The Cold Dead Earth (The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Book 3)

by J. D. Oppenheim

  Jolo stood up, yelled down to Greeley. “Put a grenade in the engine.”

  “George, watch for the mech.”

  Greeley put two grenades in the port engine, black smoke billowing out. He started toward the starboard but the lower hatch opened and out came the mech. George and Greeley opened fire and it fell before it could take a step.

  Jolo knocked on the hull again. This time the top hatch opened and Katy’s head popped up. Jolo ran to her and pulled her out and they stood on the top of the Cruiser and held each other for a moment.

  “You okay?” said Jolo. She looked healthy, her skin supple like she’d had food and water. But her eyes were tired. She smiled and held onto him.

  “Yeah. I’m fine now.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “No. They wanted our baby.”

  “They ain’t gettin’ it.”

  “George, come here and open this thing up.”

  George jumped up onto the Cruiser, went down into the ship and a moment later the rear hatch came down. Jolo picked up Katy and jumped back down onto the ice. “Got a present for you.” He handed her an M-16.

  There were about twenty-eight women inside.

  “This is Jolo Vargas,” said Katy.

  “The pirate?” said a woman so big she looked about ready to give birth any moment.

  “Relax. He used to be a Federation gunboat captain,” said the pilot of the Alexxus.

  “You okay?” said Jolo.

  “You left me,” she said.

  “And you look well fed. You a pilot?”

  “I can fly just about any Fed or merch vessel.”

  “Good.” Then Jolo turned to the group. “We don’t have time for long explanations. Know that I want us to get off this planet and back to our worlds, wherever they may be. But right now we need to get to safety. Hazuki thought the mechs would stop us. I imagine now he’s hunkered down to protect his weapons stash. But don’t be fooled. BG reinforcements are surely coming and we’ll need to be ready. But right now we need to get out of here. We’ve got a hideaway down in the old mall. If you can walk then come. If not we’ll try to carry you.”

  So Jolo led the group out of the Cruiser and headed across the ice to the hole. Two women couldn’t walk so they rode in the carryall. But about fifteen of the women could carry a gun and knew how to use it. Five others were pilots. All of them had some crew experience.

  Jolo walked with Katy at the back of the procession. “Don’t leave me again, Jolo,” she said.

  “I won’t,” he said, but he knew it was a lie. That was exactly the thing he might have to do.

  “You know I love you more than anything,” he said to her.

  “Yeah, that’s the fourth time you’ve said it.” She smiled at him and gave him a hug. He held her for a moment then stared out past the big black ship to the place on the ice where the other ship disappeared.

  Black Hole

  Things were quiet for the next few hours. Suddenly Riley’s hidey hole was an odd mix of ragged boys, pregnant women and Jolo’s crew. The women were used to living in comfort and suddenly they were in a large, dirty room with little light and no place to sit. They leaned against the walls or laid down and tried to make the best of it.

  Katy came up to Jolo and held his hand. “I know you got a lot on your mind. But the women need food.”

  “Hazuki has pulled back so we might be able to get some from the hotel.” So Jolo sent Koba, Greeley and a few of the older boys to see if they could get into the hotel and steal some food. They came back with several boxes of Fed rations.

  Jolo also put Korley up near the main entrance in the mall with order to fire his weapon only if a mech had lifted the metal sheet and tried to break in. Any humans breaking in should be led deeper into the back where Greeley was waiting to grant them a sweet, merciful release from the bonds of the Queen.

  Once the women were settled it was time to plan the next move. Jolo got the crew together, along with Riley and the pilot of the Alexxus, named Risa. “That battle gear looks familiar,” she said to Greeley with a smirk. They all were sitting down around a small fire in the corner of the room.

  Greeley grinned, and stood up in the light so everyone could see the suit. The chest armor had four bullet marks, the arms were scratched and dented, and part of the right boot was missing. The whole thing was covered in dirt and dried blood, which looked kind of brown on the green suit. “You want it back?” he said.

