The Heirs of Earth

by Daniel Arenson

  More of their plasma flew. An inferno of fire blasted toward the human fleet.

  Leona screamed, gripped the helm, and yanked with all her strength. She turned the port shields toward the enemy.

  "Brace for impact!" she cried.

  The plasma bolts slammed against them.

  The Jerusalem rocked.

  The ship flipped over in space and spun.

  "Port cannons!" she cried. "Starboard cannons! Fire!"

  The shells rang out, but the strikers kept flying.

  With blazing light and raining fire, the enemy ships reached them.

  A striker rammed the Jerusalem, and the hull dented. If not for the thick graphene shields reinforced with magnetic fields, the Jerusalem would have shattered. Leona fired the side cannons, shoving the striker back. The ship rammed them again, and the Jerusalem—this mighty frigate—spun through space like a discarded toy.

  The enemy ships swarmed around them. The Jerusalem fired from all sides. Above her, Leona saw the ISS Bangkok take heavy fire and crack open. The ISS Jaipur was burning, listing, its cannons dead. Starfighters were streaming back and forth.

  "We have to fall back!" Duncan was shouting, singed and bleeding. "Lass, we have to retreat!"

  "No!" Leona cried.

  She tugged on the helm, teeth gnashing, desperate to halt the Jerusalem's spin. The strikers stormed all around them. The battle streamed with lines of fire. The bridge rattled.

  There above, Leona saw it. She frowned.

  A striker was charging toward another Inheritor warship. Its exhaust pipes flared on full afterburner, white and blue.

  Leona reached up, grabbed a control panel, and pulled herself to her feet. She fired.

  Her heat-seeking missiles flew toward the pulsing afterburner of the striker above.

  The missiles flew into the striker's exhaust.

  The enemy ship exploded.

  A million metal shards flew everywhere, interspersed with scorpion claws.

  Leona roared with triumph.

  "We can destroy them!" she cried and hit her comm, broadcasting her words to the fleet. "Hit their exhaust pipes! Hit them when they're on afterburner! That's their Achilles' heel. Firebirds, hit them in the exhaust!"

  "Missiles up their asses!" cried Captain Mairead "Firebug" McQueen, voice emerging from Leona's comm.

  Duncan's daughter was a fiery young woman. She was rash, rude, and reckless. But she was also the best damn pilot in the fleet, commander of the Firebirds.

  Mairead flew her starfighter right by the Jerusalem. The young pilot looped around the frigate, a showy display. As she swung by, Mairead waved at Leona.

  "Firebug, enough playing!" Leona said. "Get to it."

  Mairead nodded, her red hair flouncing. "Got it, boss."

  Her Firebird flew onward. The other starfighters followed.

  The remaining Inheritor warships—at least three were disabled—were still firing, but they were slower than the enemy. And the strikers were loath to expose their exhaust pipes. The Firebirds were fast, but they were taking heavy fire. The strikers seemed to realize that the smaller starfighters were their main threat, and they began to focus on dogfighting.

  "Why haven't we launched all our Firebirds?" Leona shouted. "I'm still seeing three in our hangar."

  "Our pilots are down!" Duncan shouted back. The bridge was still burning around them. "The hull is cracked! The enemy hit us right at our launch pad."

  Leona cursed. "Take the bridge, Duncan."

  "Commodore?"

  "You have the bridge!" she cried.

  She ran off the bridge. She raced across the Jerusalem's hold, the vast chamber where the tanker had once shipped gasoline and water. A hundred Inheritor marines were here, but they would be of little use now. She raced between them and toward the hangar.

  She froze.

  Damn it.

  The strikers had scored a direct hit. The door to the hangar was locked. Through the window, Leona could see the devastation. The hangar was cracked open, exposed to space. She would need to—

  A blast hit the Jerusalem.

  They spun.

  The hull dented, and warriors cried out.

  Leona cursed. She swung her rifle, shattered a glass cabinet, and pulled out a spacesuit. She dressed hurriedly, cursing every second that passed. Finally she leaped into the cracked hangar, then slammed the door behind her.

