She paused for a moment. She took a deep breath. She spoke again, more softly now, but her voice grew stronger with every word.
"We have suffered unimaginable horrors. Everyone among you has lost loved ones. Ten years ago, the scum slaughtered tens of millions. Only a few years later, the marauders slaughtered many millions more. We watched entire cities crumble. We watched nations fall. We watched a hundred thousand starships vanish from the sky. Today we fly again into battle. And today we are accompanied by the spirits of millions of our martyrs, our loved ones burned, slaughtered, consumed, mutilated, millions who perished in the hellfire of battle and the inferno of the alien slaughterhouses. Today we fly to battle remembering our fallen mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses, children. Millions who suffered and died so that we may live." Her voice rose to a loud cry. "Today you will not join them! Today you will live! Today we will defeat the enemy! Today we will bring freedom and victory to humanity! Today we save Earth!"
She cut off her transmission. She raised her chin.
The saucers charged toward them.
Ben-Ari nodded. She turned toward Aurora, and she smiled thinly, tears in her eyes.
"Forward," she whispered. "To war and glory."
The alien lifted one tentacle in salute. Her body flashed gold. "To war and glory."
Across the bridge, the other officers—scientists, engineers, pilots—saluted too. Today they were all soldiers.
"To war and glory."
The engines rumbled.
Ben-Ari stood at the viewport, facing the wrath of the enemy—ten thousand saucers storming forth.
The Lodestar blasted forward to meet them, leading humanity's charge.
The enemy opened fire. Thousands of blazing bolts streamed toward Earth's fleet.
Ben-Ari nodded and hit a button on her controls.
The Lodestar—a tiny light before the dark horde—unleashed her fury.
The heavens burned.
Explosions rocked the Lodestar. A viewport cracked. Across the ship, the hull dented, then tore open. People spilled out into space. Fire raged.
Ben-Ari fired again. They took out one saucer. Hundreds more stormed toward them.
They kept charging forth.
"They're tearing us apart!" Fish cried.
"Onward!" Ben-Ari shouted. "Charge! For Earth!"
The Lodestar kept flying forth.
More blasts hit them, tearing into them. Another deck was breached. Flames filled the bridge.
Ben-Ari raised her chin and took a deep breath.
Firing all their guns, they slammed into the gray fleet.
Their figurehead, shaped as the Greek goddess Eos, plowed through the enemy. Saucers shattered. Their cannons kept firing, blasting bolts from port and starboard, knocking enemy ships back. No, the Lodestar was not a warship, but she had been built to survive the dangers of space, and she fought with a fury few vessels could match.
"Onward!" Ben-Ari cried. "Humanity, onward!"
They charged onward.
Blasts hit them.
Fire engulfed them.
More decks shattered, and flailing men spilled into the void.
They kept charging, knocking aside the buzzing saucers, tearing through the enemy ranks.
Ahead loomed a massive dark mothership, a hulking disk of dark metal, many times the size of the Lodestar. Hieroglyphs were engraved upon it, leaking red rust as if they bled.
Forward.
Onward.
The Lodestar's cannons blasted.
They charged toward the enemy
With fury, with shouts and blood and blazing fire, they rammed into the mothership. The goddess Eos, forged of sharp steel and larger than life, plowed into the enemy and shattered the glyphs and pierced the hull with raging flame.
The Lodestar shook.
The mothership careened, cannons blazing.
The two ships detached, and Ben-Ari fired everything they had, sending the wrath of the Lodestar into the gaping hole in the gargantuan saucer, the hole they had torn open.
Their shells flew into the enemy ship, and the mighty saucer—a vessel the size of a town—shattered.
The holocaust filled space.
Shrapnel flew everywhere.
Shards the size of oaks rained toward Earth.
The Lodestar hovered in the middle of the enemy formations, a single small ship, damaged, cracked, burning. Around them spread the thousands of enemy saucers.
Perhaps this is our death, Ben-Ari thought. But we die killing many of the bastards.
She sucked in air, prepared to release another volley of fire, to die in glory.
