They blasted forth.
Moving faster than light, they skimmed the orbit of Mars.
Below them, ravagers shattered in the shock waves.
Smoke filled the bridge. Cracks raced across the walls and viewports.
The planet grabbed the Minotaur as they roared past. Gravity yanked them. Petty clung onto the rails as the ship—still at warp speed—spun around the planet like a slingshot, then hurled itself forward back into the battle.
Hundreds of ravagers shattered in their wake.
"Disengage our engines," Petty said. "Bring us back to where we started."
Spacetime smoothed out around them, and they rumbled back toward the planet. Ahead, their two remaining warships—the Chimera and Medusa—were firing all their guns. The Firebirds were taking out the last ravagers.
The bridge of the Minotaur was cracked, full of smoke, tilted to one side. Petty grabbed his communicator.
"All ships, make your way to the planet and enter orbit. Prepare for heavy resistance from the surface. Respond to enemy fire but be careful; there are colonists down there."
The surviving warships flew toward the planet: the mighty Minotaur, the Chimera, and the Medusa, the last three branches of a mighty oak, all three now scarred and cracked and charred. Among them flew the surviving Firebirds and the lumbering cargo vessels. A few ravagers still flew at them, but the heavy shelling knocked them back.
They entered orbit around the Red Planet.
Petty took a moment to catch his breath, to gaze down at the beauty of Mars. He still remembered how, as a child, he had admired Astronaut Szabo, the first man to walk on Mars. How, as a young officer, Petty had met his wife on the Red Planet; she had been a graduate student studying ancient microbial life found under the Martian surface. How, when Coleen had been young, Petty had taken her on a trip to the planet, had shown her the canyons and soaring volcanoes and sweeping red landscapes. This planet was dear to him—and now its people cried out in pain.
He saw the colony below, magnified on the viewports. Ares—a city of fifty thousand settlers. A city of domes and walkways, shielded from the radiation of space and the harsh Martian environment. A city now draped with marauder webs.
"Sir, we're detecting thousands of marauders on the surface," said Osiris. "Many might be inside the colony too. We can't detect them through the domes."
"Thank you, Osiris," Petty said. "We have seven thousand marines in our fleet. We'll liberate this planet if we need to sweep door to door."
"Should we ready the landing craft, sir?" Osiris asked.
Petty shook his head. "Not yet." He narrowed his eyes, staring below. "It's too quiet. It—" He inhaled sharply. "There."
He magnified the viewport. Cannons, coated with red dust to camouflage them, were emerging like serpents from holes. They were all over the surface. The guns swiveled toward the armada above, then fired.
Balls of flaming steel flew toward the orbiting fleet.
"Fire defensive missiles!" Petty said.
A barrage of missiles—thousands of them—flew from the warships. Seconds later, they slammed into the projectiles soaring from below.
A few of the marauder shells made it through. Metal balls, engulfed with fire, slammed into the fleet. Several Firebirds shattered. The Chimera took heavy shelling, its hull cracking open. The Minotaur shook, the enemy assault crashing against it, breaching a deck.
"Return fire!" Petty shouted. "Use our bunker-busting bombs."
The bombs fell.
Clouds of dust rose over Mars.
"Careful to avoid the colony," Petty said.
"Sir, some of the enemy fire is coming from the colony," Osiris said. "The marauders placed cannons between the domes. Should we—"
"No." Petty shook his head. "Do not bomb the colony. Not even if marauders are firing from there. We can't risk hurting those settlers."
Osiris tilted her head. "Sir, by my calculations, if we take out the cannons in the colony, we will kill between three to five hundred colonists. It might help us save tens of thousands. Ethically, it is a sound judgment, and—"
"I said no." Petty grunted. "We will not bomb our own people. Keep hitting the surface."
They swapped fire for hours.
Vessels kept traveling from the cargo ships to the bombers, transporting new shells. Those shells kept peppering the surface of Mars, taking out the guns and webs of the marauders that sprawled around the colony. With every shell that exploded below, pride grew in Petty.
During the first marauder assault, we crumbled, he thought. But now humanity is regrouping. Now we're fighting back. Now we're gaining ground. He bared his teeth. We can still win this war.
