh, tearing the skin, and she screamed. She kept firing. More marauders kept descending. Others scurried behind her. The aliens grabbed a man, tore him open, and feasted on the brain.
Ben-Ari emptied a magazine, loaded another, fired again. Bullets could not harm these creatures' hardened skin. She inhaled deeply, aimed through her scope . . .
She hit a marauder's eye.
The alien howled in pain.
Kemi fired again, hit another eye, and the marauder scurried backward, knocking into its comrades.
"Run!" Ben-Ari shouted. "Hurry!"
She raced through the archway. Kemi ran close behind. The surviving soldiers followed.
As they raced through the cell block, the marauders leaped from the walls, from the prison cells, from the ceiling. Webs shot out, grabbed a soldier, and pulled him up into the shadows. Blood showered. Another web caught Doc, the squad's medic, and yanked him into a cell. The marauder cracked Doc's skull open and slurped out the brain.
Ben-Ari kept firing bullets as she ran. A web shot from a cell, grabbed her foot, and began pulling her toward waiting jaws. She fired—not at the alien but at the black strand, severing it. She leaped up and kept running. A claw grabbed Kemi's helmet and began squeezing. Ben-Ari fired, hit the alien's eyes, and pulled Kemi free. They raced around the pile of bodies. A soldier screamed as a marauder tore open her belly, and entrails spilled. Another soldier crawled forward, legs severed, only for a marauder to rip off her arms and devour them as the soldier screamed.
They left the cell block and ran through a tunnel. Only four or five soldiers remained. The marauders chased. Webs shot out, grabbing soldiers, pulling them back into the snapping jaws. Ben-Ari fired over her shoulder, trying to hit the eyes, but the creatures kept scurrying. Bullets shattered the human skulls coating their backs, and the aliens laughed—deep, demonic laughter. They raced forth at incredible speed on their six clawed legs.
Finally the soldiers burst out onto the planet's dark surface. Ben-Ari's spacesuit was torn at the leg, exposing her skin to the planet's thin nitrogen atmosphere. Already the exposed skin turned gray and hardened. She wouldn't survive long here without a proper suit. Kemi and one more soldier—the brawny Sergeant Murphy—emerged from the prison. They were the last survivors of the mission.
Ahead, the marauders were already encasing the HDFS Saint Brendan with black webs.
The three soldiers raced toward the starship. Countless marauders emerged from the prison behind them.
Several marauders stood on the roof of the Saint Brendan, hissing down at the three humans. Ben-Ari fired, hit one in the eye, and knocked it down. The other two screeched and kept wrapping webs around the ship.
"Into the Brendan!" shouted Ben-Ari. "We'll tear them off as we fly!"
A marauder leaped toward them across the landscape, blocking their passage. Sergeant Murphy tossed a grenade.
"Down!" he cried.
They knelt, covered their heads, and shrapnel hailed around them. One shard ripped Ben-Ari's suit at the arm. Another cracked her helmet. She struggled for breath. Her oxygen began leaking out.
"More behind us!" Kemi shouted. "Captain, watch out!"
The pilot fired her rifle. Bullets whistled over Ben-Ari's head and slammed into marauders behind her. Kemi was no longer trying to reach the starship; instead she stood in place, firing at the enemy.
Hundreds of marauders were emerging from the prison. One of the creatures leaped toward Kemi, and the pilot kept firing, but she couldn't stop the assault.
The alien opened its jaws wide, engulfing her gun.
Kemi fired into its mouth.
Unperturbed, the marauder snapped its jaws shut around her wrist. It yanked its head back, swallowing both the gun and Kemi's hand.
Kemi fell to her knees, screaming.
Her arm ended at the wrist, spurting blood.
Sergeant Murphy tossed another grenade into the crowd of marauders. It burst and several alien legs flew.
"Get her into the ship, Captain!" the sergeant shouted. "I'll hold them off. Go!"
As the sergeant kept lobbing grenades, Ben-Ari cursed. She grabbed the wounded Kemi.
"Captain," Kemi whispered, tears in her eyes. She was losing blood fast.
"I've got you, Lieutenant," Ben-Ari said. "You're all right."