With streams of light and thrumming engines, hundreds of other human starships crashed into the battle around her.
Warships tore through saucer formations. Firebirds streaked forth, all guns blazing, whipping between the motherships and engaging the small red fighters. From the distance, the great carriers—starships the size of skyscrapers—were blazing their cannons, shelling the enemy.
All was light and flame and shattering metal.
Ben-Ari sneered.
"We fight," she said. "We stand. We will win! Forward and fire!"
The battle raged for hours. All around them, the small fighters zipped, careened, shattered. Firebirds exploded. Saucers cracked open. The motherships sent forth beams of light, searing through human warships and starfighters alike. From below on Earth, it would seem that the sky was burning, that the stars were weeping.
"Ships of Earth, fight!" Ben-Ari cried, broadcasting her voice to the fleet. "Do not let one saucer pass! Fight! Hold them back! Charge into them and fire everything!"
And they fought. Warships. Starfighters. Civilian vessels. Merchants, cargo haulers, miners, racers—they fought with the same fury, same valor as the soldiers. Not one ship fled. Their cannons kept blazing. Every moment another human ship collapsed, torn apart by the enemy fire. Every moment more warriors perished. Yet here in Earth's orbit, they kept fighting. Defenders of their planet. Heroes of humanity.
"Captain!" Fish shouted. "Captain, look at those tossers! Approaching off the starboard! And we're exposed like a shag on a rock."
She spun and stared. Her heart sank.
She clenched her fists.
"Divert power to starboard shields and cannons! Fire all we've got! Take those bastards down!"
A dozen of them were charging forth: dark enemy ships, conical, tipped with drills. They were not saucers, but they were still gray ships. Bullets flew from them, hammering into the Lodestar's shields. But Ben-Ari knew these ships intended more than shelling.
Those were boarding vessels.
The Lodestar answered with a volley. Shell after shell flew from the starboard cannons. Explosions rocked the enemy drills. Two, three, then ten of the drills shattered.
But two of the conical vessels reached the Lodestar. They slammed into the ship, drove hooks into the hull, and started drilling.
"Bring up a map of the Lodestar," Ben-Ari told her computer. "Show me the hull breaches."
A hologram appeared before her, showing the decks where the drills were working.
"All security guards!" Ben-Ari said. "Make to decks D7 and E4! Now!" She turned toward her new security officer, an erstwhile HDF battalion commander. "Man the cannons and keep us fighting."
With that, Ben-Ari rushed off the bridge.
She raced down the corridors, her armor clanking, her rifle clutched in her hands. She made her way to deck D7, and ten security guards burst into the room with her.
Her heart sank.
It was the ship's nursery.
The Lodestar was, of course, not a military vessel. They had only just returned from deep space, hadn't yet evacuated the civilians. The nursery was filled with babies.
The enemy drill, a screaming terror the size of a shark, was tearing through the wall. A nurse lay on the floor, dead, pierced with shrapnel. A baby shrieked in her arms, bloodied. The lights were flashing, and the room alternated
between blinding white light and pitch-blackness.
"Henson!" Ben-Ari barked. "Walt! Guerra! Get the children out!"
Three security guards rushed forth. They grabbed babies, one under each arm, and began evacuating them from the deck.
Ben-Ari faced the spinning drill, gun raised. Seven other officers stood with her, holding their own weapons.
The drill shrieked, spraying sparks and metal shards. The massive machine kept shoving into the room, crushing the empty cribs, grinding the dead nurse to a pulp. When the hole was the size of a doorway, the drill began pulling back.
"You are warriors of Earth!" Ben-Ari said. "You will fight well! You will defeat the enemy. Today you will live!"
The drill vanished, exposing a tunnel from the enemy ship.
And the creatures charged into the Lodestar.
Officers screamed.
They were grays—but not the grays Ben-Ari had fought before. Not humanoid. These ones scuttled on eight legs like spiders. They towered eight feet tall, strange centaurs, their claws like swords. Their mouths opened in shrieks, and their black eyes blazed with dark fury.
Ben-Ari stared in horror, for an instant frozen.