Normally, he might have bombed from orbit for days, made sure he wiped out all the marauders he could before landing.
But he had no time.
Lord Malphas, he knew, would hear of this assault. No doubt, the marauder king was already mustering his forces, perhaps flying here already. Any moment now, thousands of new ravagers could arrive to destroy what remained of humanity's fleet—and the colony below. Petty had to get the colonists out—and fast—and then fly the hell out of here.
He turned away from the viewport. He spoke into his communicator. "Marines of the HDF, this is James Petty, commander of the human fleet. We prepare now for landing. On the surface, you will meet heavy resistance. The enemy will attack you at every turn. He is strong and determined. Do not underestimate him. His claws are long, his jaws sharp, his cunning ruthless. But you can defeat him! Aim for the marauders' eyes; that is where they are weak. Listen to your commanders. Fight courageously. Fight for your species. I will be fighting with you. We will overcome!"
A hundred landing craft detached from the three warships.
With Firebirds streaming alongside, they made their way down to the Martian surface.
Inside, the warriors of humanity wore their exoframes—heavy metal suits, built for war. Within these wearable robots, the soldiers were faster, deadlier, sturdier than any soldier in history. Thousands crammed into the landing craft, blazing down toward the red desert.
And James Petty rode with them.
Perhaps he was being foolhardy. He was the commander of the fleet, should oversee the battle from above. But let President Katson remain in the sky. Petty had begun his military career fighting in the trenches, and even now, past sixty with a bad heart, he would not back down from a fight.
As the landing craft shot down, the enemy fire rose.
The marauders still hid cannons on the surface. Their flames blasted skyward. Firebirds streamed below, bombing cannon after cannon, but they couldn't stop the assault. A shell skimmed the landing craft where Petty rode, tossing the vessel into a tailspin. Soldiers shouted until the pilot corrected their descent. At their side, enemy fire tore a landing craft apart, and a hundred marines spilled out, crashing down toward the surface, some still alive.
The surviving craft landed outside the colony domes in a sea of marauders.
The creatures were everywhere, racing across the canyons and hills, shrieking, casting their webs.
The landing craft doors opened, and the wrath of humanity emerged.
Tanks rolled forth, firing their cannons. Armored troop carriers blasted their machine guns. Infantrymen ran in their exoframes, firing flamethrowers into the eyes of the enemy.
"Forward!" Petty shouted, leaping in his exoframe. "Fight them! To the colony!"
Encased in a towering metal suit, he felt like a young man again. His metal fists swung into marauders, shattering their teeth, their eyes. His plasma gun fired, tearing out their legs. Around him shouted thousands of human warriors. Petty had been fighting for decades, but he had never been so proud of humanity.
Many of his comrades died.
But many made their way forward, leaving piles of dead marauders.
They fought for hours, pounding the marauders in canyons and on mountaintops, among the dunes and at the colony gates. Tanks burned. Armored vehicles overt
urned. Soldiers died by the hundreds. But still they fought. Still they pounded the enemy. On the red surface of Mars, they avenged their brothers and sisters on Earth. Here, in exile, their homeworld lost, the sons and daughters of Earth struck the enemy with wrath and vengeance and pride.
And the enemy fell before them.
The marauder corpses twitched in the sand.
The husks of ravagers smoldered around them.
The aliens that had crippled the human fleet, that had devastated the Earth—here on Mars they fell.
Petty panted, gazing at the dead marauders on the red landscape.
For the first time in this war, we won a battle. We proved that it can be done.
Leading a company of soldiers, Petty stepped toward the gates of Ares, the Martian colony. The soldiers stepped inside . . . and found terror.
For a moment, they could only stand still, staring.
"Hell," Petty whispered. "We're in Hell."
Behind him, one soldier vomited into his helmet. Another fainted.
Petty looked over his shoulder. "Medics!" he cried. "We need medics!"
