Colonies Of Earth: Unity War Book 1 Read online

  “Permission denied.”

  “Captain—”

  “Permission denied, Daniau. We don't know anything about these ships—who made them, why they're attacking. And until we do know that—or until we get orders to the contrary—we're remaining neutral.” Adelard had a somewhat itchy trigger finger, and had once intimated to Brid over a few too many drinks at an officers' party that he thought the neutral Colonies, and especially Earth, should man up already and pick a side. At the time, she'd dismissed it as “champagne talk,” and had thought nothing more about it, but maybe that was how he really felt.

  She had to admit, she was inclined to agree with him on this point. But damned if she'd be the one to take sides without knowing all the facts, or, worse, to drag Earth into a war the President wasn't prepared to fight.

  “We've broken atmosphere, Captain,” Kaipo said. In front of them, the main viewscreen showed a vista of swirling clouds overtop a background of green and brown, yellow and red lights bursting through in sharp, angry contrast.

  “Give me audio, Lieutenant, and take us closer. I want to be where the action is.”

  “Aye, ma'am.”

  The Takarabune broke the cloud cover, and Shangana grew visible on the main viewscreen. The strange black fighters swarmed over the town like the Martians had done to Earth in The War of the Worlds, an ancient sci-fi flick Brid had rented about a month ago and laughed at.

  She wasn't laughing now. The unidentified ships' lasers pummelled the streets, breaking up chunks of pavement and sending them flying into cars, buildings, people. Brid saw one of the missiles go through a truck window, spattering the windshield with blood. The lasers battered the foundation of a restaurant, and the whole front wall of the structure came crashing down on the patio and the customers who hadn't yet gotten far enough away. The Shangana Star Force Base lay in a shambles, smoke rising from the rubble, a broken arm jutting out from underneath the stones. Cars swerved to avoid getting struck by lasers and ended up running into each other instead. One drove onto the sidewalk and into a man who, for some reason, was running towards the street. Brid heard the meaty thump as his body came into contact with the metal. Other people raced about in a blind panic, screaming, as the ships rained red death down on them. A laser beam hit a woman, and she stopped mid-stride, collapsing into a charred stack of bones.

  “My God . . . !” Reindeer whispered.

  No one on board the bridge moved or spoke for a full five seconds. Then Brid shook herself, forcing herself to function by brute willpower. “Helm. Helm!”

  Kaipo and Reindeer both started, white-faced, but they were looking at her now, expecting her to know what to do.

  The order to engage tickled the tip of Brid's tongue, and she had to tighten her fists until the nails bit into her palms to keep from telling Adelard to smoke the bastards. “Take us closer,” she said instead. “Let's see if we can't scare them into leav—” She broke off, realizing of a sudden that they'd done just that: the fighters had seen them and were retreating. Or they'd done all the destruction they intended to do for now, or they were low on fuel and had to return to their warship. In any case, they were clearing Lotan's sky.

  “Captain,” Adelard said, desperation in his voice. “They're getting away.”

  “Not on my watch, they're not.” She stabbed the intership comm, called up her fighter pilots' commanding officer, Samson Lange. “Colonel Lange. I want two Banshees tailing those bogeys, and I want them out there yesterday. Do not engage. Repeat, do not engage. This is a fact-finding mission only.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  She knew Samson about as well as anybody else did—distinguished in battle, he nevertheless took his job aboard the neutral Takarabune very seriously. He would already have had the squadrons ready for take-off in case she gave the order to attack, and she knew he'd send two of his best pilots on this mission—men or women from the 15th Squadron, no doubt, because they had the finest track record. If anyone could gather information about the mystery fighters without being detected themselves, it would be those pilots.

  Meanwhile, she and the rest of her crew still had work to do on the planet. “Let's go sort that mess out,” she said.

