EARTH'S LAST WAR (CHILDREN OF DESTINY Book 1)

by Glenn Van Dyke

Steven stroked the satin sheets that were invitingly pulled back. The pillows were plumped and promising, the gel-mattress soft. He pictured her head upon the pillow, her naked body impatiently waiting for him.

  Throwing a glance toward the open doorway of the dressing room, he saw that while Ashlyn was not in his direct line of sight, that the large floor to ceiling mirror on the far wall was arraying her radiantly in full heavenly glory.

  He leaned back on his elbows and watched her slip out of the string top. Ashlyn held herself with the poise of an angel. No poem could ever express her beauty in words, nor could any artist ever capture her essence on canvas. Perfection cannot be copied.

  In bending to unzip her boots, her dangling breasts swung enticingly.

  Dinnertime. Steven’s mouth watered.

  Ash turned and removed a black negligee from her closet. Glancing into the mirror, she caught sight of Steven watching her. “Bad boy!” said Ash. After giving him a playful lion’s, “Grrrr,” she stepped out of view.

  Bad boy or not, he could not tear his eyes from her. Steven’s pulse was racing to the beat of a nuclear time clock as he thoughtlessly smoothed a wrinkle in the sheets.

  “Close your eyes, ready or not,” Ash called out.

  Steven slumped backwards on the bed, closing his eyes. He listened to the soft patter of her footsteps as she crossed the room and knelt between his legs. Gentle hands ran up his inner thigh, his breath catching as they slid slowly, weightily, over the top of his erection. She stopped, retracing her movements over him, several times. Hearing her gasp to his arousal, his passions rose.

  Leaning forward, she delicately ran her hands up the sides of his chest, before sliding outwards along the length of his arms until their fingers clasped. The hot radiating heat of her breasts pressing against his groin seared him even through his uniform.

  Slowly slithering up his body, Ashlyn laid down atop him. Nibbling his ear, her breath warming his neck, her pelvis grinding him, she whispered, “Damn, you sure do know how to hoist a mainsail.”

  Steven grabbed her ass, pulling her tight to him.

  Ash kissed his neck, panting as she felt his intense hardness, “That is a ship I definitely want to set sail on,” as she gave him a solid grind, “but right now, we gotta go! Come-on.” Ash bounded to her feet, pulling him behind her like a child’s Radio Flyer wagon.

  Steven opened his eyes to see that Ash wasn’t wearing a negligee, but rather, a black outfit of narrow strings and thin, see-thru, mesh webbing.

  “Oh my god, Ash. You aren’t playing fair. You can’t wear an outfit like that and not give me sex, right here, right now! That’s killer sexy.”

  “I want it too, but first—we have something to do.” Scrambling out the door, she took him to the lift. As the door to the lift opened, one of the crew stepped out. His mouth dropped open at seeing Ashlyn’s virtual nakedness. He took a step aside, making room for them to pass, his eyes never leaving her until the doors closed. Steven looked at Ashlyn—she wasn’t the least embarrassed, nor had she even noticed his attentions. She truly was completely uninhibited.

  “Deck five,” said Ash. “I’ve reserved the Arena for us.” As the doors closed and she looked down at his erection, “Is it hard to walk around looking like a hat rack?”

  Swallowing, “No harder than looking like a flagpole!” said Steven whimsically as the lift began to slow.

  They entered the Arena and, garnering their equipment, took their positions on opposing platforms.

  The object of the game was to control a large, fourteen-foot tall, twenty-two hundred pound, hologram Warrior-bot. The computer would start by randomly selecting an array of equipment for use in hand-to-hand combat and tactical air strikes or strategic ground assault.

  As for the large platform itself, it encases the player within a light, gravimetric pressure field that senses all body movement and then moves the bot accordingly. When set to a high level; game effects, like temperature changes, low oxygen at high altitudes and even situations like hand-to-hand combat were often felt with near realistic force. A hard blow could not only cause severe bruising, but could actually fracture bone. The virtual game was designed to be as realistic as possible without risking the participant’s life.

