“Enough. Stop this,” Gavin said. He spat up blood.
Rob grinned and showed broken teeth. “Never.”
Rob lunged at Gavin, his hands held out to choke.
Gavin grabbed one arm, pulled his brother past, and wrapped the other around his brother’s neck. With his other hand, he locked the head tight and applied pressure. Tears welled in his eyes. Rob thrashed in his grasp but couldn’t break free. I’m killing my only brother.
All he’d wanted was to avenge his brother, to pay back the Qin for everything they’d done to him and his family. Now, though, he had his revenge, and it was nothing like what he’d wanted. The things he’d grown up picturing were gone. Instead, he was doing the worst thing he could imagine.
Rob slumped in his arms.
Gavin held him tight for a minute longer and then let him drop. He sobbed where he stood.
Rob fell to the deck in a heap.
“Brother…”
Loud mechanical sounds clanged out from the down hallway. The Qin cyborgs were coming in the distance.
Gavin turned to give Rob one last look. “Good-bye, Robert.” Then he hobbled down the gantry as quickly as he could. He had to get out before the Qin blocked him in, and needed to get to that submersible before they left without him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jack had to hand it to the Qin. They sure knew how to set up a centralized command-and-control center. Now that he had a few moments to explore, he saw that it showed so much more. Not only did it control the orbital defenses but each layer provided even more control. He wondered why they used one centralized system and decided on trust. The Qin didn’t trust the Coalition. He looked up at Cross and then over at Claire.
She lay on the floor with her head propped up on a chair cushion. She watched Jack type. “What are you doing?”
“I like puzzles. This”—he waved his hand around—“is a puzzle like I’ve never solved. It’s interesting.”
Claire coughed and glanced toward the door. “You need to get ready to go.”
Cross limped over to Jack. “Wrap it up. We go in one minute.”
Jack closed the menus as he came to them, until he was back at his crude menu. If only he’d had more time to study the layout. He knew how much he’d already learned. His vision danced, and combat stimulants and blood coagulants flowed through his veins.
“What now?” Cross said to Claire. He pointed up at the starscape.
The battle was mostly over. The two lines of TU and Qin fleets had converged and were now spreading apart. A line of wreckage speckled low orbit, with the remnants of Rob’s ships falling back onto the planet.
Claire looked over at Jack. “Lock it out. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise they’ll have an opportunity they can’t resist,” Jack said sourly. He understood that if they simply walked, the Qin could come in and reengage all of the orbital batteries. As it was, he saw that both fleets were fairly evenly matched. The orbitals would make all the difference in the world.
Gunshots rang out from down the hall. They sounded so far away that they were like distant drums in the night sky.
Cross stepped down to the second tier. He stared down through the doorway. His face was set, his eyes focused. Every muscle was tense.
Jack called up one last program and set out a dozen different lines of code. Each one laid out a more complex set of encryption keys. At the conclusion was heaped a string of code that was so complex that no one could break it. Not the Qin. Not the Terran Union. No one.
“I’m locking the orbitals out now.”
Claire nodded. Her face was pale, and she struggled to look down the doorway.
Jack halted before engaging the program. He watched her and wondered how it must feel. One brother would survive, one would die. But through it all, they would still be enemies. She’d done horrible things in this war. He didn’t know how Gavin, if he survived, could ever forgive her.
Then he slapped the key and watched as the encryption spread. He packed away the data console and tucked it into his jacket.
Cross walked back and helped Jack to his feet. He turned to Claire. “What else do you need?”
“I’ve got enough until either the Qin or Coalition forces arrive.”
The two men hobbled down onto the second tier.
“What’s the key?” Claire called to them.
Jack grinned. “I have no idea.”
Claire looked away with a wry smile on her face. “It’s probably better that way.”
“Maybe they’ll talk it over,” Jack said. “Find a way to make peace?”
“Maybe,” Claire said quietly. “Maybe.”
####
Gavin hobbled through the empty halls as quickly as he could manage. Every part of his body felt worn thin. His chest burned with every breath, and he could feel the combat stimulants washing out of his system.
Not that any of it would matter to him if he couldn’t get to that submersible. He had no misconceptions; if it came down to it, Claire would kill him.
He entered the command chamber just as Cross and Jack exited through the other door toward the submersible.
“Hey!” Jack said.
Gavin waved weakly. “I’ll catch up.”
Cross hesitated then nodded. “Be quick, Captain.”
“I’m sure I will be.”
He slowly climbed up to the top tier. “Is it done, then?”