  “We’re here to talk about what we’ve got to do,” said Jolo. “First we need to kill Hazuki and all his men and gain access to the armory. We couldn’t beat him before, but now we have weapons and greater numbers.”

  “Where is it?” said Greeley.

  “If there were no ice it’d be down the street aways from the mall, in a government building, ground level in a big vault. I’ve been close to it via the underground tunnels, but that way will be guarded with everything Hazuki’s got.”

  Jolo looked at Koba, who was already grinning. “Can you make another ice driller? Maybe we can get in from the top again?” said Jolo.

  “Yeah. If Hazuki is pulling his men towards the vault, maybe I could get a look at the Argossy and the other ships. There’s got to be a smallish thruster I could use somewhere,” said Koba.

  “Riley, can you take George and Koba to the shipyard?” said Jolo.

  “Yeah, sure, but I don’t know what you are gonna find. They been takin’ ships for years and years, just stacking them up in a big underground hole. They didn’t tie them down nicely in a hangar, more like they just dumped them up in a big junk pile.”

  “Well, the most recent ships should be on top,” said Jolo.

  “Koba, you get me a working drill so we can hit from the top like we did the hotel. George, you make sure the Argossy is ready. We need to have the escape ships good to go so we can load the weapons and get out of here. If there are any fighters, we’ll need those, too. The Argossy, some kind of merch hauler, and a few fighters would be great.”

  “I wanna go with them,” said Risa. “The bastards took my ship and I’d like to find another one with some firepower.”

  “Alright. Y’all go now. Stay low and try to avoid Hazuki.”

  “The graveyard’s on the other side of the mall from the big vault, so hopefully we’ll be alone,” said Riley.

  “Killin’ the bastard, Hazuki, and gettin’ more weapons and checkin’ on the Argossy is all fine and dandy,” said Hurley. “But how we ‘spose to get off this God forsaken rock once we do all that.”

  George started to speak, but Jolo cut him off. “One step at a time, Hurley. We’re working on it. Right now let’s just get Hazuki and get the weapons. That’s what we came for.”

  After the meeting Katy went to check on the women and Jolo pulled George aside. “I met Evinrude Trant on the way to Macon. He searched for the power supply for years and never found it.”

  “The Evinrude Trant, captain of the Arcadia?” said George.

  “Yep.”

  “So we have a power supply with enough juice to pull down a battleship. We also have Cruisers that seemingly appear and disappear.”

  “What do you think?”

  George went perfectly still, his head tilted slightly and his eyes an empty gaze aimed somewhere across the room. Jolo waited a full minute.

  Finally, George looked at Jolo. “The only thing we know of that could explain this is a black hole.”

  Jolo sat down, they were in the corner still, the fire burning low. George sat down with him.

  “So the power isn’t here. But there is power,” said Jolo.

  “Yes. The power source is not here, but it does exist and, via the black hole, is capable of impacting the Earth. Assuming our data is good and there isn’t a huge underground generator.”

  “It’s like a portal?” said Jolo.

  George nodded. “What is the trigger? What causes the hole to open? That in itself would have to be powerful, able to hold that window open
, to control it.”

  “The Queen,” said Jolo.

  “She opens the portal and accesses the power to pull the ships down, to render the large engines useless.” He paused dead still, thinking. “The other end of the portal could be anywhere.” said George.

  “Only one way to find out. And the power source on the other side needs to be destroyed.”

  “When are you going to tell the crew?”

  “I’m not. I convinced everyone to come to this shitehole. We already lost Barth. And now the only hope we’ve got rests on a wild hunch. That ain’t much of a plan and everyone looks to me for confidence. They trust me. I’ll tell them we can get the boats in the air. If I spill the portal theory then we may lose the women. And we need them to fight.”

  George nodded. “Yes. Odds of success—”

  Jolo cut him off. “I don’t wanna know.”

  “I will go,” said George.

  “No. I got us into this mess. I gotta get us out.”