  The game continues until only one opponent is able to make a strategic move. You can then choose to either replay your game or continue on to a more advanced scenario.

  Ashlyn, desirous of a heavy workout, set the level to maximum. Level 60MD, offered a mountainous desert terrain, with little to no cover. Loading themselves into their Warrior-bots, they both activated the containment fields around their platforms.

  As the terrain formed, Steven’s Blue bot stood at the base of a large barren mountain. He swiveled round, taking in the terrain. He glanced at his forearm display, studying his bot’s features. His defensive matrix was weak but his laser was the most powerful that the game allowed.

  The radar display on his right wrist showed Ashlyn to be standing atop a bluff, about four kilometers distance. Now he understood Ashlyn’s flirtatious request; she had preset the computer, putting herself in the dominant position of control. She was on top.

  Instead of considering her devious manipulation of the game as cheating though, he found it challenging, if not downright refreshing.

  Steven started climbing, seeking to balance her elevated advantage. Even with his hydraulic legs pushing maximum, he found the slippery shale impossible to climb—but even in failure; he loved hearing the whine of his pumping pistons and the feel of the servo-induced strength encasing him. He was having a great time.

  Ash appeared to be moving swiftly, taking advantage of the high ground. Time began swinging in Ashlyn’s favor—for Steven, the summit unreachable. He decided to activate his radar signal bouncer. It was a device that by design, Gena occasionally allowed to go on the fritz. Neither opponent ever knew for sure whether if it was properly functioning. Right or wrong, it forced you to make cautious tactical decisions.

  Steven’s initial thought had been to scale the summit, going round the right side of a massive, rock outcropping. Now, with the summit unattainable, he studied the terrain about him, looking for options. He had no choice but to retreat.

  Behind him lay a narrow canyon that separated him from a lower, opposing mountain range. He zoomed in, scanning the far mountainside. It was largely barren and offered no cover of sufficient size to conceal his large form.

  It was near half a minute before his scans found something he could use to his advantage. If his radar was correct, Ashlyn’s bot was making good time moving at full-hydraulic stride across the top of the bluff.

  Turning, Steven raced down the mountain, covering nearly half the distance on his tin can’s butt. Crossing the gorge, he climbed the opposite slope, quickly making his way through the small rocks and waist-high shrubs. Steven’s destination was a small ditch, a scar in the hillside that lay about a third of the way down from the summit.

  Once there he found that it wasn’t nearly as deep as he had hoped. It was going to be a tight squeeze even lying down.

  The second part of Steven’s plan was a bit trickier. Using the high-powered laser located on his right wrist, he began undercutting a huge boulder that was supporting the massive rock outcropping on the opposite mountain. It was purely guesswork as to how much cutting could be safely done without bringing the hillside down. Pushing his best guess a bit, he counted on a tad of luck.

  Lying low within the ditch, he could just glimpse the mountain’s summit across from him. His radar showed she was quickly closing on him—so switching off his signal-bouncer, he prepared to wait.

  Steven smiled as he saw Ashlyn stop and activate what was likely her own bouncer—her blip suddenly jumped back not a hundred meters from its original starting position. It was a bad bounce for her and seemed an obvious ploy.

  Knowing that she must be nearing the mountain’s summit and the moment of battle was drawing near, his heart began pounding. Though on
ly a simulation, adrenaline surged in his veins.

  It was time for him to activate his bot’s only defensive feature, Inviso. For two minutes, his bot would be invisible to her. Although, with his bouncer now off, she could still pick him up on her radar. That is, of course, assuming that she chose to believe his signal was genuine. He also had to hope her model wasn’t equipped with an energy spectrometer, but that's what makes for the fun part of the game.

  Suddenly, a laser blast hit the hillside above Steven, showering him with dust and debris. Another blast and yet he refused to move a servo. Ashlyn sent several more rounds toward the ditch, trying to flush him out.

  Ash moved to her left, took one more shot and then moved again. His ploy was working and she was beginning to doubt that he was there. She checked her radar, tapping it twice almost as if she were thinking it might be broken. Her torso began rotating, scanning the surrounding terrain, searching for a potential trap. Ash fired a final shot at the ditch before ducking behind the outcrop.