“It’s done. Between the orbitals and the Qin and TU fleets, Rob’s starships were destroyed.” Claire looked straight at Gavin. “Is he dead?”
Gavin looked away. “He’s dead. I left him where the cyborgs will find him.”
Claire sat up and then fell back. “Are you sure he’s dead?” Her voice louder.
Gavin turned away and took a few steps down. “I’ve spent all my life dreaming about you and Rob. How some day I’d come to your rescue and we’d finally be back together.”
“You damned fool. This is a war. It always will be. You and I, we have nothing in common. Nothing but blood. If the day comes that we face off, I will shoot you.”
The moment sat heavy on Gavin’s shoulders. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but not this reaction. Their brother was dead, by his hand. Did he expect some sort of connection? A moment of shared grieving between siblings? He didn’t know, but all he felt now was bitterness.
A part of him that had hoped, prayed, yearned, to finally be a family again suddenly snapped shut. Now he was a soldier again, a captain in the Terran Union, nothing more. Nothing less.
He studied her one last time. How could a person change so much? They had the same parents, the same genes, but were totally different. He saw her as what she proved to be: a monster capable of executing those who surrendered, someone who could see her own siblings dead, someone who would fight for another species.
If they ever faced again, Gavin knew he’d shoot her as well.
“Good-bye, Sister.”
As he was leaving the chamber, she called out. “Tell Father…”
Gavin turned to look at her. The sound of the advancing Qin cyborgs echoed through the space.
“To leave and not come back. This world isn’t for the TU.”
Gavin turned away and left her. He felt an ache in his heart. All he had now was his father. The dreams of his youth were dead to him.
He found Cross and Jack hobbling toward the submersible. He grasped one of Jack’s arms and helped out. No one said anything until they were inside the submersible.
Cross sealed the hatch behind them. “Can you drive this thing?”
Gavin sat down and grasped the controls. All of the displays were written in the Qin language. “Jack?”
“This is it! The last thing. Once we get up top, I’m done,” Jack said, his voice sleepy. He stumbled ahead, using the supports to guide himself up. One hand held onto Gavin’s shoulder while the other navigated through a console.
“There. It’s going to beach us a few kilometers down from
the base,” he said and struggled back.
Gavin looked back and then felt the submersible start to move. They dropped down slowly, and the chamber disappeared. A wall of black washed over the submersible, and they surged through the waters.
Cross nodded off. Gavin wanted to do the same, but instead he replayed the events. How would he explain this all? The betrayal by his grandfather. The role his sister and brother had it in all.
There was only one way: the truth.
####
Jakob floated slowly down with the gossamer-thin parachute billowing above him. He looked up at it once again and couldn’t believe his luck. When he’d regained consciousness, the parachute was blowing gently in the wind.
Beneath him, a grassy landscape stretched into the distance. He could see wreckage littering the ground, defensive positions, roads, even what he thought were armored vehicles moving about.
“Us or them?” he mumbled.
A few more minutes and he’d be on the ground. Then he caught a twinkle in the sky. Another parachute glided down a kilometer away.
The first parachute set down, and he watched it closely. He could see someone stand and wave up at him. The ground rushed up, and he thumped down hard.
Thick grass rose up around him. He lay down where he fell and simply breathed in the earthy smell. Alive. Alive. It was, without a doubt, the most intense battle he’d ever seen. Normally flying a bomber or a fighter was almost clinical in the precision and grace. This had been a bloody street brawl.
The first thing he did was turn on his emergency locator. He left his pistol with his parachute; it wouldn’t do him any good.
After a few hundred meters, he unzipped the top of his flight suit. Then he saw someone waving at him. He picked up the pace.
A woman in a tight-fitting flight suit limped through the grass. Her skull was shaved completely bald, she had two black eyes from acceleration shock, and her lips were chapped to the point that they looked scaly. It was hard to gauge her age; maybe thirty-five or maybe fifty.
Jakob thought she was the most beautiful sight in his life. “Blue Six?”
“Old man?” she replied.
Jakob laughed out loud. “You calling me old? How old are you?”
Blue Six crossed her arms and gave him a look that said don’t go there.
“What’s your name?” Jakob said.
“Ivana.”
Jakob held out his hand. “Jakob.”
Ivana grabbed his hand, pulled him close, and kissed him square on the lips.
Above them, starships burned up in reentry. Trails of flame rippled through the sky in the most magnificent sunrise anyone had ever seen on the planet New America.
####
Hiro’s face was strained. One eye was bandaged up and a wicked burn peeked out from beneath the bandages. “We are holding, but if they reengage those orbitals, we’re going to have a problem.”
