Suicide Mission: Unity War Book 2

  Suicide Mission

  Unity War Book 2

  C.G. Michaels

  Copyright © 2017 C.G. Michaels

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  DISCLAIMER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This story contains explicit language and violence.

  Blurb

  Since the Colonies ran the aliens out of their space, humanity has had a brief respite in which to breathe and lick their wounds. But Captain Brid Stephenson is well aware the enemy could return any time it chooses. She proposes a strategy: find out how the aliens open wormholes, duplicate the technology, and attack the enemy on their home turf.

  It’s risky; no one knows what they’ll find on the other side of the wormhole. So when Brid’s team manages to create a prototype of the aliens’ wormhole technology, they plan a fact-finding mission.

  Garner Vasilescu, fighter pilot aboard Brid’s ship, has other ideas. He dives into the wormhole in the hopes of finding Ilana, the woman he lost. Unwilling to let him venture into enemy territory alone, Garner’s friends follow him in. Now the four of them must rely on each other to find Ilana and make it back home.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER ONE

  Just outside Earth’s atmosphere

  Garner stood in the middle of a city torn apart: rubble and pieces of machinery littered the barren ground—pieces of machinery, of ships, of people. Fires burned, sending up black smoke into a dusty sky. He heard nothing but the wind and the crackle of flames; all lay dead. His eye caught the jagged end of a Banshee’s wing. Blood glistened on it, and the sight twisted Garner’s heart. He knew the man whose veins had spilled that blood.

  He knelt, put his fingertips to the stain. They came back wet and sticky.

  Garner . . .

  That voice. Garner jumped at the sound, looked for the speaker, but he stood alone.

  Garner . . .

  He turned a full circle. At last he saw someone, a shadowed figure among the dirt and detritus. Tall, lean, dressed in the black of a Star Force officer. Garner could not make out the face, but he knew who it was.

  “Adam.” The wind took his voice, made it a thing of air. Adam gave no indication he had heard, only beckoned Garner to come closer. Garner picked his way through the rubble towards his friend, stepping over what the war had left behind. He stumbled over the wreckage of Adam’s Banshee, slipped in mud or blood. Adam remained where he was, always too far to reach.

  Garner. Listen . . . It seemed Adam’s voice lived inside his head and all around him at once. It touched his face like mist, and came again, farther now, miles away. Then without warning Garner felt a presence beside him; he turned and looked into Adam’s genial face, a familiar and cherished face.

  I have something to tell you.

  Garner leaned closer. He didn’t want to miss this, Adam’s last words to him. Adam opened his mouth, but no sound came out. A drop of dark blood coursed down his forehead to drip in one eye, a drop that became a stream; and then blood covered Adam’s face. There came the sound of an explosion, and Adam was blown to bits.

  Garner woke with a gasp. Sweat coated his thin body and made his hair stick to his forehead. He kicked off the sheets and lay there in his boxer briefs, wishing Adam wasn’t dead, wishing he could see him again just one more time, wishing he knew what the Adam in his dream had wanted to tell him.

  As he came more awake, he began to make out the white border of a photograph he’d taped to the bottom of the rack above his, Fault’s bed. Starlight poured in through the porthole, stark and bright, but shadows lived under Fault’s rack, obscuring the photo. It didn’t matter. He knew it as well as he knew his own face: a picture of himself with Adam, An, and Fault, Adam with two fingers raised above Garner’s and An’s heads to imitate horns. Adam grinning like a fool. All of them smiling, even Fault, though his smile lacked the carefree essence of Adam’s grin or the broad, knowing quality of An’s beaming face.

  Garner turned his head to look at Adam’s rack, now occupied by their most recent recruit, one Temple Bosch, around Adam’s height and, though a bit thinner, close to his build. In the darkness Garner could almost believe his form, huddled under Star Force regulation sheets, was Adam.

  Almost. Garner looked away, hating Temple and not wanting to. Temple hadn’t even come aboard the Takarabune until Adam had died; he held no responsibility for Adam’s death. But whenever Garner looked at him, all he saw was the man who came to replace his friend.

  Temple stirred, turning over in his sleep, a curl of dark hair falling across his brow. He had a refined face, thin brows, and a softly cleft chin. Nothing like Adam, whose light brown hair had no curl, no wave; whose ridiculously full lips and youthful charm had undermined every serious conversation he’d ever had.

  Garner knew very little about Temple. He knew that he came from Lotan, but Temple had yet to speak of his time there, or his family, although Temple had told them he’d requested service aboard the Takarabune. He knew also that Temple looked at men the way Garner and his bunkmates looked at women. When Temple had first arrived, he’d been well aware of the fact that he was someone’s replacement; but as soon as the first awkward minutes of introduction had passed, he had taken a measuring glance of every guy in the room. Garner had gotten the feeling Temple had sized up each one of them in a matter of seconds, deciding whether or not they would make good bedroom partners. He didn’t know where he himself fit on the scale, but a slight, wanting smile had curved Temple’s lips when he’d looked at Fault.

