They flew through a rain of light and the husks of dead ships. Corpses thudded against their hull. They flew through hailstorms of plasma bolts, their shields cracking, their decks breaching. They flew through hundreds of floating corpses. They flew above the good blue sky of Earth.
Abyzou's ship loomed ahead, hovering over the ruin of the Sparta. The saucer's cannons fired. The Lodestar flew through the barrage, losing more decks, flying onward. Their ship became a missile.
Like a wolf charging at a bear, the Lodestar shot toward Abyzou's dark saucer.
The professor reached out and clasped Ben-Ari's hand.
Their figurehead, the goddess Eos, drove into the enemy's hull.
The cosmos seemed to shatter.
She tightened her grip on the professor's hand. She looked up into his eyes. He smiled at her. They stood together as the bridge splintered. Their figurehead plowed deeper, tearing into the enemy ship, and from the crumbling bridge, Ben-Ari stared into the innards of the saucer. Grays perished before her. All the monsters of hell screamed, lashed against her ship, shrieking, clawing, laughing, dying, a horde of demons all around her. She was floating through the underworld.
Pinned under the beam, Aurora reached out a tentacle. Most of their workstations were gone. Most of the viewports had fallen, exposing spurting cables and dented steel. The mollusk grabbed a lever and yanked it down.
The Lodestar pulled back, detaching from the massive saucer, exposing a hole the size of a house.
Ben-Ari swayed across the crumbling floor and fired their last missiles.
The missiles flew into the hole.
They exploded deep inside the enemy mothership.
Fire.
Fury.
Flaming shrapnel and shattering glass and bending steel and melting flesh.
The great saucer, the largest ship in the battle, cracked open like a rancid egg, spilling its innards.
The Lodestar pulled farther back, and Ben-Ari watched, eyes damp, holding her professor's hand. It was like watching a supernova. It was a thing of beauty. Several escape pods jettisoned the saucer, but most of the grays perished in the fire, and their charred bones flew. The last of the Firebirds flew toward the wreckage, firing missiles, tearing apart the larger chunks. Millions of shards, all that remained of the enemy's flagship, rained into the atmosphere and burned up.
Ben-Ari allowed herself a single deep breath.
Most of the Lodestar's hull was cracked, falling apart. They hovered, barely still alive.
Most of her bridge had shattered, the viewports gone. She couldn't see much, but she logged into one monitor that was still working. Only a dozen human ships still flew, the Lodestar the largest among them. Hundreds of saucers still fought, but they were descending toward the planet now, leaving the remnants of humanity's fleet behind. Nobody was attacking the Lodestar at the moment; perhaps they thought the ship mere wreckage. Reports came in from Earth, flashing across her screen. The saucers were landing, and thousands of gray warriors were emerging to fight.
Her communicator crackled to life.
"Captain Ben-Ari?" the voice emerged.
She could almost weep from relief. "President Petty! I thought you were . . ."
"Aboard the Sparta? I was. I jettisoned in time." Gunfire sounded in the background. "We're fighting on the plains of Earth. If the Lodestar is still capable, I want you to fly into deep space. Leave Earth."
She gasped. "Sir! I will not!"
"You will!" Petty said. Background screams and shrieks sounded through the com. "I have an important mission for the Lodestar. You must flee the battle for now. You must live to fight another day. I have a new mission for you. I will send details when I can. For now, fly at warp speed and get the hell out of here."
Ben-Ari looked around her. But there were still hundreds of saucers flying toward Earth! She needed to fight them!
"I am a soldier," she said. "I will not tuck my tail and—"
"The Lodestar is to depart Earth's orbit, flee to deep space, and await further instruction," Petty said. "That is an order, Captain. Obey it."
She inhaled sharply. She nodded, eyes damp. She couldn't speak louder than a hoarse whisper. "Yes, sir."
She cut off the communicator.
She turned toward her bridge crew. Only three remained alive. Fish, leaning against a control panel, bleeding from gashes on his leg and forehead. The professor, hair in disarray but eyes hard with determination. Aurora, her chair smashed, wounded but still holding the controls. A dozen other bridge officers lay dead around them among shattered viewports, bent steel, and the corpses of grays.