  * * *

  Emergency personnel from neighboring towns met with Brid and her crew, who came down in shuttles wearing masks and other protective gear to help hunt for survivors and offer first aid before sending them on to the nearest hospital or shelter. Brid emerged from the first transport, followed closely by Carey Jain, the Takarabune's chief medical officer. Compassionate and witty, and having an excellent bedside manner, he represented exactly what Brid thought a doctor should be; and with his lean build, dark skin, and darker eyes, he wasn't hard to look at, either. Too bad he identified as asexual.

  “Where do we start?” he asked, his thick brows arching behind his face shield.

  “There.” Brid gestured at the toppled restaurant, where a few live bodies could be seen struggling to free themselves from the debris.

  Carey gave a curt nod and headed in that direction at a good clip, lugging what medical equipment he could carry on his back and use in the field. Beside him, Brid wore a pack with an emergency oxygen cylinder, an extra pair of masks, and a set of red flags she was to set up wherever they found a dead body, so that the corpses could be collected by a special crew later.

  Brid spotted a thin young man digging through the ruined restaurant, his face and hands bloody, the dirt on him so thick you couldn't tell what color his clothes or skin were naturally. He picked up a stone and tossed it wearily aside, then pushed at a larger hunk of wreckage, groaning with the effort, perspiration tracing clean tracks down his cheeks.

  Brid hurried over to him, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sir? We're here to help.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes round with shock, his dark, curly hair falling across his forehead, dust clinging to it and making it look lighter than it must really be. “I have to find Elijah.”

  “I'll find him for you. You just sit back and rest now.” She wasn't sure what else to say, so she took her pack off and pulled out one of the masks.

  “He was right here,” the young man said. “I was holding his hand. And then . . . ”

  Carey took a reading with his bioscanner, which measured the presence of carbon-based life forms within its range. It also measured heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of respiration. Carey aimed the device at the pile of rubble the young man had been digging through, caught Brid's eye, and shook his head.

  Brid began to strap the oxygen mask onto the man, but he pushed her away. “No. I need to find Elijah. He won't be able to breathe under there.” He went back to pushing at the rock, hacking at the smoke and other foreign particles in the air.

  Carey slipped in between him and Brid, spoke in a calm, steady voice. “My name is Doctor Jain. What's your name?”

  “Bosch—Temple Bosch. Lieutenant Junior Grade.”

  “Were you stationed at Shangana Star Force Base, Lieutenant?”

  “I was supposed to ship out to the Arcadia in the morning.” He coughed again. “Can you please help me dig? I don't think . . . I don't think he can breathe under there.”

  “You're hurt, Lieutenant. Let us help you.”

  “But what about Elijah?”

  “Lieutenant. Temple. Look at me.” Carey gently wrapped his fingers around Temple's wrists and pulled his hands away from the debris. “It's too late for him. It's not too late for you.”

  “But—” Temple glanced helplessly from Carey to Brid and back again. “But I was just holding his hand a second ago . . . ”

  “I know.”

  “Here,” Brid said. She situated the oxygen mask over Temple's face and hooked him up to the cylinder. “Try to breathe.”

  “We thought the ships were shooting stars,” Temple said as Carey shone a miniature light in his eyes to check the dilation of his pupils. “Elijah made a wish that I would”—he coughed—“that I would fall in love with him.�
�� He smiled, but it was a fragile, watery smile. “I told him he was being naïve. Now I'll never see him again.”

  “You're alive,” Carey said. “That's what you have to focus on. That's what matters.”

  Brid removed one of the little flags from her kit and set it atop the mound where Elijah lay, unsure if she agreed with Carey. Because it seemed to her that what mattered most were these wee flags, and the fact that she had so many of them.

  And she had a feeling she would be using them all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Inside Lotan's atmosphere

  Garner Vasilescu sat on his rack, his elbows on his knees, and looked at his watch for the thousandth time. Captain Stephenson had put the Takarabune on alert hours ago, yet all he and the other fighter pilots had gotten to do so far was sit on their hands. They all knew the skinny: unidentified enemy ships had opened fire on Lotan, destroying entire city blocks and murdering millions of people.

