Mars Colony Chronicles (Books 1 - 5): A Space Opera Box Set Adventure

by Brandon Ellis

  “But Lily.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and squeezed the control stick, relaxing his hand a moment later.

  “Do you believe in the afterlife, Ozzy?”

  Ozzy shrugged, his eyes going to his lap. “If there is one, I ain’t invited.” He swallowed hard. “But Lily would be, and so would her mother.”

  He narrowed his eyes at the holodisplay, watching the Marines fly their starfighters on their first attack run.

  “I don’t believe that, Ozzy,” replied Jozi. “I think if there is an afterlife, we all go. No one is exempt.”

  “Maybe.” He let out a chuckle, masking a cry, not believing his luck had run out, and worse yet, Lily’s luck had run out too. “I can only hope.”

  Jozi shook her head. “No hoping. That’s for wimps. Faith is the Galactic Knight’s way.”

  “Then,” responded Gragas over the com line, “let’s know we will survive this. Quad and I are ready to live, and fight, how about you two?”

  Jozi put her hand in a fist and held it toward Ozzy. “You ready?”

  Ozzy nodded, and made a fist, bumping his fist into her’s. “Let’s make some lemonade out of this shit.”

  36

  Rendezvous Point, Beyond Mars’s Exosphere

  Ozzy flew toward the fight, extending Pyke’s bow photon blasters, eight in all.

  The Marines initiated their attack run, and some broke from formation, and others continued their flight. A moment later, every fighter let loose photon blasts and screaming missiles.

  Lights flashed, starfighters dodged, and starfighters erupted into fire, quickly turning into stardust and space debris moments later.

  Ozzy banked right, avoiding an enemy starfighter spinning out of control, its pressure bulkhead, fin, and tail cone missing.

  The cosmos was chaos and starfighters were criss crossing, barrel rolling, and doing everything in between to avoid death.

  At the speeds these fighters were moving, Ozzy wouldn’t be able to tell a cat from a dog, let alone a Marine from a Dunrakee.

  “Jozi, be my eyes. You’re more trained in this than I am.”

  She eyed the radar, and turned it off. “Too many ships.” She shifted her focus on the holodisplay. “2 o’clock, a Dunrakee fighter chasing one of our own.”

  “On it,” Ozzy veered the craft, performing a wingover and upped the thrusters, pushing Pyke faster.

  “Downed one,” came Quad. “Port side.”

  Ozzy steered Pyke into a quarter loop and vertically climbed, or so he thought, not that he could tell what was up or down in space.

  He let the speed fall, and then went into a flat-turn, diving behind the Dunrakee starfighter.

  Target lock beeped and he pressed the trigger on his control stick, sending eight photon cannon projectiles at the Dunrakee.

  The starfighter turned into a flash of light, and burst apart at about every seem.

  “Holy Mars,” said Ozzy, his eyes like saucers. “These beams disintegrated the sucker.”

  “11 o’clock,” yelled Jozi.

  Ozzy pitched to the left and veered the ship in a large, rounded turn to come around another Dunrakee chasing a Marine.

  Ozzy waited for target lock and held down the trigger. The enemy starfighter blew apart, and Ozzy flew under the debris, avoiding any impact to the graviton shields.

  The radar popped on the screen, beeping a warning. Ozzy kept his eyes on the battle. “Jozi, what’s it going on about?”

  Jozi let out a big breath. “It’s not good. We have three bogies coming from Mars, heading right for Nautilus.”

  “How big are the ships?”

  “Dunrakee star cruisers and a carrier.”

  Ozzy banked left, bringing the Nautilus in view. It was now a small, metallic rectangle in space, but Ozzy could see it along with the oncoming ships about to send Nautilus to the scrap yard, if not worse.

  And worse was going to be the scenario.

  “We can’t defend the Nautilus from those cruisers and carrier,” said Jozi, touching Ozzy’s arm.

  Nautilus began moving, heading in Ozzy’s direction. Sever had to know he had no chance against the amassing ships.

  The com line crackled. “Ozzy, this is General Sever. Get the politicians out of here and rendezvous with the rest of the fleet.”

  “Where are they?” asked Ozzy.