"You heard the man," Ben-Ari said. "You are to fly the Lodestar into deep space. Professor, you have command of the ship. Godspeed, my friends."
She turned to leave the bridge. The professor raced after her. He took hold of her arm.
"Einav! What—"
She turned back toward him. She smiled shakily and placed a hand on his cheek. "I cannot abandon Earth, professor. Never. I'm not a scientist like you." Her tears flowed. "I am a soldier. I always will be."
His own eyes dampened. "But how?" he whispered.
"I will not disobey Petty's orders. The Lodestar will still fly away. But I won't be on it." She smiled shakily. "We have flight suits in the armory. I practiced space jumps in Space Territorial Command. I can do this." Her voice dropped to a choked whisper. "I can still fight for Earth."
The professor pulled her into an embrace, and he kissed her lips. For a moment, as sparks rained around them, as outside the demons flew, they kissed. A single light in darkness.
When they pulled apart, he gave her a salute.
"Godspeed, Captain."
She left the bridge.
She walked through the devastated corridors of the Lodestar, moving between corpses and shattered chambers.
She pulled on her flight suit.
She dived through the battle, falling through the wreckage and death. She blazed into the atmosphere, a comet of fire. She burst into blue sky. She plunged down toward her planet, toward the world she loved. Toward war. Toward beauty.
Someday perhaps I will dedicate my life to science, to exploration, to love. But not today. Today I fight.
She dived toward the plains of Mongolia, sprawling grasslands where warlords had once raised an empire. A battle was already raging below. A hundred saucers were hovering over the plains, and thousands of grays were emerging. A battalion of HDF tanks was roaring toward them, while infantry troops charged, firing their guns.
As Ben-Ari plunged down headfirst, she held out her rifle. She aimed at one of the saucers and blasted down a barrage of plasma bolts.
Her weapons slammed into the saucer's roof, and the ship tilted and slammed down, crushing several grays.
Ten meters above the ground, Ben-Ari activated her jet pack and leveled off. She swerved from side to side, dodging the enemy fire, and rained down plasma. She rose higher. She flew over the enemy hosts toward the charging human infantry. She was still an infantry major in the reserves; today she would fight with the infantry again.
Below, the HDF troops saw her. A private raised the call.
"Ben-Ari! Ben-Ari! The Golden Lioness fights with us!"
Lioness. Yes, that is what the young soldiers had begun to call her. Her surname, Ben-Ari, meant "lion's child" in her mother tongue. Her golden hair, she supposed, supplied the rest of the nickname. She had become famous after the Scum War, the commander of the platoon that had killed the scum emperor. After the Marauder War, when she had returned with the Ghost Fleet to secure Earth's victory, she had become a legend. The Golden Lioness. A heroine of Earth.
Today I better not become a martyr of Earth, she thought.
"Be brave, soldiers of Earth!" she cried, flying toward them. "The Golden Lioness fights with you! Onward! To victory! Drive them back! Show them no mercy! Fight for—"
A hailstorm of fire rose from the gray ranks.
Ben-Ari cursed and swerved sid
eways.
Electrical bolts flew around her, ionizing the air. She swerved right, leaning sideways on the curve, and more bolts flew, and one slammed into her jet pack.
She screamed as the jet pack shattered.
It caught flame and she plunged downward.
She careened madly through the sky, her teeth knocking together, her jet pack sputtering.
She slammed into the ground and plowed forward through the dirt, shattering stones, uprooting grass. Her hardened jump suit cracked, dented, turned red hot. When finally she came to a halt, she was deep behind enemy lines, struggling for breath. Inside her hard suit, her body felt like a beaten sack of meat.
She ignored the agony.
She leaped to her feet, gun firing.
They surrounded her. Thousands of them. The gray warriors.
Their armor was vaguely Egyptian. Crimson ankhs were engraved onto their breastplates, symbols of their goddess. Dark helmets coated their massive heads, the visors cruel masks. Each warrior carried a rod, eight feet tall, topped with a generator for firing bolts. Sickle swords hung at their sides. Already some of these grays carried lurid trophies of war—human heads, hands, and hearts that dangled from their belts.