  So why weren't they doing anything about it?

  From across the tiny room came the rhythmic thump-ka-smack of An Bai throwing a rubber ball against the deck so that it bounced up, hit the bulkhead, and landed back in his hand. “This waiting is driving me crazy!”

  “Yeah, well, that sound is driving me crazy,” said Adam Simonis. He lay on his rack, across and up from Garner's bed. “Can it, willya, An?”

  “It calms my nerves.”

  “Sex calms my nerves. You don't see me banging Garner here, do you?”

  “Garner has better taste than that.”

  “Don't count on it. I've seen him eyeing me. Right, Garner?”

  “Stuff it up your tailpipe, Adam.”

  “Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?”

  Garner got up to get even, but just as he did the hatch opened. They all came to attention when they saw the squadron commander, Colonel Samson Lange, enter the room. An's ball dropped to the deck, where it bounced in smaller and smaller increments: bah-ba-bu-b-b-b-bbbb . . .

  “Vasilescu, Bai. You're up.”

  “What about the rest of the 15th, sir?” asked Adam.

  “You wait, like the rest of us.” Lange gave An and Garner the kind of stare that made lesser pilots want to check their uniforms for stains. It didn't bother Garner. Or so he told himself. “Now, listen up. Some of the bogeys who've been strafing Lotan are heading away from the planet. Small craft like that can't go far without returning to a fuel source, so they're probably heading back to their mothership. Our scanners haven't been able to pick up anything on the interior of these fighters, in part because we just haven't managed to get close enough.

  “You're going to follow the bogeys. Get close–real close. Close enough to see the color of the pilots' eyes. We need intel, and right now you're the only ones who can provide it. So far, the fighters haven't been interested in any other ships, just the planet. But if they fire on you, you bugout. Do not engage. This is a fact-finding mission only. Understand?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  “Good. Look alive out there.”

  * * *

  Garner climbed into the cockpit of his F-3000 Banshee and put on his helmet, then pressed the ignition and waited for the canopy to drop. It sealed hermetically with a hiss, and he felt the familiar wave of claustrophobia pass over him. He barely had enough room to work the controls, let alone shift position; he wondered how Adam dealt with it, being a full three inches taller and several pounds heavier than he. The new guy–Fault–was also taller, and with more lean muscle than Garner's thin frame. But mechs didn't really count; they probably didn't feel anything anyway.

  An's voice came over the comlink, interrupting Garner's thoughts. “Hey, if this is a fact-finding mission only, why are we going in fighters? Why not send multi-mission jets?”

  “We've only got M-190's on board, and Banshees are way faster than M-190's. Scuttlebutt says the bogeys we're after are too quick for M-190's to track. Drones aren't fast enough, either.”

  “And the Marines say they're always the first ones on the lines.”

  “Fuck the Marines.”

  An laughed. “Just don't say that to a Marine.”

  With that, the Banshees shrieked out of the Takarabune's docking bay, their engines letting everyone within earshot know how the fighters had gotten their name. No sooner had they exited the warship when Garner picked up a half a dozen blips on his Tactical Information Display.

  “TID's got 'em,” An said over the comlink. “On our eleven o'clock. My God, they're fast!”

  “In pursuit,” Garner said. He angled his ship to eleven o'clock. “Burning aft thrusters.”

  An did the same, snuggling up to Garner's left. They blasted after the bogeys but couldn't catch up, though they did have visual. “Initiating scan,” Garner said. His computer registered the unknowns as ships roughly the size of their own Banshees and gave him an idea of the basic configuration of the bogeys, but could tell him little else.

  “We're still too far away,” An said. “I'm getting nothing new.”

  Garner worked the controls, trying to coax more speed out of his craft. “Just keep after them. They can't go far.”

  “And if they meet their mothership? Then what? We ring the doorbell and ask if we can stay for dinner?”

  “Let's not get beaded up about that until it happens.”