  Everyone, it seemed, wanted Fault. Even Jaden had admitted she thought the cyborg attractive, and Jaden usually kept those sorts of feelings to herself. The fact that she thought Fault handsome bothered Garner in a big way, and he didn’t like it. He already had a girlfriend—technically—and even though she was gone, even though she had told him they needed some time apart, the things he felt for Jaden still felt like cheating.

  Not that any of it mattered. The Colonies had bigger problems than Garner’s love life (or lack thereof). The aliens the humans had dubbed Snappers (or Turtles, if you preferred) had done severe damage to the Seven Colonies, mainly in the attacks on Lotan and Osiris. Their numbers remained secret, as did their technology and the location of their homeworld. The humans knew
the aliens’ language, or at least one of their dialects, and ever since they’d translated it, every member of Star Force had been required to learn it. A few members of the 15th Squadron, Garner included, had gotten a first-hand, if rather distant, look at the Snappers; so they knew what the enemy looked like.

  But none of that information had lowered the death toll the Colonies had suffered. None of it would bring Adam back from the dead, or Ilana back from the hands of the aliens. So none of it, in Garner’s point of view, mattered.

  The morning alarm rang. The lights went on. Temple stretched and smiled sleepily at Garner, who looked away, his mood black, the itinerary dismal.

  The Takarabune buried her dead today.

  His morning shower wasn’t the same without Adam singing loudly and decidedly off-key. Breakfast passed in silence. Many of the people lost on the Takarabune Garner had not known; W1 Class warships held 60,500 people in total, 180 of whom were fighter pilots. He didn’t even know half of the pilots, though a number of them he could recognize in passing, and out of those, he knew a handful of names. He knew the 15th. He knew Adam.

  He attended a number of burials in space that morning. His sister, Ness, had lost squadron members, as well. Not everyone could fit in the ship’s docking bay, where the funerals took place, so people were allowed only to go to those funerals that meant something to them personally. Garner got permission to go to the funeral for those of the 16th Squadron who were being buried in space; he had done so because his sister acted as squadron leader for the 16th, and because one of the people lost, a Lieutenant Jago Taggart, had found a place in Ness’s cold heart.

  Ness spent the funeral with tears in her blue eyes, tears she would not allow to fall. The long scar on her otherwise beautiful face stood as a cruel reminder that she had suffered at the hands of Osirian cyborgs who—unlike Fault—had believed their cause worth the cost of innocent lives. Over a year had passed since Ness had earned that scar, and the scar that marred her midsection; but Ness had not, and would not, forget.

  Garner went over to Ness after the funeral. He wanted to say something, though he didn’t know what. She brushed past him and out of the docking bay, away from her squadron and straight for the bar.

  Not all the burials today took place in space. After lunch, the Takarabune entered Earth’s atmosphere and began shuttling passengers to various points on the planet. Garner and the rest of the 15th Squadron went down to a small hangar in Mount Carroll, Illinois. From there they took a bus to Mount Carroll Cemetery. The bus naturally had no air conditioning, and they all got wet long before the ride ended. Once outside, the Sun hammered them relentlessly, making the slow walk up the hill and to the gravesite torturous. Bees buzzed in and around the fresh flowers that decorated many of the graves. The caretakers had recently cut the grass, leaving fragrant blades drying in the afternoon heat.

  Captain Stephenson had joined the mourners, and so had Colonel Lange; as commander of the 15th, he had known Adam personally and had been the one to inform Adam’s parents of his death. Manuel Campos, the ship’s counsellor, had come.

  The colonel and Captain Stephenson went to Adam’s family to express their sympathies. Adam’s parents looked only vaguely like him. His father, whose hair had all but departed from his skull, had similar eyes, eyes that hid behind wire-rimmed spectacles and revealed nothing of Adam’s easy humor; then again, he was in mourning.

  Adam’s mother, a short, stylish woman, had a number of nervous tics and a twitch to her mouth that made it appear as if she were trying to smile at inappropriate moments. His sister very much resembled the mother, but at fourteen she did not yet display her mother’s enviable figure. She wore black running shorts, an old black T-shirt stained with bleach spots, and black flip-flops. Garner couldn’t tell if these choices came as a result of her lack of fashion sense or as a consequence of teenage rebellion. Her hair, too, was black, dyed most likely, as she had light brown eyebrows, like Adam’s.

  Only Adam’s brother, Alan, two years older, truly resembled him, and he looked so much like Adam that for an instant Garner mistook him. The only difference, aside from a fraction of an inch in height, was the older brother’s expression and paleness of face. He wore lines around his mouth and eyes that belonged on a much older man.

  Grief aged them all. They all moved slowly, they all had shadows beneath their eyes and in the hollows of their cheeks. None of them spoke overmuch, preferring to wait until the wake before they approached the family. Garner thought he should shake the parents’ hands, at least, but he could not bring himself to come so close to the brother, to look into those eyes and know they weren’t Adam’s.