Ben-Ari spun in a circle, howling, firing her plasma rifle on automatic, spreading a ring of fire.
All around her, gray warriors fell, burning. More stepped up to replace them. She had charged her rifle before her jump, but it would not last long on automatic. She kept spinning, cocooning herself in flame, desperate to hold back the horde. The grass blazed around her feet. The shards of broken starships lay around her, still sizzling hot. She slew another line of grays, but more advanced.
A gray raised his electrical rod. A bolt slammed into Ben-Ari's shoulder, denting her armor. Another bolt hit her chest, shoving her back, charring her breastplate and knocking the breath out of her. A third bolt hit her back, and she fell to her knees.
They closed in all around. They drew their swords.
"Ben-Ari," a gray rumbled, voice deep and demonic. "We have orders to take you alive." His eyes narrowed with glee. "But you can live without your limbs." He raised his sword.
Ben-Ari raised a shard of broken starship and hurled it. The sharp metal slammed into the gray's chest, cracking his armor and impaling him. His sword fell. Ben-Ari lifted the weapon.
"You will not take me," she said, staring around her at the creatures. She held her rifle in one hand, her sword in the other. "You will not take this world! I am Major Einav Ben-Ari! I am human! This world is not yours. You will not take it!"
She would fire her plasma gun until the last drop of flame, then plunge her sword into her heart.
She pressed the trigger, and her plasma roared out.
Around her, the enemy burned.
The great ring of fire crackled around her, her shield, her fury, her death in light and glory.
Her gun sputtered. A last flicker of fire emerged, then died. She stood alone, clad in her charred armor, hundreds of dead grays around her. And thousands of living beasts climbed over the corpses, advancing her way. She raised her chin. She raised her sword.
Farewell, Earth. Remember me in victory. She took a shaky breath. Be brave.
She placed the tip of her blade against her chest, prepared to plunge it through her heart.
Roars tore across the land.
Cannons blazed.
Clouds of dust flew.
With the might of gods, the tank battalion plowed into the gray lines.
Ben-Ari lowered her sword. She gasped, her eyes damp.
She stood in the field, watching as the great machines of war crushed the enemy beneath their caterpillar tracks. The tanks' shells sailed overhead, shrieking, deafening. Phoenixes were emblazoned on their hulls, symbols of the HDF, and pride filled Ben-Ari. Here was human might.
She ran, swinging her sword.
She was still alive. And she could still kill.
A gray lashed a bolt at her. She deflected it with her blade. She leaped toward the towering creature—she didn't even reach his shoulders—and swung the sickle blade into his legs, cutting them out from under the gray. Another gray fired, hitting her with a bolt, knocking her down. When he loomed above her, she leaped up, and her sword slashed through his neck. She wrenched the rod from his hands, aimed, and fired a bolt into another gray. The beast fell, crackling with electricity.
"The Golden Lioness lives!" cried a voice. A tank rumbled up toward her, and a soldier reached down a hand. She took it. She climbed onto the tank. They charged onward.
The tanks crested a hill, and from here, Ben-Ari could review the battle.
She lost her breath.
She had fought in two galactic wars, but she had never seen a battle like this. Hundreds of thousands were descending upon the plains. Saucers hovered everywhere, fading into the horizon. Human transport jets were releasing company after company of paratroopers. Artillery brigades were shelling the saucers, and fighter jets were flying overhead, battling the enemy's red dogfighters. Entire infantry brigades were charging into battle, slamming into countless gray warriors. Blood drenched the fields of Earth. The husks of starships, some small Firebirds and some massive warships, smoked upon the plains.
The words of an old song returned to her.
"We're putting out the fire with gasoline," she whispered, and a sad smile touched her lips. "It's been so long."
As a younger officer, Ben-Ari used to scoff at fools who rode atop tanks instead of hunkering within their shells. Today she was a fool. Today she remained atop the tank, charging at the lead of the thousands of lumbering machines of war. Today she wanted them to see her—her soldiers for inspiration, her enemy for fear. She was the Golden Lioness. She had defeated the scum and marauders. She was the scion of a military dynasty. She would let them see her. She would live.
