Colonies Of Earth: Unity War Book 1

by C. G. Michaels

  Up ahead flew the enemy warship, blasting hell out of the planet. “Hit that mother with everything we've got,” Brid said. “Concentrate on its aft. Keep hitting the same spot. Pilirani, tell the Montauk and Dronning to do the same to their opponents. If we keep at it, their shields will fail. Let's show these assholes what humanity is made of.”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  By Brid's reckoning it took less time to penetrate the enemy's shields this go around; and now they committed a whopping thirty percent damage as soon as the enemy was susceptible, and this with only the Takarabune attacking. Copperheads, which had busied themselves with strafing runs, now gathered to protect their mothership–but too late: the Takarabune let loose two more missiles, and the alien warship took another forty percent damage.

  My God, they're vulnerable. They're actually vulnerable. “Pilirani, tell the others to keep on the enemy's aft. Tell the whole fleet to go for their aft!” She got to her feet and crossed to the main viewscreen, where an image of the Snappers' warship hovered. “There's a sweet spot,” she said, and put her index finger to the center of the ship's aft. “Right there. Between the thrusters. They can't take too many hits. And they really don't like missiles.

  “My friends, we have just found the enemy's first weakness.”

  “Captain,” Pilirani said. “Colonial reinforcements have arrived above atmosphere.”

  A cheer rose from the crew. Brid strode back to her seat. “Let's head back into the fray, shall we? Helm, head for the Dronning and Montauk. We'll be the ones to lend assistance this time.”

  The human reinforcements proved sufficient to persuade the aliens to retreat. By the time Takarabune, Dronning, and Montauk emerged from Osiris's atmosphere, the Colonial reinforcements were giving chase; the rest of the fleet had orders to stay behind and take care of the wounded–their own and Osiris's. Brid promised herself the Takarabune would collect as many survivors as she could; but first they needed to give their fighter pilots a place to rest and recuperate.

  To that end, she ordered the Takarabune remain outside Osiris's atmosphere until all the surviving Banshee pilots had safely docked. Some of her pilots had gone to the planet's surface, she knew, but she had received word that, although low on fuel, those pilots could still make it back to the warship.

  Those pilots were landing now. Brid stood in the docking bay–the heat was abysmal, particularly with the temperature control on the fritz–hoping to boost morale a bit. She always thought the little things mattered, and someone telling you had done a good job, a courageous job, was one of the things that mattered a lot. She didn't have time to praise each of the squadrons individually what she thought of them, but she planned to congratulate them all at once as soon as she had the opportunity. For now, one squadron would do: the 15th, those who, by all assessments, had fought hardest and bravest.

  She watched them climb out of their Banshees, the sweaty, battle-weary lot of them, and experienced a wave of connectivity. She had once flown in a craft not unlike these, back when Earth had all but forgotten war. She knew the jargon, the equipment, the life and the people. And she had given that up for a career in command.

  Sometimes nostalgia made her regret that choice.

  One of them spotted her and called the others to attention. She beckoned them closer. “At ease.” She studied their young faces, drawn with stress and fatigue. “Well done,” she said; and then the words left her. “Well done,” she said again, and turned to go, feeling the fool for not doing better by them.

  “Ma'am?”

  She met the gaze of the one who had spoken. Tall, thin, brown hair, a handsome face with a broad nose and sculpted features. His large blue eyes regarded her unflinchingly. Vasilescu, his name tag read.

  “The 15th would like permission to help planetside,” he said. “Tending to the wounded and collecting survivors.”

  She hadn't expected that. “Don't you want to rest? To eat?”

  “Ma'am, we'd like to help. Please.”

  Her eyes grew misty. She cursed herself for showing such a weakness and lowered her head as if in thought, hoping to hide the tears that threatened. When she recovered, she nodded and lifted her head. “Permission granted. You do the human race proud, 15th.”

  She left them then. She didn't dare look back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Osiris

  Fire. Everywhere there was fire, most of it low and orange but crackling diligently, as if refusing to be banished, a lingering reminder of the aliens' presence. Where the fire had gone out, the ground yet smoldered, sending up tendrils of smoke that blanketed the sky so thickly you couldn't even see the sun.

