Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  ‘Third time lucky, Pat,’ Dave croaked. Annie appeared behind her father, looked worried.

  ‘Your friend, Igor. He’s not well,’ she said. ‘We looked after him as best –’

  ‘Medic!’ Heath cried out. ‘Medic! Stat!’

  Two navy corpsmen bustled past Heath, Em and Hooper, and dropped down the wooden ladder into the cellar. They disappeared into the darkness as Dave’s two sons appeared out of it into the light of Emmeline’s torch.

  ‘Dad?’ said Toby. ‘Can we come out now?’

  Dave looked around what he could see of the house. It was rotten with death. But there was nothing for it.

  ‘Sure,’ he croaked, ‘come on up. But just know, it’s not pretty.’

  Em and Pat helped Annie climb the ladder first. Heath peered down into the hole, anxious for news of Igor. The old man and the boys came up after Annie.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she breathed when she could see just a little of what had happened. ‘Your friends? Are they all right? Karen and Zach?’

  Dave shook his head.

  ‘Zach’s dead. Karen . . . I don’t know . . .’ he trailed off as more medics arrived, hauling a stretcher, and dropped into the cellar.

  ‘I’ll live.’

  They all turned toward the familiar voice which now sounded different to Dave. Her accent, he thought. Her real accent. She’s not pretending anymore. She looked about as bad as he felt.

  ‘Znal by gde upást’ – solómki b podstelíl,’ she said and then translated. ‘Would I know where I will fall down, I’d lay some straw.’

  When they all stared at her she shrugged. ‘It’s a Russian thing.’ And to Heath and Emmeline, ‘Your man Allen fought bravely. Mourn him, then finish those who killed him. That’s also a Russian thing.’

  ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Heath. ‘We’ll do our best.’ He sounded as though he didn’t think their best would be nearly good enough.

  ‘How did he die?’ Emmeline asked. ‘Was it…’ she trailed off, looking upset.

  ‘He died well,’ Karen offered.

  ‘It was quick,’ Dave added. ‘He took a lot of them with him. And we’ll take more. Promise.’ He looked to Karen for confirmation.

  ‘We will,’ she agreed as she tore the top off a tube of energy gel.

  Annie, who had corralled the boys into a corner of the kitchen, now herded them toward the door, saying to her father, ‘Dad, I might go sit with Jack and Toby until we’re ready to leave. We’re still leaving, aren’t we?’ she asked Dave.

  ‘We are,’ he said, without bothering to check whether Heath agreed or not. ‘You might want to go wait in Pat’s den, I reckon. It’s pretty gross in the lounge.’

  ‘And there’s a dead monster upstairs, Mom,’ said Jack.

  ‘Dad ate its brains,’ Toby told everyone, just in case they’d missed the good news.

  Pat led his daughter and grandsons out of the crowded kitchen. As he passed Dave he said, ‘You did all right.’ And that was all. That was about as good as it was ever going to get from Pat O’Halloran.

  Annie stopped and wiped some of the daemon ichor from Dave’s face, creating a small clean spot which she kissed, chastely.

  ‘You did better than all right. Thank you for coming home.’

  ‘It’s not my home,’ Dave said, more sad than anything else.

  ‘You can always rebuild a home, Dave. Or make a new one.’ She cast a quick glance at Emmeline and whispered. ‘She keeps looking at you like, well . . . I think she really likes you.’

  ‘And you don’t?’ Dave asked, his eyes narrowing.

  Annie smiled, a lopsided expression.

  ‘I know you,’ she said and then she was gone.

  Movement and noise from below signalled the corpsmen were ready to move Igor. They’d removed the arrakh bolts and strapped him to the stretcher, but it was going to be difficult lifting the heavy man up.

  ‘I got it,’ Dave said. ‘Ekaterina? A little help?’

  Colonel Varatchevsky quirked an eyebrow at him, questioning the use of her birth name, but she nodded as Dave dropped into the hole. All that Grymm ichor he’d drunk was doing him a powerful amount of good.

  ‘I got this, boys,’ he told the medics.

  Igor was barely conscious, but his eyelids fluttered and he focused on Dave with a great effort.

  ‘I still say you fight like an idiot,’ he whispered.

  ‘And I still say you punch like a girl,’ said Dave as he took a firm but careful grip on the stretcher and lifted it gently up to Karen, who took it from him in one smooth, fluid motion.

  ‘Wow,’ said one of the medics.

  Dave bent a little at the knees and jumped the eight feet up, out of the root cellar. Emmeline was bent down beside Igor fussing over him, but the wounded SEAL was out of it.

  ‘So what now, Captain?’ Karen asked Heath as the medics scrambled up from below and carried Igor away.

  They followed the stretcher out of the kitchen. It was hard to believe the number of bodies in the wreckage of Pat O’Halloran’s living room, but Dave could see even more of them outside. Zach would be out here somewhere. Unless . . . Dave turned away from the thought, and from memories of Urgon chewing through Marty Grbac. He could still hear the occasional gun blast, and every now and then, the snarl of a chainsaw. The good lady reverend going about God’s work. The sun was coming up though, and it would do the real work of cleansing the earth for them. This part of it anyway.