Then she screamed and fired her gun.
Her plasma washed over one of the towering, deformed hybrids.
One creature burst through the flames, shrieking, and lashed its claws at her.
A blast hit the Lodestar, and the lights went dark.
Backup power kicked in, and the light returned, revealing the massive, twisted head of a beast only centimeters away from Ben-Ari. Its jaws opened wide, teeth bared, shriek deafening.
Claws slammed into Ben-Ari, denting her armor, and she flew through the air. She hit the wall, screamed, and fell to the floor.
More of the creatures came charging into the Lodestar, scuttling on their many clawed legs.
The lights vanished again.
Ben-Ari roared and blindly fired her plasma rifle. Blue bolts flashed forward, filling the room with light, slamming into the creatures.
The monsters kept advancing, shrieking, jaws unhinging and widening like the jaws of serpents. Guards shouted and fired their guns. The creatures advanced through the hailstorm of bullets, grabbed guards, and ripped them apart. Severed limbs hit the walls. Blood showered. Entrails splashed onto the floor.
Ben-Ari fired again. Again. She trudged through the gore, switched her plasma rifle to automatic, and gushed forth a mighty torrent of flame.
The inferno washed over one of the creatures, and it screamed. Its skin and flesh melted, revealing the bones beneath, but its heart still pulsed behind exposed ribs.
Two more monsters advanced around their burning comrade, and their claws grabbed Ben-Ari, denting her armor. They lifted her off the floor.
As laser blasts shook the Lodestar, the power died again. The room plunged into darkness.
Pain blazed on Ben-Ari's shoulder.
She yowled and swung her rifle, slamming the barrel into something hard.
The lights came back on, revealing two drooling, bloated faces, the craniums draped with wrinkly gray skin, the eyes deranged, the jaws red with blood—her blood.
Darkness fell.
Teeth slammed into her armor, punching holes through it.
Ben-Ari drew a knife from her belt and drove it upward with all her strength.
When the lights returned, the blade burst through a creature's jaw and into its mouth.
The claws released her, and Ben-Ari fell to the ground, raised her rifle, and fired.
Plasma sprayed upward, a geyser, bathing the room with heat. She screamed as the flames cascaded and showered her helmet. She kept firing. The two creatures above her fell back, faces melting.
She rose to her feet. The twisting creatures knelt before her, ablaze, flesh dripping off the bones. Across the nursery, monsters and humans lay dead. Two living beasts still remained.
Her rifle was drained. Ben-Ari drew twin pistols and fired with each hand.
Bullets slammed into the creatures.
They leaped forth, skin blistering.
Ben-Ari stood her ground, firing again and again.
Her bullets drove between their exposed ribs and into their beating hearts.
The creatures crashed down onto her, burying her beneath them, showering her with blood as they died.
She shoved them off and rose to her feet. The rest of the guards lay dead around her. The monsters gave a last twitch, then fell still.
She spoke into her communicator. "This is Ben-Ari. Get an engineering team to deck D7. Hull breach."
She left the chamber, swayed, and nearly fell. She forced herself to keep walking. Medics rushed toward her. They bandaged her wounds as she marched through the ship. The corridor shook. She tilted, nearly fell. Blasts sounded everywhere. She kept walking. Through the portholes, she saw the battle raging outside, the shells flying, the starfighters battling. Saucers slammed into a warship, and the mighty vessel shattered, showering the Lodestar with shrapnel. The ship shook, and the lights vanished for an instant before returning.
She made her way back onto the bridge.
"Status!" she barked.
Fish turned toward her, face dour. "Half our fleet is gone, Captain. Our ships have taken out a thousand of those buggers, maybe more, but they've got thousands to spare."
"We'll keep fighting to the last ship," she said. "We can't let them reach Earth."
The bridge swayed as the enemy fire slammed into them. The Lodestar was limping, barely able to stay flying. Thousands of starships still battled around them. Earth filled half their viewports, its forests burning as the husks of ships slammed onto the surface.
"Professor!" Ben-Ari said. "Can you open a communication channel to Earth's HDF headquarters?"