  “They are heading to Europa. I’m sending over the coordinates now and you can take their trajectory. Hopefully you can catch up to them. The majority of our population made it out, and are alive. We, on the other hand, will not.”

  Small escape pods jettisoned from Nautilus, flying quickly back to Mars. They were getting the civilians out, no doubt hoping they would be able to find a way to survive on Mars and in a Mars city as long as possible, at least giving them a chance.

  The coordinates came up on Ozzy’s screen.

  “Sir,” said Ozzy, biting his bottom lip, his mind wanting to help, but his heart knowing it would be a fatal attempt. “Thank you.” Ozzy didn’t know what else to say. The guy was giving his life, and his crew’s, in order to save Ozzy and the politicians.

  “I have let the Marine starfighter pilots know that their sacrifice is not in vain. They will maintain combat until you are out of range. The ones who survive, will fly in a path away from Europa in the guise of a true escape plan. We hope the Dunrakee bastards will follow them,” said Sever. “God Speed, Ozzy. Give the politicians my best, except for Jonas Moon. My hope is he is dead?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you, Ozzy. Live well.”

  The General turned off the com line.

  Ozzy pulled a u-turn, and punched in the coordinates, setting course.

  “Zoom in on rear cams,” he said, pressing a few buttons on the holoscreen, the distance between him and Nautilus getting farther and farther, and the distance between him and the starfighter battle gaining more and more kilometers as well.

  Jozi zoomed in on the Nautilus. Its escape pods were ejecting out of the starboard side, pushing out handfuls at a time.

  Shit, thought Ozzy. That’s not enough to get everyone off board.

  The Nautilus rocked back and forth as a volley of photon torpedoes hit it dead center, sending electric shockwaves around the ship, absorbing into the graviton shields.

  Ozzy lowered his head, and Jozi put her helmet in her hands, not wanting to watch.

  Ozzy glanced back up only to see more direct hits shake the Nautilus to its core, yet the escape pods continued to jettison.

  An escape pod could hold fifty people at most, and that was squeezing them in, and thousands of pods hadn’t fired out yet, meaning thousands of civilians were still on board.

  An external explosion from the main graviton shield catalyst, which was like a bulbous metallic object on top of the ship, and usually the hardest object to crack on a craft, flashed brightly and erupted into blue and white flames.

  “Oh My Mars,” said Ozzy, under his breath, nausea creeping up his throat.

  The big starship then turned steeply just as a barrage of photon torpedoes from the oncoming Dunrakee battleships hit directly in the middle of Nautilus engine core. It’s front end dipped and it’s back end lifted upward.

  Flames licked outward from the middle, dyeing down quickly the more the craft split in two. Nautilus’s lights flicked off and the graviton shields disengaged. Another barrage of weapons blasted Nautilus into pieces, and the pods stopped ejecting, and Ozzy stiffened, every piece of his body wanting to crush every living Dunrakee into death itself.

  “I’m sorry, Ozzy,” came Gragas’s voice. “My race’s government is an abomination to all life.”

  Ozzy went to stand, to rush to Gragas’s weapon’s pod and beat the living tar out of him. He was Dunrakee and deserved to have the same fate as many of the people on Nautilus just had.

  Jozi put her hands on Ozzy, keeping him in the pilot’s seat. “He’s one of the good guys.”

  Ozzy cringed, his eyes
narrowed. “Good guys? There ain’t nothing good about a bubble-head.”

  “I understand,” came Gragas through the com line. “And today, I agree with you.”

  Ozzy threw a punch in the air like a pissed off teen. “How can someone like you come from a race like that?”

  “As you have seen,” replied Gragas. “Most of my race isn’t like the Dunrakee government. It’s a horrifying time in my race’s history. One that I wish someday will be long forgotten, but until then, I will stand by the human’s side and aid you the best I can. That is my mission. And that is my oath.”

  Ozzy crossed his arms, his face reddening. But he couldn’t deny the truth. “I’m sorry, Gragas. You’re one of the good guys.”

  “Apologies are not necessary with me, but I understand your rage. I have had the same.”