  ‘I don’t suppose you found a stumpy little Thresher with a neckbeard out there, answers to the name Compt’n?’ Dave said.

  Heath was not ready to have his mood lifted.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t, but we’ll keep looking.’

  Emmeline appeared at his other elbow. Tears had cleared tracks down her dirty face.

  ‘Michael,’ she said. ‘Poor Zach. And Igor. I said they should come up here.’

  Dave and Heath spoke at the same time, saying the same thing.

  ‘Bullshit.’

  But it was Dave who went on.

  ‘Em, if it was anyone’s fault it was mine. Zach was with us right up until the end. I should have made him get in the cellar. But I didn’t. I couldn’t . . .’

  He trailed off, feeling what he always felt around Heath. That he was being judged.

  ‘I’m real sorry about Zach,’ he said again, feeling guilty and responsible for the young man’s death. He was standing very close to where he’d died. Heath held up one hand.

  ‘Chief Allen was a warrior, Dave. Like your brother.’

  Hooper felt a heavy swelling in his chest. It wasn’t pride.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘He was. They were.’

  Then he sighed.

  ‘So. What now?’

  Heath’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed the wanton ugliness of the battlefield.

  ‘I won’t lie to you, Dave. It’s going to get worse. Much worse. And I can’t promise we’ll win. But for now? Now we fight.’

  Acknowledgements

  These first three novels of The Dave have been a joy to write and much of that is down to the work of the editors and publishers who’ve nursed manuscripts and author from conception to delivery. Cate Paterson, Haylee Nash, Deonie Fiford and Lord Alex ur Lloyd in S’dney, and Tricia Narwani in Manhatt’n.

  Before Dave ever got to them however, he was given a protein bar, a beer and a hurry along by my research guy, Master Scolari SF Murphy.

  And before Murph ever met him, Dave was willed into being by Russ Galen, my agent superiorae who dealt with forces beyond our comprehension.

  Writing all three books at once was both a challenge and a gift. One of the unexpected benefits was being able to see reader reactions to the characters and their relationships in Emergence while I was still working on the hot drafts of Resistance. I made a few tweaks here and there in response to feedback and I’d like to say thanks to everyone who reached out at my blog or online. I do listen and it does help.

  Finally, I write these
words as my long-suffering family plays without me in the backyard. They don’t put up with nearly as many shenanigans as the Hooper clan, but they do have more than their fair share to endure.

  My thanks to them and now I’d best get out there. I think the dog has chased something into the pool again.

  About John Birmingham

  John Birmingham is the author of the cult classic He Died With a Felafel in His Hand; the award-winning history Leviathan; the Axis of Time series: Weapons of Choice, Designated Targets and Final Impact, and the Stalin’s Hammer: Rome ebook; the Disappearance trilogy: Without Warning, After America and Angels of Vengeance; and the Dave Hooper series: Emergence and Resistance.

  Between writing books he contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines on topics as diverse as the future of media and national security. Before becoming a writer he began his working life as a research officer with the Defence Department’s Office of Special Clearances and Records.

  You can find John at his blog, http://cheeseburgergothic.com, and on Twitter @johnbirmingham. You can also buy his books at http://johnbirmingham.net.

  Want to save the world? Join the conversation on Twitter at #TheDave.

  Also by John Birmingham

  The Axis of Time series

  Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1

  Designated Targets: World War 2.2

  Final Impact: World War 2.3

  Stalin’s Hammer: Rome (ebook)

  The Disappearance trilogy

  Without Warning

  After America

  Angels of Vengeance

  The Dave Hooper series

  Emergence

  Resistance

  More bestselling fiction available from John Birmingham

  WEAPONS OF CHOICE: WORLD WAR 2.1

  A near-future military experiment thrusts a multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding toward Midway Atoll – and what was to be the most spectacular Allied triumph of World War II.

  The 21st-century sailors are a shocking spectre for these veterans of Pearl Harbor – men who have never seen a helicopter or a nuclear weapon, and who have never encountered an African American colonel or a female Australian submarine commander. But they respect the armada’s awesome firepower, and what it may mean to the War.

  Initial jubilation is quickly doused by a shocking realisation – other ships may have made the trip – and may be in the hands of the Japanese. What happens next is anybody’s guess . . . and everybody’s nightmare.

  DESIGNATED TARGETS: WORLD WAR 2.2

  The nightmare of the Transition has pitched a whole world into chaos, as the great powers of 1942 scramble to build the weapons of tomorrow.

  But the military crisis is only one part of a ruptured history.

  Awareness of the future is sweeping the globe, and many of the people of 1942 are split between desire for the freedoms their descendants enjoy, and fear of the society which awaits them. Then Japan invades Australia, foreign agents begin a campaign of terror in the USA, and Germany prepares for an all-out attack on Britain.

  The 21st-century forces must resort to the most extreme measures yet and face a future rife with possibilities – all of them apocalyptic.

