Stranded Justice (The Justice Trilogy Series Book 2)

by Steven L. Hawk

  Fear, at what they would find on the surface of the planet.

  Confusion, at what was happening.

  At the forefront, though, was an overwhelming abundance of anger. Anger that someone had gotten the best of them.

  The Waa rarely felt anger or fear. Grief was a momentary allowance, briefly experienced then stored away. As a race of mind readers, they weren’t burdened by such primitive responses. At the first hint of distress, projections of soothing comfort were automatically provided by the collective mind.

  But in this moment—after having his friend so recently taken from him, finding himself cut off from other Waa, and traveling on a carrier full of humans headed toward an unknown landing—Aank turned away from his natural response. Instead, he sought out the emotions pouring off his fellow passengers and allowed the feelings to wash over him.

  For the first time in his life, Aank felt the rawness of rage, the power of untempered anger. His vision blurred and he felt dizzy. With the clarity of an objective bystander, he observed as the portion of his mind that processed reason and logic stepped backward. Stepping forward to take its place was single-minded determination that demanded action. It required revenge, retribution for the loss they had suffered. Eli’s death would be avenged.

  It was a heady experience that he allowed to consume him for only a moment, but in that moment he recognized that anger offered both benefits and dangers to those held in its grasp. Benefits included enhanced strength and an increased ability to focus on short-term goals. The dangers included a lack of judgment, a decreased analytical prowess, and a failure to assess long-term consequences. The key was in finding the proper balance.

  Interesting.

  Chapter 4

  Eli couldn’t stop giggling.

  The rush of excitement as the world spun around and around allowed no other response. He felt alive, safe, and free.

  A quick glance to his left revealed his dad’s face, filled with joy and laughter. The hands that held him—one gripped tightly around his left wrist and the other around his left ankle—were both strong and gentle. Despite the ever-increasing speed of the circles his father spun him in, Eli had no fear of falling, no concerns about his dad losing his grip, and no care at all in the world. Every couple of seconds, his mother—no more than a blurred whisper in the background—flashed past as the spinning game continued.

  All he knew in that moment was laughter, love, and the rush of air on his face as his dad twirled him around, and around, and around.

  It had been a long time since Eli had held the memory. He couldn’t have been more than five or six when he and his dad took their final turn at the spinning game. Soon after that final spin, his dad’s priorities and focus had shifted—for good reason. General Grant Justice was the leader of Earth’s armed response to the invading Minith. Building an army from the ground up is always difficult. When the recruits to that army are mostly peace-loving volunteers and convicts, the task becomes monumental and all-consuming.

  Eli never resented his father for the long absences. Even as a six-year-old, he understood what was as stake and appreciated what drove his father. His dad was needed to save their world. Nothing could be more important than that.

  Not even a game of spin.

  Eli clutched at the memory, fearful of letting it slip away. It was the last time he remembered feeling like a child.

  He gripped it for another instant.

  Then the darkness found him and he remembered nothing.

  * * *

  The three carriers skimmed low over Cerbius, their landing skids barely ten meters above the treetops. Lieutenant Gale Benson of the Shiale Rangers piloted the lead craft.

  His eyes darted back and forth between the forest that rushed by below and the instrument panel in front of his pilot chair. He was searching for any opening in the canopy that might offer a suitable landing zone. The carriers didn’t need much space—any opening more than ten meters wide could accommodate the trio of vehicles. But there was nothing below but an unbroken field of dense, impenetrable green.

  His thoughts flashed back to the moments just before they had been ordered to evacuate the Agate. The bio-readings for both EJ and Samna had been on his heads-up display one moment and gone the next. Extinguished in the blink of an eye. There were only three reasons why bio-readings could go dark: suit malfunction, suit out-of-range, or death of the suit’s owner. Unfortunately, since neither EJ nor Samna had made it onto a carrier, all three potential reasons led to the same result: death.