  Steven’s timer had only seconds remaining before he would again be visible. Come-on Ash, hurry it up!

  He felt a wave of relief as he saw her exit a few meters below the outcropping’s right side. Her lower position would now put him two meters above her direct line of sight. Ash sent two more straying shots his way and then started cautiously descending the narrowing crevasse of the hill.

  As the timer on his Inviso counted down to 0, Steven lifted his arm, letting go a three-second blast at maximum power. The blast cut a deep fissure beneath the base of the keystone boulder supporting the entire structure.

  His position now revealed, Ashlyn’s shoulder turrets unleashed a hail of heavy .60 caliber gunfire in Steven’s direction. She knew that she didn’t have a good angle on him, but it was also clear that he didn’t have one on her.

  While still firing at him, Ash punched the square, yellow button on her left wrist, lowering her two breast panels. Steven found the sight to be strangely erotic, and when he saw a single, white, red-tipped missile inside each breast cavity, he burst out laughing, shaking his head. If women only knew what strange creatures they were sharing their beds with, we’d all be put outside to sleep with Fido.

  Ash was about to touch the glowing, red fire button as she felt the rumble. Her upper torso rotated left, then right, trying to locate its origin. The hillside’s loose shale and gravel began to give way, sending it skittering down the mountain past her. Struggling to stay upright, she lowered her long, robotic arms so that she was in an inverted, four-point stance. As her head rotated to look behind her, four meters away was a boulder, twenty-two meters in diameter, the first of many, bearing down on her.

  Unable to escape from the end-game move, she stood frozen as the boulder rolled over her, crushing and then exploding her bot. Ashlyn screamed.

  Steven half expected to see her clinging to the rock like a flattened cartoon figure as it rotated round, but as the dust cleared, he saw nothing more than twisted scrap metal strewn across the hillside.

  A moment later, “Game over. Blue Warrior wins,” announced Gena.

  As the terrain about him dissolved, he saw that Ashlyn had loosed herself from her bot and was falling to lay crumpled on the platform. Loosing himself, he jumped over the handrail of the platform to the ground below and ran to the top of her platform.

  Ash was gasping, hands clenched to her abdomen.

  At her side, “Ash, are you all right?”

  “Wow, that thing was heavy!”

  “Sorry, Ash. I didn’t mean for it to be so painful. Do you think anything is broken?”

  “Just my ego,” said Ash with a pained frown. “I’ve never seen a strategy like that before. Novacek warned me that you were good, but that was—brilliant.”

  “We should get you back to your cabin and let the shower’s sonic-massager work the stiffness out,” offered Steven.

  “I’ve got better ways of working the stiffness out,” said Ashlyn as she gingerly rose. “I have the arena reserved for another ninety-six minutes.”

  His heart skipped.

  “So what are you waiting for?” said Ashlyn.

  “Just admiring the view of the mountains and valleys.”

  With a grin, “You’ll have more fun hiking them, than staring at them. Here, let me help you,” said Ash nearly ripping his clothes from him, “We’ll need every minute. Remember, you owe me a double!”

  ***

  From deep within his dreams, Avenger’s siren jolted him awake.

  With the klaxons abrupt stop, stark silence left the sound of Steven’s thumping heart and ragged breath to fill the darkened room. He reached out, verifying that Phillip was still asleep and lying beside him. His mind fought to clear away the fog that clung to him, to comprehend the siren’s message.

  As Gena brought the light up in the room, she also connected him to the bridge.

  “Is it time for the drop?” asked Steven.

  “Almost, sir. That was the twenty minute warning.”

  “Put us on full alert! Call the first team to the bridge.”

  ***

  As Commander Gordon Novacek took the First Officer’s seat next to him, Steven reflected back to the day when the two of them had first met. Novacek was the epitome of first impressions being lasting ones, for he was a man never to be forgotten.

  For starters, if all the men in the world had drawn sticks, then Novacek had drawn the short one. Bald, square faced, weak jawed, standing a squat 5 foot 5 inches in height, he had about the droopiest set of eyes that any human had ever possessed. To top it off, he was hampered yet further by a stutter which grew proportionately worse when under duress.