  Beneath the smoke lay Fault's former home, now completely annihilated. The world lay charred and decimated, its formerly sleek and modern buildings razed to so much soot-blackened rubble and detritus. Bodies and body parts littered the ground, some of them laser-burned, some bloodied and broken. Fault looked around him, trying to make sense of the street signs now that no structures existed to prove their validity. Here was Hyacinth Avenue, and there, Powell Lane . . . so back there would have been the compound where he had trained, and over here had stood one of the outlying neighborhoods, which had been populated with military husbands and wives, and with army brats. Fault had met a few of them; they'd always treated him like a bomb ready to go off.

  A small number of armored tanks roamed the streets, likely to collect at the military compound. They would have tried to defend the city from the strafing Copperheads and the Snapper warship that had committed so much destruction, but they would have had little luck—the warship would have hovered too high for them, and its shields would have proven too strong even for Osirian tanks. And the Copperheads would simply have been too fast.

  The SAMs would have fared better, but apparently they hadn't done well enough: flames licked the ground where each of them had once stood, and the earth lay ruined and black all about the area. Fault wondered how long the Osirians had held out, and when they'd known they couldn't hold out any longer, and what that had felt like. To know they were defeated. To know they were going to die.

  Lanei was staring at him. “You okay, Fault?”

  He wasn't sure how to answer that. People he'd known had died today, people he'd interacted with on a daily basis. His former CO. The doctor and lab techs who'd fitted him with his cyborg parts. Peers who'd stayed behind while he'd gone off to the Mare Cognitum to fight in the war against Nommos. But he hadn't gotten along with any of them, so he couldn't really say he was sorry. And yet he felt a strange and twisting sort of loss.

  “I'm fine,” he said brusquely. “Let's go.”

  Everybody had a section they were supposed to explore, and Fault led the way to the labs, glad for his mask, which protected the eyes as well as the lungs from the many foreign particles in the air. Lanei, Adam, and Ness went with him, silently making their way down a street whose cars stood frozen in time. People had tried to evacuate, but the aliens had cut them off, blasted holes in the pavement and in the vehicles driving on it. Crowds had escaped their cars only to get shot down as they ran, or to get caught in an explosion.

  Some of the cars had wrecked in their hurry to reach a safe haven; others had crashed trying to avoid a blast of laser fire. Ness used the bioscanner to find out if any of the passengers yet lived, but with each car they checked, they had to place a red flag down: Dead here. Please collect.

  The lab was worse. A missile had struck it, demolishing the bulk of the building and leaving a carcass of metal and glass for them to slog through, the ground alternately crunching and slipping underfoot. Fault could still recognize the layout of the building through the wreckage, and he spotted several links to earlier memories of the time he'd spent here: a toppled refrigerator filled with blood samples, its contents cracked and spilled—that which mechs routinely donated for study and experimentation purposes now represented the only bodily fluid for miles around that had been given up by choice. There was a metal arm like h
is, half-buried in the rubble, too damaged to be salvaged even if they hadn't discontinued cyborgs. Fault kicked at it. Not many of these were being made anymore since the mechs themselves weren't being made, so he had few enough options should he lose an arm to the war; the fall of the lab meant he had one fewer. In what had once been another room, he saw the same laser device that had been used to sever his organic parts in favor of mechanical ones. Miraculously, it still stood, though the arm had broken and now dangled precariously. He wondered what the scientists had been using it for now that they no longer made cyborgs.

  “I found a hand,” Lanei said. “Do I put a flag by it?”

  “It's dead, isn't it? Use a flag.”

  “Hey, guys,” Nell said. “I got something!”

  Adam went over to her, peered over her shoulder at the bioscanner. “You sure?”

  “I'm telling you, that's a reading!”

  “It could be an animal. A dog, or maybe a rat—”

  “It's too big for an animal. Come on. It's back that way.” She led them into the next area, where the laser device stood. “There he is!”