  The Agate, however, was a different story. It didn’t disappear in the blink of an eye. It took five long minutes for the ship to crash through the green canopy below. The trio of small carriers had circled the scout vessel until they were certain of its fate. The last view Benson had of the ship was it breaking in two as it fell into the forest beneath them. There would be no getting home on that craft.

  The hole that opened up inside his chest at the thought EJ and Samna dying screamed for his attention, but Benson refused to acknowledge the pain. Instead, he clamped down on his feelings and refocused on the task at hand.

  “Carriers two and three, you guys see anywhere to put down?” he asked, keying the comms channel for the follow-on vehicles.

  “This is two,” came an immediate reply. The female voice was familiar. “Negative.”

  “This is Senior Engineer Tiang, piloting three. Nothing below but green.”

  “Same here. Ideas?” Benson asked, anxious for any input that might help.

  “Ensign Sheen here, piloting carrier two.” Benson thought he had recognized her voice and was glad to know she was safe. “The only breaks we spotted from orbit were over water and at the mining facility.”

  “This is Tiang,” the engineer piped in. “Captain Hansen is on board. He says the coast may give us the best chance at finding a landing spot.”

  “Well, I can’t see delivering ourselves to the folks that shot us down, so the ocean it is,” Benson announced. “Maybe we can find a beach to set these things down on.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Sheen agreed. “You plot the course, and we’ll fall in behind.”

  “Will do,” Benson agreed. “And Tiang, tell Captain Hansen I’m all ears if he has any other ideas or suggestions.”

  Now that they were off the Agate and on the surface under hostile conditions, command of the scouting party transferred to the rangers. The responsibility for their collective safety would have fallen to EJ, but he wasn’t with them any longer. Benson shrugged off the flash of anger and pain at that thought. Instead, he turned his attention to getting everyone safely off this planet. As the most experienced serviceman among them, Captain Hansen’s advice and counsel could only help in that task.

  “Captain Hansen said . . . um . . . and I quote: ‘It would take more than a baby-faced lieutenant wearing armored underwear to get him to shut up.’”

  Benson laughed but didn’t send a reply. He wasn’t going to get into another debate on who should be leading them at this point. EJ and Hansen had had enough of those disputes on the journey after Hansen had been informed the rangers would be in charge of security once they reached the planet’s surface. They each had their orders, and while Hansen outranked him, they were no longer on the scout ship. If push came to shove, the captain would just have to do as he was told. The same went for Senior Engineer Tiang. He was supposed to be in charge of the mission once they reached the planet, but their situation had changed with the attack on their ship. Exploration had been put on hold. Now, it was all about survival.

  Benson brought up the carrier’s mapping system and set a course for the nearest ocean. It was more than a hundred kilometers—roughly twenty minutes—to the east, but that would be no problem for the three vehicles. They could circle the entire planet several times before needing a recharge of fuel. Distance wasn’t what concerned him.

  His concern was the enemy.

  He didn’t know who had shot down their ship or
the extent of their capabilities. They had a laser cannon for defense, which indicated a competent foe—one who was prepared for unwelcome visitors. Possession of the cannon didn’t equate to possession of fighter vehicles or any other way to chase down the three Alliance carriers, but he had to operate under that assumption.

  The three Alliance carriers were strictly transportation and exploration vehicles. Except for the rangers on board, they had no defensive or offensive capabilities. Which meant that finding a suitable landing zone gave them the best odds of surviving a follow-up attack.

  “I probably don’t need to say this,” Benson relayed to the other carriers. “But stay alert for unwanted guests. We don’t know if the crew at that mine can chase us down, but let’s assume they can. And will.”

  “This is Sheen!” The excitement in her voice was clear. “Interesting you should mention that because my sensors have just picked up a small craft off our starboard.”

  Benson scoured the instruments of his carrier and saw a tiny blip that showed an airborne craft at their four o’clock, flying well above them.