She lifted the lieutenant and slung her across her shoulders. She ran toward the Saint Brendan. It was barely visible now through the coating of black, sticky webs. Behind her, Ben-Ari could hear Murphy still shouting, and grenades burst, and shrapnel—both the shards of grenades and chunks of marauders—fell all around, sizzling hot, cutting Ben-Ari. Her last oxygen seeped away. She couldn't breathe. She ran on whatever air was left in her lungs.
She reached the ship. Before she could climb aboard, a marauder leaped from the roof. Ben-Ari fired, hit its head, fired again, finally hit an eye. It screeched and scuttled away, blinded.
She sawed through webbing and opened the airlock. She climbed into the ship, Kemi still slung across her shoulders. Ben-Ari gasped for air, then turned back toward the landscape.
Her heart sank.
Sergeant Murphy stood alone before the infested hive. Countless marauders were racing toward him. He emptied his last magazine. He was still far away. Too far to make it.
"Sergeant!" Ben-Ari cried. "Run!"
He looked over his shoulder at her, holding a grenade.
"Fly, Captain!" he cried back to her. "It was an honor."
Lips tight, Murphy saluted, then grabbed a second grenade from his belt.
Marauders leaped onto him, burying the man.
The grenades burst.
Clawed legs, swordlike fangs, and human flesh flew.
Ben-Ari closed the airlock door. She laid Kemi down, took off her helmet, and inhaled deeply. Using a cable, she applied a tourniquet to Kemi's stump, then raced onto the bridge.
She was no pilot, but she knew enough to kick-start the engines. They rumbled and died. Ben-Ari gritted her teeth, hitting buttons, diverting power from shielding and stealth to the engines, then started them again. The ship shuddered as the engines roared.
But the Saint Brendan struggled to rise, still caught in the webs. Through the viewport, Ben-Ari could see the strands tightening, holding the ship down, could see a thousand marauders racing toward them, more webs shooting out. A few marauders grabbed the hull, claws scratching the metal.
Ben-Ari leaned toward another control panel, hit buttons, and photon bolts burst out from the ship's cannons. Webs burned and tore.
The ship soared, casting off webs and marauders alike.
They blasted into the sky.
They emerged from the thin atmosphere within moments, and the stars spread out above. Webbing still burned and fell off the dented ship. Ben-Ari trembled on the bridge, losing blood, her leg and arm cut.
Again, death. Again, losing soldiers under her command. Again, terror in the dark.
"We should never have come here," she whispered. "Not to this world. Not into space. We awoke too many monsters in the shadows."
Kemi shuffled onto the bridge, clutching her arm. The stump still leaked blood, even with the tourniquet. She needed proper medical attention—soon.
"Kemi!" Ben-Ari said. "You need to rest, you—"
"Captain," the lieutenant whispered, looking at a viewport. "They're following."
Ben-Ari saw them. Ships. Jagged alien ships rising from the planet below. They reminded her of metal flowers, their petals closed, or like drills ready to burrow through stone. No, she decided. Not flowers or drills. Here were great claws—claws of steel. Red plasma burned within their grips, and the ships soared toward the Saint Brendan. Five of them, then six, then a hundred.
The metal claws on the alien ships opened like uncurling fists, exposing the flames within.
Balls of plasma shot out.
This wa
s a fight she could not win, Ben-Ari knew.
She grabbed a joystick. She flew away from the world below, away from the enemy ships, away from the corpses of her men, from the nightmares.
But she knew that those nightmares would never leave her. Even if she escaped today, they would linger in her mind. The visions of the marauders emerging from the shadows. Cracking open skulls. Slurping. Consuming. Laughing.
"Captain!" Kemi cried, and an instant later a blast hit the Saint Brendan.
Fire raged outside the viewports.
The ship shook madly.
"Kemi, can you still fly this thing?" Ben-Ari cried.
The pilot nodded, reached for the controls with one hand, but then fell. She lay on the floor, her tourniquet loosening, and began to convulse.
She's going into shock, Ben-Ari thought. Damn it, we need—
Another blast hit the ship. They jolted. Smoke filled the bridge and alarms blared. A robotic voice intoned about a hull breach at the crew quarters.