  “No. You need to stay with Katy and the baby.”

  Jolo paused for a moment. He stared into George’s glass eyes. George had a point.

  “This is why I am here,” said George.

  And somehow, even though the man wasn’t made of flesh, Jolo could see care and concern in his eyes, in his face.

  “Katy and the baby need you,” said George.

  “Thank you.”

  “You wanna hug it out,” said George, smiling.

  Jolo laughed. “That’s a Greeley joke.” Jolo hugged him and George just stood still and stiff as he always did. “The BG will send more ships soon enough. Wait for an injured ship to call to the Queen. She’ll open the portal for a few moments. And there’s your chance.”

  The Lost Argossy

  The next morning Jolo led fifteen well-armed humans to take out the synth Hazuki and all of his men. Koba had found a small thruster in the shipyard and he and Jolo burned a tunnel in the ice the night before that led down to the top of the Richmond-Parks Georgia State Annex Building #4.

  It was only about a twenty minute trip from the parking lot to the annex if you hustled over the ice. But Jolo had a big crew and the hole out and the hole in only allowed one person at a time. Jolo came up first onto the ice, followed by Greeley. It seemed like it took forever to get everyone out. Jolo paced back and forth, urging them on in a quiet, firm voice, occasionally searching the sky and the space over the mall for black ships. They needed to be down before any ships came. All the women with him were Fed crew or officers and were either not pregnant or only a month or two in. All had volunteered to come.

  Meanwhile George was leading Katy, Hurley, Riley, Risa and a few of the other pilots to the shipyard to be on the ready in a space worthy ship in case the power got shut off. George’s orders were to get them there then find the ground force and be ready to enter the portal if the Queen opened it.

  Jolo second guessed himself all morning. There were too many variables, too many people. He wasn’t even sure if all of the Fed women would be able to pull the trigger when the time came. They were trained, but only a few had been on a boat during the war.

  ……

  Katy followed George through the dark tunnels at a fast clip. She had the bulky M-16 Jolo had given her, but at some point she put it over her shoulder and pulled out a small blaster she got from Riley. She was a pilot and preferred a pilot’s weapon. Let the ground pounders like Greeley play with grenade launchers. Though her weapon of choice was the rail gun on the Argossy.

  “Never woulda guessed in a million years we’d get saved by the pirate, Jolo Vargas,” said the Fed pilot Risa. “You his girl, huh?”

  “Yeah. If you knew him you’d know this is what he does. Always helping people.”

  “When he ain’t stealing from the merchant ships,” came a voice from a plump merch pilot three months’ pregnant.

  George allowed them a moment’s rest while he ran ahead to make sure the next intersection was clear. “I know he came all this way to get weapons to save the Fed and he didn’t leave us,” said Risa.

  After a moment, George came back, scolded them for making noise and set off at a blistery pace for the ship yard. It was at the end of a side corridor of the mall. The ground turned from brick to hard pack to soft earth, then opened up into a large empty space. The giant ground hauler that took the Argossy away was there right at the edge, each wheel as tall as they were. Above them was a layer of ice a meter or so thick, the orange light filtering down, illuminating a huge pile of ships.

  They all stood at the edge of a giant hole cut deep into the earth. It went down farther than they could see. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. New boats, old boats, ships from Katy’s youth, Federation military, merchant class, some that looked alien, were all tossed in like they were toys thrown into the trash. They were piled up high and deep.

  Hurley wanted to get a close look at an old single-manned ship he hadn’t see in fifty years so he jumped out into the pile, on top of a freighter.

  “It’s a Stingray!” he yelled, like a child finding a lost toy. “They are priceless and fearsome. If that little baby runs I bet it could tear into a BG boat.” He was standing on a Fed commuter boat and reached up to touch the hull of the Stingray and then he started to slip. George jumped down and grabbed him before he fell into the snarl of broken ships.

  It took a moment to fully digest the magnitude of the stack of ships. “There must be thirty or so levels, maybe a kilometer down,” said Risa.