He nodded. "Yes, Captain."
"Patch me in."
The professor worked, opening the channel.
"Earth, this is Captain Ben-Ari," she said. "I'm going to send you a live feed of the battle with coordinates of every ship. I want you to begin firing artillery from the surface."
The professor's eyes widened. "Captain! Missiles from Earth to space are notoriously inaccurate. With so many moving targets up here, they won't be able to aim. They'll be firing blindly. They might hit our ships too."
Ben-Ari nodded. "Yes, Professor, I'm aware. But we have only five hundred ships left. They have thousands. The odds are in our favor."
The professor gasped. "Einav—"
"There are tough choices in war, professor. Sometimes commanders must sacrifice the few to save the many. Our task is not to bring everyone home alive. It's to keep that home safe." She returned to her communicator. "Earth, are you receiving our live feed?" She nodded. "Good. Commence shelling when ready." She glanced out the viewport at her disintegrating fleet. "I suggest you hurry."
She stood on the bridge, hands behind her back, watching thousands of starships fly and fight and burn. Watching another human warship shatter. Watching hundreds of Firebirds wink out and rain to Earth like comets. Watching thousands of saucers still fly.
Ahead flew the flagship of the enemy, a mighty saucer with a golden ankh upon it. It still flew high above, overseeing the battle. Ben-Ari knew that Prince Abyzou was there. Waiting for her. She could feel him staring. Even without a communication feed, she felt his eyes boring into her. And he knew she was staring back.
Another human warship shattered.
A carrier fell.
Ben-Ari stared up at her enemy.
Taste our fire, she thought.
And from Earth below soared thousands of missiles.
From here, they seemed almost delicate, tipped with red fire, leaving trails of smoke. Yet they grew larger. Thousands. Soon tens of thousands. A forest. A cathedral. The columns of fire rose, and the missiles soared into the battle, and space itself seemed to shatter.
Mushrooms of flame bloomed across space.
In the sudden silence, it was almost beautiful.
Missiles drove into saucers like flaming needles. The vessels shattered. Red and orange and golden fire blazed across them, a thousand shimmering lights. Another volley rose from below, gentle arches of smoke, and space shook, and saucers fell, cracking, falling apart, spinning, blazing, hailing down into the oceans, onto the ravaged plains and cities of Earth.
With them, human ships fell.
Careening saucers slammed into Firebirds. Errant missiles drove into warships. Storms of shrapnel tore into civilian ships. Only one carrier, the mighty Sparta, still flew.
But we're hurting the enemy. Ben-Ari stared at the devastation unfolding around her. Standing in the domed bridge, she felt as if she hovered within the battle, as if again she were fighting in nothing but a spacesuit. We're holding them back. With the last of our strength, we're defending Earth.
She checked the Lodestar's arsenal. They still had some fury left. With a thin smile, she unleashed a volley of missiles, directing her wrath toward Abyzou's ship above.
The mighty saucer trembled.
Cracks raced across its hull, and chunks of it fell, emblazoned with its bleeding hieroglyphs. Around the mothership, missiles from Earth were ravaging the smaller red saucers.
"I failed to kill you last time, Abyzou," Ben-Ari whispered, ready to release another volley. "I will succeed today."
She prepared to fire the killing blow, to finally slay Nefitis's son.
Across the bridge, red lights flashed and klaxons blared.
"Ben-Ari!" Petty's voice emerged from her communicator, raspy, gasping for Earth. "The other side of Earth!"
She spun back toward the blue planet. Her heart froze.
"Tell me," she whispered.
But she saw them rising over Earth's horizon. Now her heart shattered.
More saucers.
Hundreds more.
Thousands more.
A monitor crackled to life, and Abyzou's ravaged face appeared there, smirking.
"My second legion has orders to take you alive, Einav." The creature licked his shattered teeth. "Soon we'll be together again."
She screamed hoarsely and fired her missiles at him. Abyzou laughed. The thousands of new saucers slammed into the battle with blinding light and shattering steel.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Earth Honor (Earthrise Book 8) Page 17