  The preacher—no, a priest, he realized, and thought: God, Adam was Catholic?—gave a sermon, but Garner, having gone to five funerals that day already, tuned him out. At the appropriate moment, Alan got up to say a few words, but his characterization of Adam came across as trite and false. The rest of the family wept, moved by Alan’s words. The girl, Desiree, spoke as well. She said Adam used to help her with her algebra; but Adam had once told Garner he could barely add two and two. Did any of these people even know Adam? Or had Adam shown a mask to Garner, and this was the real Adam, an Adam Garner would never know?

  The funeral ended, and Garner stood with the rest, sweat coursing down his back and sides and making him itch. He took his turn at tossing fresh dirt onto the casket. The dirt, dry and filled with tiny stones, fell onto the coffin with a soft thump. The gesture was hollow. Adam lay in space, in pieces, his fighter torn apart by enemy fire.

  The mourners began to drift back to their cars, to go to the Simonis house for the wake. Garner tried to work up his courage to speak to the family, but as the last of the friends and distant relatives parted from Adam’s parents, he still stood awkwardly to the side, not quite daring to approach. Jaden noticed, and came to stand beside him.

  “It’s not mandatory, you know,” she said. “Meeting the parents.”

  “They don’t even know him. Not the real him.”

  “They know a part of him, just like we know a part of him. We know the Adam who went to war and fell in love with another pilot. They know the Adam they had Sunday dinner with, the Adam who teased his little sister and learned to drive at fifteen.”

  Something stuck in Garner’s throat. “Someone should tell them what he was like when he was with us. That part of him deserves to be remembered, too.”

  “We’ll remember. We’ll always remember.” She touched his arm. “Let’s go. The bus is waiting.”

  “In a minute.”

  She nodded and left him. Jaden always knew when to let things be.

  As soon as she departed, Doctor Campos came over. He had kind eyes, the sort that dragged secrets from people. He stood beside Garner for a moment, silent, his gaze on the grave. At last he said, “Before I became a counsellor, I was in the Gharad-Osiris War. I lost my best friend in that war. He died saving my life. It’s hard to lose a comrade in battle. It’s even harder to talk about losing that comrade. But if you ever do want to talk, know that my door is always open.” He studied Garner for a moment. “When was the last time you took leave?”

  “Over a year ago.”

  “Why don’t you take some leave now? Give yourself a little time to grieve.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your friend died, Lieutenant. You are most definitely not fine. Think about it, at least. And remember my offer.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  The counsellor left him then, left him alone with an empty grave. It was only then that Garner allowed himself to cry.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mount Carroll, Illinois

  Brid adjusted her dark blonde hair in the small powder room off the living room in the Simonises’s quaint home, afraid to bother with it too much but worried it might fall apart if she didn’t secure it more tightly. Never one for fancy styles even at the most formal of times, she’d opted for a messy up-do for Adam’s funeral because it was somethi
ng she actually knew how to do, but the trio of tortoise shell filigree clips she’d jammed in to keep her hair in place had started to slip, and her messy up-do was looking more “messy” than “up.” She fiddled with the clips a bit longer before finally giving up and starting over from scratch. When she finished, she possessed a disappointingly bedraggled look, but it couldn’t be helped; she didn’t know what else to do with it.

  As she double-checked her mascara, Brid breathed in the scent of pine air freshener and wondered how accurate the smell was—she’d been breathing canned air for so long now that she’d forgotten what real pine smelled like. She’d forgotten the seasons, too. This part of the world was currently celebrating the heat of summer, and the funeral had her perspiring until she’d stepped back into air conditioning. Even with the AC, though, the Simonis house smelled like a home: besides the powder room’s air freshener, the dining room was redolent with the aroma of casseroles and fresh baked goods.

  She quickly smoothed her dress, a light, flowy thing in patterns of dusky purple and black. The dress pulled in at the waist, had short, fluttery sleeves, and frothed all around her calves, making her appear feminine and understated. Her black heels only added an inch to her height because she thought she was tall enough already, and she wore a strand of black beads about her wrist that finished off with an old-fashioned watch face.

  A faint rap at the door reminded her other people wanted to use the facilities, so Brid quit her preening and stepped out to a small line of waiting people. Glancing at her timepiece, she saw that she’d spent a total of about three minutes, but quite a lot of mourners had come to the wake, as well, and she knew everyone would need freshening up after so long in the hot sun.

  The next thing she wanted was something cool to soothe her parched throat, so she made her way to the dining room and got behind everybody else vying for a drink or snack. Everything looked and smelled delicious—she particularly had her eye on the peach cobbler—but when her turn finally came, she happened to notice Doctor Carey Jain standing beside the cold fireplace in a black jacket and trousers with a night-blue dress shirt beneath. God, the man wore a suit as well as he wore a uniform, Brid thought. She loved the slender look of him. Currently, he chatted with Emma Hepburn. Talking business, like as not; Emma was one of the residents aboard the Takarabune, after all. Even so, Brid felt a twinge of jealousy over the other woman’s dark good looks, not to mention the fact that, professionally, at least, Emma had a lot in common with Carey.