  FINAL IMPACT: WORLD WAR 2.3

  As history reaches a tipping point, the forces unleashed by the Transition threaten to destroy the world. Hitler and Tojo race towards an atom bomb. Stalin plots to tear down the future and rebuild it in his image. And the Allies begin their Great Crusade with weapons and knowledge from the next century. What price will Kolhammer and his people pay for disrupting their past?

  STALIN’S HAMMER: ROME (ebook)

  Ten years have passed since Admiral Kolhammer’s 21st century battlefleet was dragged into a wormhole and thrown across oceans of time, emerging with disastrous consequences and shattering the history of the Second World War.

  Hitler and the Nazis have fallen, Kolhammer sits in the White House, but Stalin rules half of Europe and Asia. The great Soviet engines of state power turn and burn to ‘set history right’. Not just of the war, but of all future time.

  In Rome with his lover Julia Duffy, an older, mellower Prince Harry is drawn into Stalin’s plans when a simple game of spies goes horribly wrong. Underneath the eternal city, former Spetsnaz officer Pavel Ivanov fights a running battle with the NKVD’s executioner-in-chief as Stalin’s minions fight to preserve the secret of a weapon that could destroy the West with one, fearsome blow.

  In Stalin’s Hammer: Rome, the first of a series of serialised novellas, John Birmingham returns to the world he destroyed along with the US Fleet at Midway in the Axis of Time series.

  WITHOUT WARNING

  A wave of inexplicable energy has slammed into America. And destroyed it.

  What will the world do without its last Superpower?

  For the jihadists, Allah has performed a miracle. For the US and its allies, Armageddon has arrived. Australasia, far from the noxious waste darkening Europe’s skies, beckons as a possible oasis.

  Who and what will fill the void?

  AFTER AMERICA

  ‘Our world went to hell on March 14, 2003.’

  Four years after an inexplicable wave of energy decimated the American mainland, and then just as inexplicably disappeared a year later, US President James Kipper is no closer to explaining the catastrophe to the traumatised survivors.

  In a decaying New York City, an assassination attempt on the President prompts the suspicion that the looters overrunning Manhattan may be more organised and sinister than previously thought.

  Working on a farm in Texas to earn his citizenship, Miguel Pieraro believes in the promise of the New America. That is until tragedy cuts through his family.

  In the English countryside, Echelon agent Caitlin Monroe must once again fight for her life, a sharp reminder that her nemesis is active again.

  Then out of the smoking ruin of the Middle East comes an enemy that will be Kipper’s toughest challenge yet. The battle for the Wild East is just beginning, but does this New America, and its gun-shy President, have the strength of will to destroy the past in order to save the future?

  ANGELS OF VENGEANCE

  Jed Culver, President Kipper’s sword and shield, knows that what is right and what is best are rarely the same thing.

  To some, Mad Jackson Blackstone, rogue governor of the Republic of Texas, is slowly but surely destroying the United States.

  In New York, Caitlin Monroe’s one shot at vengeance may lie buried beneath the rubble of the city, but she has to be certain.

  Unknown killers hunt Lady Julianne Balwyn in the anarchic, violent freeport of Darwin.

  Sofia Pieraro is all alone in the empty heart of a haunted land, revenge her only reason to keep moving.

  After many years the long trail of the dead will bring them all together.

  The final battle for America and the new world will not be fought with armies, but in the quiet and the dark, by individuals, driven towards vengeance and annihilation.

  Previously in the DAVE HOOPER series from bestselling author John Birmingham

  EMERGENCE

  ‘Monsters,’ said Vince Martinelli. ‘There are monsters on the rig, Dave.’

  Dave Hooper has the hangover from hell, a demonic ex-wife and the claws of the tax office sinking into him. So the last thing he needs is an explosion at the off-shore oil rig where he works.

  But this is no ordinary industrial accident, and despite the news reports, Dave knows that terrorists aren’t to blame for the disaster. He knows because he has killed one of the things responsible.

  When he wakes up in a hospital bed guarded by Navy SEALs, he realises this is more than just a bad acid trip. It all really happened. Yet his shock is cut short by a startling self-discovery; his contact with the creature has transformed the overweight, balding safety manager into something else entirely. A goddamned superhero.

  Then he learns the attack on the rig is only th
e first.

  RESISTANCE

  Two bright geometric shapes, metallic flashes picked out in the morning sun, moving impossibly fast and straight amidst the visual clutter and chaos of forest and rock . . .

  ‘Is it dragons, Dave, is that what it is? Because I’m not ready for dragons . . .’

  A dragon brings down the Vice President’s plane, a monster army is camped outside Omaha, and an empath demon springs an undercover operation in New York.

  New Orleans was just the beginning. More and different demons are breaking through all over America, and Dave Hooper has a new enemy with more guile and guts than the celebrity superhero, who is still stumbling into his role as Champion. While his agent fields offers for movies and merchandise, Dave is tasked with ending a siege in Omaha, saving his friends and deciphering the UnderRealms’ plan to take over the earth.

  As an ancient and legion evil threatens to destroy mankind, Dave has to decide what kind of man he wants to be and the nature of his role in this new world. He may not be the hero humanity deserves, but he’s the only one we’ve got.

  First published 2015 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

  Copyright © John Birmingham 2015

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  http://catalogue.nla.gov.au