Kane nodded at the cameras. “And on the ground?”
General Amit cleared her throat. “We can resume operations on your call. I’d recommend we—“
“No.” Kane held up his hand. He knew what Amit wanted. “I’m opening negotiations with the Coalition forces.”
He felt the weight of other commanders’ eyes on him. Every single one of them had lost a great deal in this war, some more than Kane. It wasn’t going to be a popular choice, that he knew, but how could they keep fighting, and for what?
Even if they did secure the planet, the population would be hostile for a generation at least. Could they hold it? Maybe for a while, but why?
General Hoffman spoke next. “We’ve been interviewing the population, and it seems that most left a few years ago.”
“Where?” Kane said. This was just one more thing that settled the issue for him.
“They’ve been settled elsewhere is the word we keep hearing,” Hoffman said. He looked around at the other officers. “What remains here are the elderly, the essential civilians, and soldiers.”
“It was always a trap,” Kane said. As much for himself as for the others.
“What do the Qin want?” General Amit said. She leaned close to her camera, and her face was larger than the other officers’.
“For now, we’re working on keeping hostilities from starting again,” Doctor Shan said slowly. “Once that is guaranteed, then we can resume where the other peace talks failed.”
General Amit scowled and sat back.
An aide entered Kane’s office quietly and stood to the side, out of view of the cameras.
Kane looked up.
“He’s here, sir. They’re moving him to medical.”
Kane stood quickly and gave a bow to the screens. “All of you have done damned well. Pass word to your sailors, soldiers, and marines. This was one hell of a fight. We got a bloody nose, and they did too. Now start thinking in the long term. Kane out.”
He rushed through the halls of the carrier. His aide kept trying to brief him on what she’d learned so far, but he couldn’t focus. Not until she told him how the locksmith had totally encrypted the orbital batteries.
“Make sure to get that to fleet command,” he told her. To reinforce the urgency, he added, “Now.”
She scurried off with a quick salute.
Kane came around the corner and stood in the middle of the hallway. Wounded soldiers and sailors stretched as far as he could see. His own excitement dropped away as the true scale of the battle came to him. He passed down the line slowly, shaking hands, saying a kind word, expressing thanks. All of this: his duty, his burden, his loss.
By the time he entered the med bay, his eyes were filled with tears. So many had given so much.
A nurse in a bloodstained uniform directed him down the hall. He found Gavin on a gurney being prepped for surgery. They had stripped away his body armor and were shrugging him into a surgical gown while trying to scrub him clean.
Kane stopped in shock and held his hand over his mouth to hide the reaction. His son was in terrible shape. Bruises. Bullet wounds. Scrapes. Cuts. The sight of him, alive, made Kane sob.
“Gavin.”
“Dad,” Gavin replied. There were tears in his eyes, and he reached out a dirt-stained hand to his father. “I have so much to tell you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Terran Union frigate Prince Charles picked up the Qin shuttle rising from the planet below. The officers, eager to avoid an incident, assumed it was supposed to be there.
A Qin cruiser, the Lonely Strike, also watched the shuttle rise and assumed that it was on official business. So much was chaotic in the hours after the strike that they simply ignored it. Why would they do otherwise?
They gave it a quick biological scan and saw only a single human male inside. Hardly worth worrying about.
Up it rose, threading a line through the wreckage that marked the gap between both TU and Qin starships. It passed by the slowly falling hulls of starships, both human and Qin. No one in the sky quite knew what to make of the newcomers that had threatened them all. The Qin seemed as surprised as the Terran Union. The one thing that bonded them now was that they’d fought together, for a brief moment, against a common threat.
Then the shuttle broke free and was into space beyond. Only then did the command and control from both the Qin and Terran Union determine that this shuttle was something different. Already it was on a course for the moon.
Then it was off the radar and gone, tucked into the surface of the moon, and with that everyone decided that the matter was done. Shuttles were darting about everywhere at this point, searching for survivors in the wreckage. Both sides decided that it wasn’t worth pursuing. Or, more likely, it was lost in the chaos.
For the Qin watched the Terran Union though wary, alien eyes.
And the Terran Union watched the Qin.
Peace hadn’t come. Not by a long shot.
It was a truce, as fragile as a thread of silk.
Hello Reader,
I hope you enjoyed Hard
Nova. When I first laid out my plot the book was quite different then it ended up. Certain plot twists emerged that took it from an invasion story, all the way to a tale of family torn apart by war.
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Thank you so much for reading Hard Nova and for spending your time with me.
Graciously,
Casey
Hard Nova Page 26