He walked through the colony that brave human settlers had built within the domes. When Petty had visited here with Coleen years ago, he had found an idyllic civilization. Farmers in overalls and straw hats had plowed the Martian soil, singing as they worked. Families had lived in clay homes. Dogs had run between trees genetically engineered for this foreign soil. A small colony, a baby compared to a place like Haven at Alpha Centauri—but a colony of peace, of beauty.
Today Petty saw a vision of Dante's Inferno.
The farms were burnt. The houses lay in ruins. Webs rose everywhere, coating the dome, hanging between poles, covering the ground. Corpses piled up, forming hills—naked, bald, brutalized, the skulls carved open and the brains removed. The stench—God, the stench of the place. Petty could smell it even through his helmet.
But most of all, the living broke Petty's wounded heart.
Thousands of settlers were still alive.
The hardy, smiling settlers Petty had met years ago were gone. These people looked like ghosts. They shuffled forward, naked, skeletal. Their skin draped over their bones, and he could count their ribs; Petty could barely believe they were still alive. Their heads were shaved, and bruises and cuts covered their naked bodies. Men, women, children, babies—the marauders had turned them all into wretches. They reached out, weeping, whispering in joy, tears streaming down their gaunt cheeks. Some settlers were missing limbs. The limbs that remained were only skin and bones, the joints bulging. One man still lived with an open skull, the brain exposed. Other people could only crawl.
"What did the marauders do?" a soldier whispered, tears in his eyes. "What the hell did they do here?"
"Those bastards." Another man clenched his fists. "Those fucking bastards."
The soldiers moved through the colony. Petty's nausea grew. He approached a web behind a water tower, and he struggled not to gag.
The marauders had not done this just for food. Just for conquest. They had done this for sick pleasure.
On the web, the aliens had installed living, twitching artwork—humans broken, reformed, stitched together. A man with two heads, one sewn on and rotting. A man and woman carved in half and stitched together, forming a conjoined twin, still alive and whimpering. Some humans hung with bellies sliced open, their organs exposed, pulsing, still alive. A few women were pregnant, their thighs tied together. Children were flayed alive. The remains of the dead—skulls, severed hands, peeled faces—hung on lurid strings around them. It was . . . an art installation? A web of trophies like something a serial killer might collect?
"Medics," Petty whispered, then forced himself to shout. "Medics!"
A clattering rose behind him.
Petty turned around and saw a marauder there.
The beast drooled, shivering, missing four legs. It knelt in the dirt. A child's severed arm was stuck between two of its teeth, and human skulls clattered on its back. Its guttural voice emerged from its jaws.
"I . . . surrender . . ."
Petty's hands shook.
He roared in fury.
He fired his rifle, and his plasma slammed into the creature, slaying it in the dirt.
He fell to his knees, crying out in agony.
"Evil," he whispered, tears in his eyes. "Those sick, goddamn evil bastards."
He trembled. He knew these visions would never leave him. He knew that for the rest of his life—whether he died in this war or thirty years from now—the memories of this place would haunt him. And that the survivors, even should they be nursed back to health, would never recover their joy.
He wanted to remain in the dust, to weep, to tremble. But he was a soldier. And his discipline drove him to his feet.
"Soldiers!" he said. "We might have only moments before the enemy arrives with reinforcements. Help me get the survivors into the shuttle craft. We're taking them into the cargo ships—and off this rock."
They moved as fast as they could. Petty had not slept in days. If not for the metal suit encasing him, he might have collapsed from exhaustion. But he kept working, helping the survivors into the shuttles. Thirty thousand survivors still lived, and it took the shuttles several trips to finally ferry everyone into the cargo ships above. These hulking, heavy vessels had been built to store weapons and supplies, not for comfort, and they offered only metal floors to sleep on, but Petty imagined that it was heaven compared to the hell these people had endured on Mars.
Not moments after the last human was off Mars, and Petty was back on the Minotaur's bridge, the alarms blared again.
"Ravagers!" Osiris said. "Hundreds coming in!"
"Azoth engines, engage!" Petty said. "Get us out of here."
"Where should I—" Osiris began.
"The Oort Cloud," Petty said. "We'll lose them in the dust. Go!"
The surviving vessels—only three warships, a handful of cargo hulls, and their retinue of Firebirds—blasted off.