  Bloody hand prints covered the floor and walls. A hole gaped open in the airlock; the vacuum must have sucked the wounded crew and pilots into space. There were three Firebirds here. Two were damaged and smoldering, but the third was unscathed.

  Leona climbed into the starfighter.

  The small, agile ship—no larger than a fighter jet from ancient Earth—roared to life.

  Leona fired the Firebird's guns, ripping open what remained of the airlock, and roared out into space.

  She soared.

  The battle spun around her with light and fire and shattering steel.

  The damage was terrifying from here. Two Inheritor ships were gone—just ruined husks filled with death. Two others were listing, taking heavy fire, cracking open. The rest were overwhelmed, and the strikers were swarming everywhere. The Jerusalem's shields were pockmarked, falling apart, covered with ash.

  Leona gripped her joystick. She had clocked many hours flying in these small starfighters, far more than flying the Jerusalem. In this humble round cockpit, she felt at home. A striker charged toward her, plasma firing. Leona soared high, dodging the assault, then streamed forward and around the enemy. For a split second, the striker revealed the chink in its armor. Leona fired a hailstorm of bullets toward the blazing afterburner.

  The striker shattered. Shards of metal and scorpion shells spread across space, peppering warships.

  "Firebirds, rally here!" Leona said. "Warships, give us cover. Let's show these bugs human pride."

  "Ooh, look at the fancy commodore, flying with us peasants," said Mairead. But as the redhead flew by in her starfighter, she gave Leona a wink.

  The others joined her, twenty birds in all. As they rallied, the strikers turned toward them. Plasma hit a Firebird, tearing it apart. The pilot fell from the shattered cockpit, burnt and screaming. Another striker plowed through their formation, taking out two more Firebirds.

  Leona chased the striker, firing her machine guns. Her bullets grazed its side before finally entering the exhaust.

  The striker shattered.

  "Kill them all!" Leona cried.

  And the Firebirds charged.

  They were small ships, far smaller than the strikers. They were weaker. They barely had any armor. They fired mere bullets and slender missiles, not roaring plasma.

  But they were fast.

  They were damn fast.

  Years ago, Emet had bought a hundred space-racers from a bankrupt drag race operation. He had lovingly restored the machines, working long hours in the hangar. Today they could zip through space with the speed and grace of hornets.

  They swarmed around the strikers, rallying behind Leona. The afterburners glowed. The bullets slammed into the turbines. Striker after striker shattered. As the Firebirds fought, the Inheritor warships kept firing their shells, pounding the strikers. The enemy ships could not regroup. Whenever they tried to charge at the Firebirds, missiles from the warships knocked them aside, exposing their weak spots. Bullets flew. More strikers burned.

  Leona and three other birds chase the last two strikers around the Jerusalem, unleashed a barrage of bullets, and the enemy ships collapsed. Dead scorpions floated through space, ejected from the wreckage.

  Leona slumped back in her seat.

  The battle was over.

  "We won," she whispered, finally allowing her hands to tremble, her breath to shake. "The Heirs of Earth are victorious."

  She spent a moment surveying the aftermath. Her heart sank.

  Three Inheritor warships were ruined. Many Firebirds had fallen.

  I knew those
soldiers, she thought. Sons and daughters of Earth. Proud warriors. Friends. Gone.

  And they hadn't even found the convoy of deathcars yet.

  Leona would need to gather damage reports. To collect the dead. To tend to the wounded. To repair the ships. To clean the blood. To continue her mission. To—

  Her hands trembled around the joystick. Her Firebird rattled.

  Fire rained upon her wedding day, and the albino scorpion laughed, raising Jake's severed legs.

  She knelt, blood dripping between her thighs, painting her wedding dress.

  Around her, the dead danced.

  She breathed.

  "One," she whispered.

  She breathed again.

  "Two."

  She took a deep, shuddering breath.

  "Three."

  And she was back. She tightened her lips.

  She returned to the Jerusalem. She walked through the battered hold, moving between her warriors, and onto the burnt bridge. She had just sat down at the helm when she saw them. There—in the distance ahead.

  There they were.

  She inhaled sharply.