  Jozi checked the radar. “I punched in the coordinates, Ozzy,” she said, her voice low. “We are heading to Europa. And there aren’t any Dunrakee ships close to us. We may be scot free.”

  “Take over controls,” said Ozzy, pushing into a standing position, Lily on his mind.

  Jozi stood. “I won’t allow you to do whatever you think you need to do to Gragas.”

  Ozzy looked down, nodding. “I’m not going to hurt Gragas. I had a momentary lapse of pain and he doesn’t deserve my anger. I’m seeing my daughter.”

  Jozi grabbed the controls. “Okay, then go. We are maintaining course and our speed is increasing at every second. I’m putting it on autopilot to Europa. Right now, I have someone to see as well.”

  Jozi walked out of the cockpit and down the corridor to the storage bay where the politicians and Lily were. Ozzy followed.

  Ozzy knew she meant the Bobby guy, a guy she had briefly dated in the past. His gut clinched for a moment thinking about it. He sighed, chiding himself. “At a moment like this, you get jealous? I’m an asshole.”

  He marched toward the storage bay, heading for his daughter.

  But just before reaching the bay, he glanced out a port window, seeing Mars shrink the farther they flew from her.

  He couldn’t blink and couldn’t look away. Although she was everything bad in his life, she allowed him to have a life. Although he never said a warm, kind-hearted word about her, she never gave him a dull-day in his existence.

  She allowed his race to live a little while longer on her back, and gave them what she could even though she didn’t have much.

  He pressed his fingers on the window, feeling the cold glass. A tear streaked down his cheek, and his chin trembled. “Thank you. And I’ll miss you.”

  He watched her until she was a just a small red, and tan glowing, beautiful ball in the sky.

  His eyes welled, and a knot formed in his throat. “It’s so odd,” he whispered to himself. “I didn’t know I loved you.”

  37

  Enroute to Europa

  It had been a month since they’d left their home to colonize a new one.

  Ozzy sat next to his daughter in Pike’s storage bay, where they and the politicians had slept on blankets, tarps, and whatever they else could find for sleeping supplies on the ship. The highest ranking politicians were in the few sleeping quarters the ship had, but that was only a handful.

  The food and liquid replicators on Pyke kept them alive, and sane, or else they’d be eating one another, Ozzy imagined.

  Ozzy rubbed his eyes, and yawned. He had Lily in his lap while he leaned against one of Pyke’s inner walls. Gragas was at the helm in the cockpit, most likely mucking it up with Quad who was sitting next to him in the co-pilot’s chair.

  Lyra was no where to be seen, most likely transporting from place to place like she had been the entire month they were on this craft.

  She’d appear back on the ship every-so-often, but kept to herself, keeping quiet, and observing the politicians on the craft as if they were her homework project.

  On the occasion Ozzy asked her to transport him and the whole ship to Europa, mostly as a joke. She always refused, saying, “Unless you are of my race, only those of the bloodline can transverse with my technology.”

  Oh yeah, the bloodline thing. Ozzy almost forgot that he was of the blood. And apparently that was why he was so good at translating ancient glyphs because the blood running through his veins was different than the majority of the galaxy.

  But he was learning why, thanks to his many questions to Lyra and Gragas.

  Most people had zero-point-two milligrams of gold in their blood, and he, just like others of the blood line, had more. And gold enhanced brain function and focus.

  He nodded to himself, something he’d been doing a lot on this trip. “I have more gold than normal in my veins.”

  “What, daddy?”

  Ozzy jerked back in a start. “Did I say that out loud?”

  “Yeah, you’ve been doing that lately.”

  Ozzy chuckled, changing the subject. “What is on your mind today, Lily?” asked Ozzy, glancing around the room, and stopping at Jozi. She was leaning her head against her old friend Bobby she had dated in the past. He was a politician from Briault, which was one of the wealthiest cities on Mars, and was a good person for a change, something unusual in the political chain.

  Bobby and Jozi were laughing, which was good. He liked her being more human. Or maybe her cybernetics weren’t as cyborg as he thought, and she was now used to them.

  “Or she acted different around me because she doesn’t like me,” Ozzy said. “That’s probably the case.” He let out a sigh. She deserved love more than anyone else on Mars. “Just let her be happy, Ozzy,” he told himself.