Within seconds, Mars was too far to see.
And may I never see that planet again, Petty thought, and his eyes burned, and a lump filled his throat. Please, God, let me forget what I saw there.
They flew through the Oort Cloud, finally losing pursuit among the radiant gasses and dust. The last fleet of humanity—survivors, fighters, weary and brave souls—floated in the darkness. Lost in shadow. Alive and victorious.
But even in victory, Petty did not forget.
One planet still cried out in agony.
One planet still needed him.
I have not forgotten you, Earth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Marco bolted up, panting, drenched with sweat.
He lay on a cot.
He stared around, heart pounding, ready to fight the monsters in the pit, to die fighting them, to—
He froze and stared around.
He was alive.
He was back in the HDFS Marilyn.
Specifically, in the crew quarters. Three other cots were here, and his fellow Dragons—Ben-Ari, Kemi, and Lailani—slept in them.
Marco rose from bed, and the world swayed. He grabbed his head and took deep breaths, struggling to steady himself.
"Wake up, everyone!" He stumbled toward the nearest cot, the one where Kemi slept. "Wake up!"
Ben-Ari was the first to wake up. She leaped out from bed, but she too clutched her head and nearly fell.
"Slowly," Marco said. "You'll be dizzy." His head still spun. "I think we were drugged."
Kemi and Lailani rose next, leaning on each other.
"What happened?" Lailani said, blinking and looking around. "How did we get back here?"
"I was hoping you'd tell me," Marco said. "Last I remember, I was up to my eyeballs with monsters." He looked down at his body. It was banged up, bruised, scratched, but still in one piece.
"I remember climbing onto the balcony," Lailani said. "Oh, sorry, Marco. Mezzanine." She rolled her eyes.
> "That's the last thing I remember too," Kemi said, then winced. "And I remember Marco falling into the pit. The monsters tearing at him." She gave him a soft look. "You sacrificed yourself for us."
Lailani's eyes also softened. She rose to her feet and gave Marco a hug. "Thanks, buddy." She leaned her head against his shoulder.
Ben-Ari checked her gun. Still out of bullets.
"Sergeant de la Rosa, lend me and Sergeant Emery some spare ammo," the captain said. "Everyone—guns loaded. And follow me. We're not in the clear yet."
They left the crew quarters, guns held before them. They saw nothing but darkness through the portholes. The ship's lights were on, eerily pale. The crew walked toward the airlock and paused.
Lailani checked a control panel on the wall. "There's air outside." She hit buttons on the touchscreen. "The ship hasn't moved. Same coordinates where we left it." Her eyes widened. "And all her systems are back online! I can access the Marilyn's navigation system, weapons system, life support, even the entertainment library. The works." She turned toward the others. "Guys, somebody fixed the Marilyn while we were asleep."
"And somebody brought us back from that castle," Ben-Ari said. "Somebody I'd very much like to speak to. Follow me outside. Let's take a look."
She opened the airlock, and they leaped outside, pointing their guns.
They all froze and stared.
"Fucking hell," Lailani said. "Would you look at that."
"The sky!" Kemi said. "It's . . . it's . . ."
"It's beautiful," Marco whispered.
The night sky was no longer black. It was deep purple, indigo, and swirling silver. The stars shone, huge and yellow, nearly the size of the moon, haloed with light. The colorful swirls looked like paintbrush strokes.
"Starry Night," Ben-Ari whispered, staring up, the light in her eyes. "Van Gogh's Starry Night. We're in a painting."
"Not everything is paintings and books, Marco!" Lailani said. "Sometimes you—Oh. Ben-Ari said that. Sorry, ma'am. I'm just used to Poet being the one talking like that."
Ben-Ari shook her head wildly as if to clear her thoughts. She grabbed her flare gun, and soon a flare hovered above them, illuminating their surroundings. The light brought another shock. The farmlands, the medieval town, the forest, the distant castle—all were gone. The landscape was barren. They still saw the groove along the ground where they had crashed, and the mountain still rose in the distance, but all other features were gone. No wheat. No grass. No sign of any life. The world where they had crashed was desolate, a dark desert.
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