  The deathcars.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The deathcars flew across the darkness, a convoy of despair.

  Leona counted ten of them. The deathcars were surprisingly small. They were black, bulky rectangles, barely more than crates with engines attached. The symbol of the Skra-Shen, a red stinger, was painted on their hulls. The ten deathcars flew in single file, so close they almost looked like a train moving through space.

  Leona flew the ISS Jerusalem closer. The flagship rattled and shook as it flew. The battle on the border had damaged it, but the Jerusalem was a tough old bird. It would take more to bring her down. What remained of the Inheritor fleet—eleven warships and a ragged group of starfighters—flew behind her. They were fifty AUs into Hierarchy space now—billions of kilometers deep. Earth had never seemed so far.

  But ahead was humanity.

  If their intelligence was correct, those deathcars were filled with human captives.

  The enemy saw them. Two strikers were guarding the convoy. The scorpion warships charged toward the Heirs of Earth, but Leona knew how to defeat them now. The battle did not last long. The strikers shattered, and their scorpions flailed through space.

  Leona spoke into her comm, broadcasting her words to her fleet. "Those two strikers we destroyed? They'll have raised the alarm. We can expect more company any moment now. All marines, prepare for boarding."

  The fleet charged closer. There would be human prisoners aboard the deathcars—but scorpions too.

  "Warships, form a ring around the convoy," Leona said, struggling to keep her voice calm. "Firebirds, form an outer ring and watch our backs. Move fast. Let's stop this train."

  The fleet obeyed. The Jerusalem, the largest and heaviest of the ships, moved to block the lead deathcar. The other warships lined the sides of the convoy. The Firebirds spun in rings around them, forming a whirring cage.

  Leona watched from the bridge, chest tight.

  She hit her comm and hailed the enemy.

  "Attention Skra-Shen vessels!" she said. "This is Commodore Leona Ben-Ari, representing the Heirs of Earth. Prepare to be boarded, and put up no resistance. Comply and your lives will be spared. Resist and die."

  A clicking, sneering sound rose from the other end. Scorpion laughter. Screams followed—human screams.

  "Muck!" Leona said. "They're killing the prisoners. Marines, board them! Now! Now!"

  She pulled on her helmet, left the bridge, and ran into the hold. The boardhogs were ready in the hangar. There were three of them—heavy mining vessels purchased from a quarry on a rocky world. Originally, these bulky machines had been used to bore through solid stone, but they worked on starship hulls too. Leona leaped into one of the boardhogs.

  "Three marines, join me!" she cried.

  Three warriors leaped into the boardhog with her, as many as the small vessel would fit. All three wore spacesuits and held assault rifles. Beside her, other warriors were leaping into their own boardhogs.

  Leona shoved down the throttle, and they launched from the Jerusalem's hangar. A second later, the two other boardhogs followed. From the other warships, more boardhogs were launching.

  Leona flew toward one deathcar, hit the hull with a thud, and latched on. She pulled a lever, activating the drill. Sparks flew and metal screamed as the deathcar hull tore open. With the boardhog latched into place, it sealed the opening, leaving the deathcar pressurized.

  Leona drew her pistol, leaving her rifle behind. She would need the shorter barrel in the confined space.

  "For Earth!" she cried, leaping out of the boardhog and into the deathcar.

  A scorpion leaped toward her, claws lashing.

  Leona screamed and fired her pistol, putting a bullet through its eye.

  She took another step, spun, and fired at another scorpion. This one blocked her bullet with its pincer. The beast slammed into her, knocked her down, and buried her under its weight.

  Leona screamed, kicked, but couldn't free herself. The claws lashed in a fury. But other Inheritors were leaping in, and their bullets pounded the giant arachnid, finally cracking the exoskeleton. The hot, gooey insides leaked out. Leona grimaced, shoved the creature off, and rose to her feet.

  She looked around her, seeing the interior of the deathcar for the first time.

  Her heart tore.

  Her eyes dampened.

  We are cattle to them. Just cattle for the slaughter.

  The deathcar was crammed full of prisoners. Hundreds of them.