  “What was that, Daddy?”

  “Oh, nothing Lily-bug. I was just talking out loud, again.”

  “You do that a lot about Jozi, too.” She craned her neck and eyed him with her beautiful, innocent blue eyes.

  Ozzy grinned. “Yeah, I’m becoming an grumpy old man.” He took his gaze off of Jozi and eyed the once glamorous politicians, who were somewhat of celebrities on Mars, but were now nothing more than human today, sitting on their rears, scared, wondering what their future’s held.

  There were about a hundred of them, some eating and some talking in a hush. Ozzy wondered if they had family and if so, where they might be.

  He fidgeted with his fingers, shifting his thoughts to his own family. Lou was onboard Pyke, and closed lipped, sitting alone, unaware that he even had a brother. Maybe when they get to Europa, they could get some doctors to rewire what needed rewiring.

  Ozzy closed his eyes and let out a happy breath. He was alive and more importantly, so was his daughter. They made it out safely and had a few more days until they were in Europa’s atmosphere. Yet, they still hadn’t heard one peep from the rest of the Martian evacuating fleet, no matter how many hails they’d sent, or how many messages they tried to get through.

  Static.

  Nothing.

  No radar contact, as well.

  The fleet was a ghost flying.

  “Crap,” he lightly punched the side of his leg. He had forgotten Indigo back on Mars, where Relic was.

  “Where’s mommy? Are we going to finally see her when we go to that planet?”

  Ozzy’s heart sank. He didn’t want to tell her. It would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do, but it was a given…he must. “It’s not really a planet, Lily-bug. It’s a moon around Jupiter,” replied Ozzy.

  “Are we going to see her there?” Her eyes beamed, and she smiled.

  “Lily?” He put her arms around her in a hug. “There is something I need to tell—”

  “Ozzy,” came Gragas, standing at the entrance of the corridor leading to the cockpit. “We have contact.”

  Ozzy stood, picking Lily up. He shot a look at Jozi, who heard Gragas as well. Commotion filled the storage bay as politicians perked up, hope in their eyes.

  Jozi walked toward Gragas and Ozzy did the same, making their to the cockpit. Quad was sitting in the co-pilot chair, his legs up on the flight console, relaxin
g.

  A ping from the holodisplay reverberated off the walls.

  Gragas gestured at the display. A fleet was on the radar, and it was massive and very close to Europa.

  “They finally heard our call and pinged back,” muttered Quad.

  The com line crackled.

  “S-5 Pyke, this is Star Cruiser S-44 Sparta. I’m Admiral Gary Warwick. We read you loud and clear.”

  Ozzy couldn’t help but smile. He set down Lily and pressed the com line. “This is Ozzy Mack, Pyke’s captain. We have nearly a hundred politicians rescued and on board on orders by Brigadier General Luke Sever.”

  “Thank God,” replied the Admiral. “We are a day away from Europa. It looks like you’re two days. We’ll be orbiting, taking readings, and seeing if it is habitable. We’ll see you when you arrive. The good news is that we don’t detect any Dunrakee ships.”

  “Sir,” responded Ozzy. “If I might add, there is a colony already established on Europa. It is not well known, but I have heard rumors that it is flourishing.”

  “Let’s hope that’s the case. Out.”

  The come line turned off.

  Ozzy felt a hand on his back, and sharp points pressing through his jumpsuit and onto his skin. He turned. “Lyra?”

  She grabbed his arm. “Excuse us.” She pulled him down a corridor and around a corner, out of view.

  She scratched her neck. “I’ve been going back and forth. They are tough to deal with, but the meeting is on. It’s been off, then on, then off again, and then on. They’re not entirely convinced your race is the Explorer Race.”

  Ozzy grabbed her shoulders. “What are you talking about, Lyra?”

  “Darling, listen, the Ancients aren’t gone. They’ve been underground the entire time humans have been on Mars and longer. They have an entire civilization down there.” Lyra continued, “And they have the rest of the Gaia Stones. The stones will tell you where to go, and to whom you can get the information from.”

  “You’re confusing me. Slow down. What information and where would I need to go?”