  “Increase speed to maximum and stay close to the canopy below,” he ordered. There wasn’t much more power left in the twelve-person carriers but he pushed the throttle forward and managed a few more kilometers per hour. He sighed. The ocean was still ten long minutes away and he hoped they’d find what they were looking before the aircraft on their tail had an opportunity to take any hostile actions.

  He couldn’t see it from his seat in the cockpit, but his instruments showed the enemy vehicle keeping pace with their formation. It wasn’t getting closer, which was good, and it hadn’t yet fired on them, which was even better. Unfortunately, it seemed faster than the carriers, so losing it on their way to the coast didn’t seem likely.

  When the strip of dark ocean finally appeared in the distance, the four vehicles maintained their same positions.

  That’s good, Benson thought. Not ideal, but being tracked is better than being shot out of the sky.

  As soon as the carrier reached the coast, Benson put the vehicle into a wide, looping bank to the left. He pushed the nose down, dropped fifty meters in altitude, and looked at the jungle through his port window. For the first time, he was able to see the forest from a different angle, and he drew in an involuntary gasp at the view.

  “Whoa,” he muttered. Similar exclamations filtered into the pilot’s cabin from the passengers seated in the compartment behind him.

  The coastline was dominated by giant trees. While the Alliance crew already knew the tops of those trees extended upward more than three hundred meters from the planet’s surface, they had had no idea what to expect beneath the upper canopy. Now they had an unobstructed side-on view, and it was spectacular.

  Benson reduced altitude even further, and from their position three hundred meters off the coast, he felt as if he was looking at a cutaway view of the forest.

  The trees were evenly spaced, and they were massive. Benson estimated the smallest trunk was at least twenty meters in diameter at ground level. But that wasn’t the most striking feature the forest displayed. The most commanding aspect of the trees was in how their branches grew outward and interlaced with the branches of neighboring trees. Together, the imposing giants wove themselves into a series of four distinct layers. Each of the four layers was unique and distinct and seemed to present its own microenvironment.

  The top layer of the forest existed just below the upper canopy. It was well lit, and various forms of winged wildlife could be seen flitting about. The carrier was flying too fast to make out many details, but this layer teemed with winged creatures of varying sizes.

  A loose mesh of intertwined branches and leaves created a thin floor for the topmost layer. This floor doubled as a type of ceiling for the next, lower layer. Splashes of red, blue, and yellow revealed a jungle-like myriad of plants, flowers, and smaller trees within the second layer. It was as if an entirely different world had somehow managed to evolve, and though visibly dimmer than the topmost layer, the lower layer flourished. Unlike the layer above, the floor of the second layer was formed from a more tightly knitted infrastructure of tree limbs, dirt and roots than that of the first layer floor. The light that passed through this floor was extremely weak and cast the third layer into a dim twilit glow.

  While only a slight filtering of light permeated through to the third layer, here—next to the coast at least—Benson could make out a few details. The branches that formed the floor of the third layer were large, seemed much sturdier than those above, and were densely intertwined. He could easily envision large animals traveling through the forest using the floor that those branches worked together to create.

  Finally, Benson turned his attention to the bottom layer, where the trunks of the giant trees sprouted from the ground. The land around those trunks seemed hard-packed and was absent of any visible plant life. He could see into the bottom layer for dozens of meters before the interior space beyond turned completely dark. It was evident that little, if any, sunlight penetrated the three upper layers to reach the surface of Cerbius.

  Looking into the depths of the surface layer, Benson could imagine the darkness that covered most of the planet’s surface. He couldn’t help but wonder if the bottommost layer contained life, or if it was as dead as it appeared.

  Not that it mattered. The dark, empty, bottom layer offered the perfect destination for the Alliance carriers.

  They had found a place to land.

  Chapter 5

  Eli heard moaning.

  The realization that the moaning was his helped push back some of the fog. Anxious to clear the rest, he drew a long, steady breath and released it carefully.