Sitting at the helm, Ben-Ari fired the rear cannons, sending out photon bolts, knowing it was not enough. She diverted energy away from the guns, away from the stealth motors, leaving just the bare minimum for survival. The oxygen levels dropped. The air turned frigid. She kept diverting more power, putting everything into the engines. Into speed.
They blasted forward in space.
Their azoth engine—a warp drive capable of bending spacetime—began to warm up. Through the viewport, she could see its blue glow.
We're a small ship, she thought. We're weak. We're alone. But we're fast.
She shoved the throttle forward.
The warp drive roared into action, and the stars stretched into streams of light, and they burst into warped space.
And the marauder ships followed.
Ben-Ari could see them in the rear viewports, great metal claws, soaring after her through the funnel of warped spacetime.
"So they have warp technology," she muttered. "Great."
Kemi moaned, convulsing, her eyes sunken. The low oxygen level wasn't helping. The pilot needed urgent care and probably a blood transfusion. Ben-Ari only had time to kneel and tighten the tourniquet, then return to the controls.
Sorry, Kemi, I can't help you any more right now.
Another blast of enemy plasma flew, and Ben-Ari yanked on the joystick, dodging the assault. The plasma roared overhead, searing the roof of the ship. Built for stealth, the Saint Brendan wasn't particularly sturdy. Already they were leaking air. One more blow, and the whole ship was likely to collapse.
Ben-Ari inhaled deeply.
Oh to hell with it.
She flipped more switches, shutting down the life support system, diverting even that power to the engines.
The lights shut off. The air stopped circulating. Even the control panels shut down.
The only sound came from the engines—roaring, thrumming, shaking the dark ship. The only light came from their blue glow, the streaks of starlight, and the enemy fire.
They flew.
They flew like a falcon after prey, like fire in the deep, like light in the dark, like a woman fleeing old horrors and guilt, faces of dying friends, terrors that would not die. They flew, a single ship of humanity, fleeing the darkness.
And there ahead, Ben-Ari saw it. A point of light in the tunnel of curved spacetime. The star Achernar. The border of humanity's territory in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
A hundred streams of plasma burst out from the enemy ships behind her.
Ben-Ari could not breathe, but she shouted.
She shoved down against the throttle, as if her own body, her own willpower could give the ship extra speed.
She charged toward the star and shut down the azoth warp engine.
She crashed out of warped space, the stars slamming into dots around her.
She returned power to life support and gasped for air.
Fire raged.
She yanked the ship down, pulled it sideways, then dived. The blasts of plasma lit space around her. One grazed the wing, tossing the Saint Brendan into a tailspin. She managed to steady the ship, finding herself facing the marauder fleet.
A hundred ships, maybe more, floated in space before her.
They did not advance farther.
The enemy vessels hovered just across the border, still within the demilitarized zone. With the lights off on the Saint Brendan, Ben-Ari felt as if she were floating through space with no ship around her, lost in the darkness.
She knelt by Kemi and touched her cheek. The pilot was still alive, still conscious, but growing cold. They stared out the viewport together.
Before them, one enemy ship floated a little closer, hovering right at the border. A massive ship, large enough to swallow the Saint Brendan, formed of a hundred blades curving inward. That claw opened, blooming like an iron flower, exposing the innards of the ship. There, behind a porthole like an eye, lurked one of the aliens.
There was barely any power left in the Saint Brendan. The ship was cracked, leaking, burnt. Ben-Ari jiggled the controls, sending a last fleck of power to her viewport, zooming in on the enemy ship, on its arachnid captain.
He stared at her. She recognized him. Yes, it was a him—not an it, not a dumb bug, but a sentient being. A cruel being. The first marauder she had seen, the one with the red scar and crest of horns, the one who had spoken to her.
The alien stared at her across the border. He smiled—a lurid, drooling, toothy smile, human blood in his jaws.
Ben-Ari hit a button, opening a communication channel.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
His voice emerged through her ship's speakers, guttural, clattering. "Call . . . me . . . Malphas."