  Upon receiving his commission, Steven had been granted the reward of handpicking his officers. Novacek had been chosen fourth, after Renee, Leslie, and Victor, who had all been his close friends since his first year at the Academy. Though Novacek was thirty years Steven’s senior, he had been an obvious choice, because he’d placed first in the Academy finals—not first in his class, but first in the entire history of the Academy, a record that stood until Steven’s own testing.

  For a mission of this type, Novacek was the perfect choice. He had been one of the few to receive the same tactical combat training as Steven. He could also be trusted to follow any order without question. Any task assigned him was as good as done.

  “Drop initiated!” said Robbie.

  The swirling vortex on Avenger’s forward screen suddenly came alive with streaks of white light, focusing to the pinpoints of star-filled heavens as Avenger slowed.

  “Drop successful. We’re right on target, sir. Sirius B, is 38 degrees off our port bow, 13 million kilometers distance,” called Lieutenant Rawlings on radar.

  “Put our position in relation to LV-6 and the other planetary bodies in this system on screen.”

  “Sir! I have three contacts! Distance, 1.4 million kilometers, fanned out 13 degrees to starboard. Their profile matches the destroyer class vessel that attacked Earth, sixteen years ago,” said Rawlins.

  “Have they spotted us?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re being scanned by a Polaris wave. I jammed it, but for a couple of seconds we were open to them. They have powered up and are beginning to move toward us.”

  “Rawlings, is there anything within range that might help us?” Steven knew that physically they were no match for three destroyer class vessels.

  “Admiral, there is one option,” said Novacek.

  Steven turned to look at him.

  “Sirius B.”

  Novacek’s intoned confidence along with his street smarts, made Steven’s decision. “Robbie, execute toward Sirius B, maximum speed!

  Novacek, continue.”

  “Sir—it’s your S-sol m-maneuver. I’ve s-studied it extensively. The anti-g-gravity plating should be c-capable of deflecting the bulk of the g-gravity and the s-shields will handle the heat and r-radiation. It’ll also make us b-blind to them for a few m-minutes.”

  “Tha
t was only a sim,” Steven reminded.

  “But it w-worked.”

  For the first time, Steven wondered if people were putting too much faith in him. His Academy test was nothing more than beating a programmer’s inputted data. It was a game—but now, they were committed. The enemy was in pursuit.

  With a smirk, he nodded to Novacek. “All right—let’s do it!

  Robbie, keep us at full impulse and drop the forward anti-grav plating. Let the sun pull us in. Plot a course that will enable us to slingshot around the starboard side of the sun. Watch the gravity well—don’t let the angle of our descent get too steep.”

  Several of the crew turned to look at him, awed at what they were about to do.

  “What the hell were three destroyers doing way out here, anyway?” said Engineer Preston.

  “The pawns are always out front,” said Steven. “But it’s the King that we’re after.

  Jenkins, are you prepared to launch all tubes?”

  “Yes, sir. Tubes 1‑18 are loaded with Intercepts. Ready and standing by,” returned Jenkins.

  “Chief, what’s our current energy status?” Steven requested.

  “Steady at 96 percent.”

  “Sir, I think the destroyers are a bit bewildered by what we’re doing. They’ve corrected their heading and are on an intercept course, but they were sluggish in doing it,” said Rawlings.

  “Will they catch us before we get there?”

  “They’ll get within missile range, but I don’t believe their missiles will catch us before our speed builds enough to outrun them.”

  “And what is the distance to their home planet, LV-6?”

  “81 million kilometers, 140 degrees astern,” said Rawlings.

  “Perfect! Stratton, program a drone Sharkfin to head for the planet at maximum burn, equatorial impact. Leave her fully armed but disarm all the warheads. Set her shields to maximum, and the defensive matrix to auto-avoidance. Have the fighter drop its shields as it enters the atmosphere.”

  “Programming, setting impact zone for equatorial plane,” confirmed Stratton. “And you did say to have her drop shields, sir?”