  He slowly blinked awake and found himself hanging facedown and staring into darkness. His body swayed gently and twisted in a slow counterclockwise direction. He reached out for purchase, and the gentle swaying immediately turned into a wild bouncing movement that sent a river of nausea coursing through his stomach. He waved his hands wildly, searching for solidity. Except for the familiar resistance of his PEACE armor, they found only empty space.

  He stopped reaching out and forced himself to take three long, slow breaths. After several moments, the bouncing and nausea subsided to tolerable levels.

  “Scotopic sensor on.”

  The night vision system—one of the armored suit’s numerous capabilities—activated, and a view of the area came into focus. Eli stared down into a long fall. His suit informed him the drop to the darkened ground below was more than fifty meters. He might be able to survive a fall of that height with the suit’s help, but it wasn’t something he wanted to attempt.

  The ranger reached behind his back to see what was holding him. His hand found the thin cable attached to the back of his suit, and that’s when he remembered.

  The ship. The damaged drives. The second attack.

  His fall.

  He had fallen from the belly of a ship. A full kilometer. Minus fifty meters, he revised, staring down at the ground below.

  How the flock was he still alive?

  Eli didn’t know, but he wouldn’t get any answers hanging in the dark. Reaching behind his back, he gripped the safety cable with his right hand and pulled. The action tipped his body into a mostly upright but still-swinging position. He looked up, found the thin cable, and tracked it to where it disappeared into a tangle of thick, broken branches twenty meters over his head.

  With his destination established, he reached up with both hands and pulled. The suit’s mechanized joints helped Eli make quick work of the climb. He paused when he reached the hole in the ceiling. It dawned on him that his armored body, crashing down from above, had caused the damage. And those branches had apparently helped break his fall. Crazy.

  He inched his helmet up into the hole and found himself looking at an armored hand. The safety cable was wound tightly around it.

  Samna!

  Eli pulled himself up through the hole and lay on his sto
mach. He reached for Samna’s hand and squeezed, and then let his eyes travel past the hand and up the arm to the helmeted face. Her eyes were closed.

  “Samna!” Eli called out and scrambled to her side. He pulled up short of reaching her and a groan escaped his lips.

  Samna’s body had been cut through at the waist. Her upper body was wedged tightly into the network of branches on which she had landed. There was no sign of her lower body. A quick inspection of the cut left no doubt: Samna had been caught in the path of the laser cannon. Nothing else could have sliced through her armor so cleanly or left her wound fully cauterized.

  Eli felt a crushing boulder of guilt drop onto his shoulders. He was Samna’s captain, her leader. Her safety and well-being had been his responsibility and he’d failed her. He stared down at the broken soldier and shook his head.

  The safety line had also been sliced cleanly, he noted. That would explain why they had fallen.

  He may have failed her, but she had held up her end, even in death. Her grip, still tightly grasping the safety line, had saved Eli from crashing through to the dark surface below.

  Eli looked around at the tightly interwoven branches upon which he sat. They formed a floor that was both solid and flat. He looked up and noted the broken foliage above them where they had crashed through. There was more light above and he considered his next move.

  Dark below. Dim here. Lighter above.

  None of the layers presented a challenge to his armored suit. The light enhancement features of the PEACE armor would allow him to see on any of the levels. But using fewer of the suit’s systems meant conserving power, and while his suit was almost fully charged—his display read 99.88 percent—it wouldn’t stay that way indefinitely. Which meant he needed to climb up to the branches and the lighted area high above his head.

  From there, he could try to find the Agate.

  “Locate the Agate,” he commanded, triggering the suit’s internal navigation device. Immediately, his suit’s internal computer painted directional instructions on the inside of his visor. Due east, estimated 59 kilometers. 87 percent accuracy. Not perfect, but considering he’d fallen from a ship that had likely crashed, he’d take it.