"Where are you from?" she said. "What do you want from us? What—"
"Sleep well, Einav Ben-Ari," the alien hissed. "We will meet again. The nightmares are coming."
With that, the claws on the ship closed, hiding him from view. The alien vessel turned and flew away, and the others followed, vanishing into the darkness of the demilitarized zone.
Ben-Ari held the wounded Kemi close.
He knows my name, she thought.
"Captain," Kemi whispered, eyes sunken, barely able to speak. "Divert . . . power from the auxiliary batteries . . . should be enough . . . to return to base."
The lieutenant's eyes closed, and she lost consciousness.
As the Saint Brendan limped back toward its port of call, a small colony on a nearby world, the words kept echoing in Ben-Ari's mind.
We will meet again. The nightmares are coming.
CHAPTER TWO
It was a lot tougher to leave the army than join it.
After five years of service in the Human Defense Force, Staff Sergeant Marco Emery stood in the crowded room, barely able to breathe. Hundreds of other soldiers, all anxious for their release papers, crammed together.
"Fucking place is more crowded than a whorehouse on half-off Tuesdays," Addy muttered.
Marco tried to shove her aside. "Addy! For chrissake, your elbow is digging out my kidney."
She shoved back. "I got nowhere to go! Besides, you have two kidneys, you can lose one." Her elbow jabbed back into him.
Marco sighed. She was right. It was a large hall but packed to the gills. The soldiers were squeezed together like scum eggs in a hive. Addy was pushing up against Marco's right side; strangers pressed against the rest of him. Most were sergeants, having risen in the enlisted ranks for five years. Others were younger soldiers, injured in the wars, eligible for early discharge; some were missing limbs, others were missing faces, while some peered with the dead eyes of shell shock. Everyone was sweaty and annoyed. The temperature felt hot enough to kill tardigrades, and Marco had read that the little buggers could withstand nuclear blasts.
"They torture us when we join," Marco muttered, thinking back to RASCOM on his enlistment day five years ago. "And they give us one last good torturing when we leave."
"I'
ll keep torturing you forever." Addy knuckled his head. "It keeps me busy."
Marco sighed, looking at Addy. She was his foster sister. His sister-in-arms. His best friend. Tall, blond, and bluff, she had been with him during his darkest hours: the night his parents had died, the morning of their enlistment, their battles against the scum, and now here, as they left the military and began a new life. He thought back to the girl he had known on their enlistment, an eighteen-year-old full of piss and vinegar, more bluster than brains. Over the past five years, fighting in the depths of space and training new recruits here on Earth, Addy Linden had grown into a wise, sensitive woman, kinder, softer, and—
She elbowed his ribs—hard. "Shove the fuck over, Poet! You stink like a whore's crotch in July."
Marco groaned. Kind and soft, at least, when they weren't crammed with a thousand soldiers all clamoring for their military discharges.
"It's not me who stinks," Marco said. "It's the soldiers around me, and—"
When the brute in front of him—a towering sergeant of pure muscle and sweat—turned around and scowled, Marco swallowed his words.
Finally, a door at the back of the chamber opened. A single soldier stepped out, clutching his release papers. Another soldier stepped in.
A thousand more kept waiting.
"Hurry up!" shouted a soldier.
"For fuck's sake, I gotta pee, hurry!" roared another sergeant.
After what seemed like ages, the door opened, and another soldier moved forward in line.
Marco groaned. It would be a long day.
As the hours stretched by, as the heat and stink of sweat spun his head, Marco thought back over the past five years. An era was ending. Half a decade in the military—by the end of today, it would be his past.
I joined this army as a terrified teenager, he thought. And I'm just as terrified to leave.
Five years. By far, the first had been the hardest. He had joined at the worst of times, at the height of the Second Galactic War, the great struggle against the scolopendra titaniae, the aliens most folk just called the scum. After a hellish ten weeks in boot camp, Marco had fought the aliens. On Earth. In the mines of Corpus, a dark moon in the depths of space. And eventually on the aliens' own homeworld, finally killing their emperor. That first year still haunted Marco's nightmares, leaving him drenched in cold sweat most nights.
Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4) Page 3