  "What did they do to you?" Leona whispered. She clenched her fist. Her face flushed, and her lips peeled back. "My Ra, what did they do?"

  But she knew the answer.

  They deprived them of humanity, she thought. They turned them into animals.

  The human prisoners had been stripped naked. Many were bruised, whipped, bloodied. A few were missing limbs. Others were dead already, lying on the floor. The scorpions had sheared or ripped off their hair; many prisoners had bleeding scalps. The scorpions had spared no one. They had even gathered elders, children, babies, and pregnant women. The prisoners were crammed in so tightly they couldn't move. Their skeletal, bleeding bodies pressed together.

  We were once noble, Leona thought, fury filling her. We had once raised great cities, composed symphonies, painted masterpieces, explored the galaxy. This is what the scorpions reduced us to. Dying wretches.

  Her comm buzzed. Duncan's grainy voice emerged into her earpiece.

  "Commodore, we've seized the other deathcars. The scorpion bastards are all dead. My Ra, lass, the people here . . ."

  "Begin evacuations at once," Leona said. "More strikers might arrive any second."

  "There are some people who cannot safely be moved," Duncan said. "I have a patient with a broken spine. Another patient is going into labor. One is suffering seizures. May I suggest we commandeer these ships, take them back with us? We can fly them ourselves, lass. It'll be faster and—"

  "Evacuate everyone now!" Leona said. "I need these deathcars empty. That is an order, dammit!"

  She cursed herself for those words. She sounded panicky. Her father would be cool, collected, in control. Why had he trusted her to lead this mission? Leona couldn't handle this. The room swayed around her. The prisoners were reaching out to her, weeping, tugging at her clothes, whispering prayers, praising her name. But they all spun around her, ghosts in a dream, undead souls with sunken eyes.

  One.

  She breathed.

  Two.

  She squared her shoulders.

  Three.

  "Hear me!" she said to the prisoners. "I am Leona Ben-Ari, an officer in the Heirs of Earth. We're here to help. We're going to move you into our own starships, where you'll receive food, water, and medical attention. I know you're hurt. But you must move quickly."

  One of her warriors approached her. It was Coral Amb
er, the weaver Leona had recruited in the desert planet of Til Shiran. Instead of her white robes from the desert, Coral now wore brown leggings, tall boots, and a blue overcoat—an Inheritor uniform. The insignia of a private proudly shone on her sleeves—a golden chevron.

  Despite the uniform, Coral still looked nothing like a typical Inheritor. She had embroidered silver runes onto the coat, ancient symbols of power. Instead of a gun, a silvery dagger hung from her belt, its blade engraved with ancient symbols. Her platinum tattoos coiled across her dark skin like filigree, coating her hands and right cheek, and her shimmering hair flowed like strands of starlight.

  There's a strange power to her, Leona thought, remembering how Coral had cast back the Peacekeepers with pulsing funnels of energy. A power I don't understand. I wonder who she's more loyal to—the Heirs of Earth or the Weavers Guild.

  "Commodore?" Coral said. "Shouldn't we listen to Doctor Duncan's orders and commandeer these vessels? We can fly them ourselves, take them back home, and convert them into warships."

  Leona looked at the weaver. "Oh, we're going to commandeer them. We're going to fly them. But we're not flying them home." She placed her hand on Coral's shoulder. "Private, I'm going to need your help."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Rowan stood inside the ISS Cagayan de Oro, not knowing if to laugh, cry, or dance. Or maybe all three.

  "We're inside an actual Inheritor starship," she said to Fillister. "A starship Admiral Emet Ben-Ari himself flew here."

  A tear streamed down her cheek, she laughed, and she twirled around. Yes. All three.

  Her dragonfly spun through the air, doing his own little dance. "It's beautiful."

  The Cagayan de Oro was still docking at Paradise Lost, parked in the hangar. Rowan stood alone in the ship's storeroom. Emet was in the cockpit, calibrating his instruments. Bay was across the hangar, fixing Brooklyn, his own starship. For now, Rowan was still stuck in Paradise Lost, this space station where she had spent nearly all her life.

  And yet here, inside Emet's starship, was a different world.