  About a yard away, a foot jutted up out of the debris, a foot wrapped in an expensive—and now quite ruined—shoe. Fault clambered over to the shoe, found a leg attached, and the rest of a body, partly concealed by metal pieces, glass shards, and an unholy amount of dust. The man's face was discolored by bruises and detritus, swollen in places, and cut by tiny splinters of glass, but Fault recognized him. “Doctor Begbie.”

  Begbie stirred, moaned. Fault began dragging debris off him with an urgency he hadn't expected to feel. Begbie had orchestrated the production of the HE-1121—Fault's model—and had overseen much of their maintenance while they were stationed here. He'd treated the mechs like lab rats, but he'd been a fixture in Fault's life until he'd transferred to the Mare Cognitum, and seeing him like this disturbed Fault on some primal level. “Doctor Begbie, can you hear me?”

  “Uh-h-h . . . Faulkner, is that you? What happened?”

  “We're gonna get you outta here. Hold tight.”

  “The war came to us this time. It came to us . . . ” His eyelids fluttered, and his head fell back.

  “Doctor Begbie. Doctor Begbie!” Fault shook him.

  “He's dead,” Ness said flatly.

  Emotion flooded Fault, emotion he wasn't prepared for. He gripped the lapel of Begbie's lab coat, unsure if he wanted to hug the man to him or shove him into the ground.

  Ness was looking at him strangely. Very tentatively, reluctantly, she put a hand on his arm, which Fault was dismayed to realize was now trembling. “Are . . . are you okay?”

  He shook her roughly off. “Leave me alone, Valescu.”

  She glared at him. “It's Vasilescu. God! I should've known better than to reach out to a mech!” She got up and went stomping away. “Come on. Stick a flag on him, and let's get a move on. Daylight's burning.”

  Lanei gently put a flag down, and then she and Adam followed Ness to the next section of the lab. Fault sat on his knees, taking deep breaths, still grasping Begbie's lab coat in his fist and fighting not to cry.

  In the end, it was a battle he lost.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Inside Osiris's atmosphere

  Brid entered her cabin at just past two, GMT. She had been at it for a full seventy-two hours now, and couldn't decide what she needed more: sleep, food, or a bath.

  She wouldn't manage to sleep yet, not with all those images of death and suffering still fresh in her head, and at the moment she was too weary to eat. So a bath. The lights turned on when she came in, bright lights that hurt her eyes, so she dimmed them manually. Now a candle-like glow surfaced from the bottom of the bulkhead, where it met the deck.

  She stripped, wanting more than anything else to get out of these clothes that stank of smoke, of blood, of death. When she stood naked, she scooped up her garments and shoved them into the laundry chute, closing the chute with a bang. The sound made her jump; God, she was on edge. Her hair had come undone long ago, the tie lost amongst the rubble and ruin of Timaru City, or perhaps in the shuttle she'd taken to and from the Takarabune. She pushed a tangled, dirty lock out of her face and went into the bathroom.

  The lights came on here, too, white and glaring. She winced, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and winced again. She dimmed the lights, then turned the water in the shower on, scalding hot and full blast. Steam clouded the room. She stepped fearlessly into the tub, but a gasp of pain escaped her as the water hit her skin. She added cold, just a touch, and submerged herself beneath the pounding spray. She had lost weight in the past hours, having barely had time to eat or drink, and her stomach growled in spite of the images in her head.

  She used copious amounts of soap and shampoo and attacked her skin and hair with a vengeance. Smoke clung to her like an unwanted lover. She had blood on her from small cuts she had obtained, blood from other people as well. She had bruises and scrapes and bumps. Her muscles had knotted, and she worked at them, holding them mercilessly under the searing water while she massaged them into something like relaxation.

  Brid cut off the water and yanked the towel from the rack, not yet daring to step out into the cold room–“cold” because the techs had fixed the temperature control in the last seventy-two hours, leaving her room and bathroom at a normally comfortable seventy degrees Fahrenheit. After her shower, though . . . She shivered just thinking about it. Her skin had turned red from the heat, was warm to the touch. At least she was finally clean.

  She left the towel and washcloth on the floor, intending to dump them in the laundry chute in the morning. Though this technically was morning.