  “Beaded up? Who's beaded up? I'm as cool as Pluto, man.”

  They flew on for a few minutes in silence, frustrated at their inability to get closer to the fighters; after a time, Garner noticed where they were all headed. “They're going into the Murmansk Asteroid Belt.” Because it lay so close to them, Lotan owned Murmansk, and mined it for various minerals, helium, and oxygen. A lot of the helium-3 that powered Earth ships were bought from Lotan.

  The unknowns had slowed, and not only could Garner see them weaving their way into the Belt, he was able to close some of the distance between them and himself.

  “They're not mining ships. What would they want with Murmansk?”

  “Let's find out.” Garner drew nearer to the Belt, An right alongside him.

  “The Belt is playing havoc with my radar.”

  “We need to get closer.” Garner pulled his Banshee right up to the edge of the Belt. From here he could see most of the bogeys, dipping and banking around the asteroids in their path.

  And he could see something else, too. It was massive, bigger than the Takarabune by about half, and black as pitch. Small, pale globes of yellow light illuminated its glassy surface, and the shape . . . so odd.

  “Is it just me,” Garner asked, “or does that thing look like two balls with a giant M&M stuck between them?”

  “It's called an 'oblate spheroid,' ” An said. “And no, it's not just you.”

  The bogeys headed for the M&M's rim, which lay open, a roughly 1,500 meter-long entrance into the depths of the warship. The fore and aft of the vessel looked almost the same, the difference being that the aft had enormous thrusters, while the fore had an extra pair of lights, these larger than the others and slightly more intense. He thought of eyes.

  “I still can't get a reading,” An said, “but I've got some video. Should we head back?”

  “Lange said to get close, right? Real close?”

  “To the fighters, not the mothership!”

  “The fighters are in the mothership. And do you really want to go back now when we've got this opportunity?”

  “Kinda, yeah.”

  “I'm going in.” Garner gently encouraged his Banshee into the Murmansk, moving around a smaller asteroid that drifted into his path.

  “This is so not a good idea.” But An followed him in, staying near, just not so near they would collide if they had to perform evasive maneuvers. They crept forward, keeping the warship at least partly in view at all times, their radar struggling to read anything past the rocks that made up the Belt.

  “This isn't working,” An said.

  “We need to get beyond the asteroids so there's nothing between us and it.”


  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  They broke into a clear spot, and now the mothership loomed over them like a great owl eyeing a pair of mice. Garner couldn't suppress a shudder at the sheer size of the thing.

  “Think there are more like this somewhere?” An's voice was subdued.

  “I hope not. Let's get the scans and get out of here before anyone notices–” He stopped, seeing a fighter emerge from the mothership and start in their direction. “Bogey at twelve o'clock.”

  Maybe getting closer hadn't been such a good idea, after all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In Lotan's atmosphere

  Fault ran the length of Mid-Deck 14, sweat dampening his military-issue tank and making his unruly hair cling to his forehead, his boots clanging dully against the metal flooring. He was alone this morning, but that was nothing new; normal people didn't like mechs, so they stayed away from him, and he stayed away from them. He didn't need them, anyway.

  The only thing he'd ever needed was a war to fight. At least, up until recently. War was what they'd bred him for, after all—what they'd trained him for, what they'd built him for. He understood battle, and not much else—probably the nanites in his head were to blame for that; they kept the interface between his biological brain and his mechanized motor controls working, but they weren't good for much else.

  In fact, they caused more problems than they fixed, which was why the Osirian government had discontinued the creation of cyborgs, and why so many of the active units had been recalled: mechs often went haywire for no discernible reason, destroying everything and everyone in their path. Either the nanites malfunctioned, or the interface broke down or became corrupted, and no one could figure out why or how to fix it. Most of the faulty mechs got sent to “rehabilitation facilities” and lived the rest of their lives in cold, dank cells where they couldn't hurt anyone, or so Fault had heard. The rest . . . the rest got put down. So the mechs who still functioned properly lived on borrowed time.