The sun set, but the battle lit the darkness.
Tonight we are free. Tonight we live.
Throughout the night, the horrors kept descending from space. More saucers arrived, runes blazing red upon their hulls, and they cast down death from their cannons. The clouds broke, and countless chariots of fire descended, their wheels scythed, their riders firing bolts into the lines of infantrymen. Armored pods fell from the sky, cracked open like eggs, and spewed out monstrosities the grays had engineered: towering warriors that raced on six legs, charging insects with wicked black eyes, and scaled beasts with humanoid faces that could lift tanks in their claws. The gates of a hellish future had opened, and the terrors spilled forth.
Not alien terrors, Ben-Ari thought. The terrors of humanity, of the monsters we will become, which I must prevent us from becoming.
And again the guilt filled her.
I banished the monks. I created this.
Her tank charged into a line of grays, and she cried out and fired an assault rifle taken from a fallen soldier.
I will make this right.
"The chariots of fire!" she shouted into her communicator. "Black Rose Brigade, take them on! Destroy the chariots!"
Hours ago, over two hundred tanks had rumbled in Black Rose Brigade. Only half now remained. Their commander had fallen; Ben-Ari now wore that mantle. The hundred tanks charged downhill, cannons blazing.
Ahead, the enemy chariots were tearing through the lines of human infantry. Each chariot was larger than a tank, terrible machines of dark steel, glyphs shining upon their sides. Fire crackled across them, and scythes thrust out from their wheels, tearing into soldiers, ripping men and women apart. Instead of living horses, robotic beasts pulled these chariots, stallions of dark steel and gears and engines. Nefitis had first revealed herself to the ancient Egyptians, and here was that civilization reborn, mechanized and ruthless.
The ancient Egyptians enslaved my people, Ben-Ari thought, as these creatures seek to enslave us all. We will not let them.
"Charge ahead!" she cried. "We do not stop. We do not surrender. We do not turn back. We do not slow down. Charge! Full sp
eed ahead, and tear through them! Send these bastards to hell!"
The tanks charged, crushing corpses beneath them, and plowed into the lines of chariots.
Flame met metal. Bullets met flesh. Blood soaked the soil.
Fire and gasoline, Ben-Ari thought. Despair and hope. War and glory. Human nobility and the evil we cannot become.
As the battle raged, she knew that this was different than any war she had fought. This was a war against herself. A war against the demon inside—the demon she must cast back.
Her tank slammed into a chariot and fired its cannon, knocking the massive vessel aside. Mechanized horses galloped, and another chariot slammed into their tank, and fire engulfed them. Ben-Ari ducked into the hatch, and they charged onward through the battle, ramming into gray warriors, battling for every meter. The wall of tanks and the wall of chariots met where life ended, and the earth shook.
She rose ahead atop the tank to survey the battle, and she saw that all around her, tanks burned and humans lay dead, ripped apart, many merely piles of bone and blood.
Screams rose from a living company. Soldiers turned to flee. Ben-Ari stared and lost her breath. She placed her hand against her chest, seeking the comfort of the Star of David medallion she kept hidden within her armor.
By God.
Three monstrous cyborgs were scuttling their way. They were the size of whales. Each was formed of segments, and they raced on many clawed legs. They were organic flesh yet coated with metal plates. Their torsos thrust upward like those of deformed centaurs, and each creature sprouted several bloated, wrinkled heads with massive black eyes. They were grays, genetically twisted, hellishly formed, integrated with machines. Guns were mounted on their backs, and they fired hailstorms of bullets into the fleeing infantry.
For the first time in the battle, Ben-Ari wanted to flee too.
For the first time, pure terror filled her.
She tightened her lips. Eyes damp, she nodded.
"Take them on," she said into her communicator. "Black Rose Brigade, take them on! Charge! To victory!" She grabbed a megaphone and shouted across the battle. "Soldiers of humanity, I am the Golden Lioness! I fight with you! Take them on! Charge! To victory!"
Earth Honor (Earthrise Book 8) Page 20