  Her comb struggled through the tangles in her hair, but she persisted until she had defeated every knot. Then she tossed the comb onto the counter and wiped away the mist in the mirror with her fist.

  The hot water had removed some of the paleness in her cheeks, but her eyes were wide, bloodshot, and wounded. Shadows circled those eyes, lived in the hollows of her cheeks. Her ribs, her hip bones, her clavicle, were more defined. Her lips had gone dry, peeling unattractively.

  She slathered on some deodorant and went back into the bedroom, where she scrounged black boxer briefs and a dark grey tank top. A squat, rather old digital media player sat in one corner of the room, scuffed and, in one place, dented from the travel it had put up with over the years. Brid touched the Music button, selected Steve Roach's “A Deeper Silence,” and hit Play. She needed something to quell the screaming inside her head.

  She paced a moment, unable to quiet her mind, unable to stay still though her bones ached. At last she flopped down in her favorite chair, a cushy number she'd bought on Lotan during leave one year. She tucked her legs underneath her, rested her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes. Roach's music, the minimalistic quality of this piece in particular, the spaces between the notes, usually relaxed her. She had always thought of “A Deeper Silence” as a kind of cosmic sigh, something she imitated now, with a deep, slow breath in and out.

  Her eyes opened. Her hands had curled into fists.

  A quick tap at the door jolted her heart into rapid-fire beats. She cursed under her breath. “Who is it?”

  “Reindeer, ma'am.”

  God, what now? They had done all they could for Osiris. Takarabune was not an emergency vessel; they couldn't handle any more refugees, they didn't have any more supplies to send, and they had a war to fight. They were exhausted. They could do no more.

  Or did it concern the Takarabune: more repairs needed, a dearth of fuel or supplies, or–far worse–an update on the news of the increasing dead, both on her ship and in the fleet itself? Every time she thought she had seen the end of it, someone else died of injuries incurred. She didn't know that she could handle yet another report of same, not tonight.

  God, just leave me alone. But they would not, they could not; she was their captain, after all. And she had signed up for this, well aware of the responsibilities.
<
br />   Of course, she had done so during peace, at least peace for Earth. But she supposed that didn't matter.

  She got laboriously to her feet and donned her robe (standard issue, so black, and required wear when greeting a subordinate). “Come in.” Her voice had gone hoarse. She badly needed a drink but didn't have the strength to go to the bathroom to get one.

  The door slid open, revealing a tired Reindeer in off-duty clothing, a tray with a covered dish and a cup in her hands. She came in, moving soundlessly, like a cat, and placed the tray on the bed. “The crew thought you could use this.”

  She took the lid off the dish: a baked potato and sour cream, steamed broccoli, and a bit of breaded pollock with a dollop of white sauce–all of it blistering hot. “We went for light fare. We took a vote on the fish. I wanted chicken, but the cook insisted.”

  Brid took the cup in shaky hands and had a taste. Sweet, herbal. Tea.

  “I know how much you love coffee,” Reindeer said, “but this will help you sleep. It's chamomile. I added sugar. I hope you like it.”

  “It's delicious.” She had to force herself not to drink it all in one greedy gulp. “Do we have more?”

  Reindeer nodded, smiling. “Plenty.”

  “That's good to hear.”

  Reindeer nodded again. “I won't keep you. I know you like to get up early.” She turned to go. At the door, she paused. “Ma'am . . . You do us all proud.”

  Brid was so shocked she couldn't reply. Reindeer slipped out the door.

  Her crew was proud of her. They had gotten together to give her this meal because they wanted to tell her she had done a good job, a courageous job.

  The tears began to fall, slowly at first, then a torrent, until her food went cold and she could cry no more.

  * * *

  Brid walked swiftly in the direction of the Infirmary, a fresh coffee in her hand. This she sampled frequently, having had less than three hours of dreamless sleep, and this after being up for a full seventy-two hours. Her heels clicked on the polished metal deck, clack-clack, clack-clack. Her mind, though dulled from lack of sleep, worked on a problem: the Colonies had sent the enemy running, but had only destroyed one of their warships; the rest had survived to lick their wounds and return at their earliest convenience. The Colonies wanted another win. A big one.