  Katy walked along the outside of the giant hole searching for her boat. It had to be near the top, but the hole was a hundred meters across and it took awhile to get around the thing. Risa called out from the other side, “I found the Alexxus!” It was perched atop an old Inverness Freight hauler and the remains of a Fed frigate.

  “Any damage?” Katy yelled.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It don’t look good. Last thing I remember was taking a lot of heat from several BG boats. I think she’s gone.”

  Hurley yelled from the other side of the hole. “Risa, you could use this merch fighter here. They call ‘em Greenbacks ‘cause they gotta green stripe along the top. It looks to be in good shape.”

  The boat was a little older, and made to defend merchant ships from pirates. “I’ve run into these before, back when we were, uh…”

  “Pirates?” said Risa.

  “Yeah,” said Hurley. “Those are sturdy little boats with some firepower. We wouldn’t hit a freighter if we thought those little boats were around.”

  “Well,” said Risa, “one rear stabilizer looks bent but she’ll fly. Guns look okay.”

  Katy made it to the backside of the hole where the earth rose up twenty meters or so to the ice roof above them. George was right behind her.

  She stared at the mess of alacyte hulls and thruster cowling and random bits of ancient ships. But no Argossy. She could see Hurley and Risa coming her way from the other direction, and then she saw movement not far in front of them.

  Katy and George started running in their direction. Sure enough, there was a man who’d just come out of a hole in the wall. Katy made it there first and pulled out the blaster. She’d seen the man before, delivering supplies to the hotel for the old lady. He had only a few teeth left and his tongue was dark. By the looks of him he’d been sleeping.

  Suddenly he was cornered between Katy and Risa. He yelled something that no one understood. Then reached for something in his ragged jacket. But Katy shot him before he could get it out. The pulse shocked him and he fell to the ground though still alive, a small blaster in his hand.

  Risa walked up to him, kicked him with her boot, then took the little black weapon. “Yeah, I remember that piece of shite.” She grabbed him by the pants leg and started pulling him towards the edge of the hole. Riley grabbed the other one and they watched him slide down into the pit. He landed on an old boat, slid off that one onto the underside of a old non-military transport, then continued to fall.


  The small hole he’d come out of was a control room. There was a small battery powered light and a joystick to control a winch that was hidden in the darkness along the rear earth wall.

  “We’ll need the winch to get the boats out,” said George. “Katy, can you handle it from here?”

  “Yeah. Be safe.” He nodded, and then he stopped, and went cold still like a statue.

  “You love me, right?” he said, finally. “In a good way, but not like Jolo.”

  “Yeah, George. I love you, and Koba and Hurley, and Greeley. And Barth. You guys are my family. Is that important to you?”

  “I want it to be,” he said. “I think it is. There is a difficult time to come and I will remember you always. I have to go now.”

  “George, we’ll be okay. We always are.” He gave her a stiff hug and ran back down through the tunnel to meet the ground team.

  “Well there’s a first,” said Risa. “A synth with feelings.”

  “He’s special,” said Katy.

  Hurley started up the winch and it retracted from the back wall, a giant arm reaching out over the giant pit. Hurley, Risa and Riley busied themselves pulling the Greenback fighter off the top of the pile while Katy circled around the hole again searching for the Argossy.

  Thirty minutes later the sleek, old Greenback was sitting on the ground near the ship hauler. It had a bent stabilizer a big dent along the underside near the nose, but other than that it looked okay. It had seen some action but was faster and had better armor and weapons than the Alexxus. Risa immediately started doing diagnostic checks.

  Risa climbed into the small fighter through a round hatch under the cockpit. A few minutes later she came out smiling. “The computer says the engines are fine,” she said. “Fuel cell levels are an issue, though.”

  “Naw,” said Hurley. “All we gotta do is find a few merch class freighters that ain’t too old. They’ll have fuel cells and I’m willing to bet we’ll find some that still have a little juice in ‘em.”