Earth Valor (Earthrise Book 6) Read online

  EARTH VALOR

  EARTHRISE, BOOK 6

  by

  Daniel Arenson

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  AFTERWORD

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  Illustration © Tom Edwards - TomEdwardsDesign.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sitting at the helm, Kemi gripped the joystick as the Marilyn plunged through the black hole.

  "Hold onto your butts!" she shouted.

  The ship rattled, threatening to tear apart. Darkness surrounded them, crushed them, yanked at them with such force that Kemi struggled to remain conscious. Around her, the others clung to their seats. Captain Ben-Ari clenched her jaw, face pale, her ponytail whipping from side to side as the ship jerked around. Lailani was shouting out curses, barely audible over the roaring engines and the trembling hull. Marco was silent, turning green, and seemed to be mumbling prayers.

  Clutching her joystick with all her strength, Kemi stared ahead into the abyss.

  And the abyss stared back.

  A funnel of darkness stretched ahead, spinning, roiling, crushing the starship. It seemed almost like a living thing, a great serpent of the cosmos, swallowing them.

  "It's tearing us apart!" Lailani cried. "Turn back!"

  "We can't!" Kemi said. "Not even with a working azoth engine. It's got a hold on us!"

  Lailani grimaced, crossed herself, and began to whisper fervent prayers. Captain Ben-Ari's lips were moving too, and she clutched her Star of David pendant.

  But Kemi was too busy to pray. She was struggling to keep the ship together, to adjust their flight to the forces tugging at them. The joystick was struggling to break free like a living creature. She held on. She kept flying. Down through the tunnel. Straight ahead. Deeper into the black hole.

  Humans had sent probes into black holes before. None had ever returned any data. In an old experiment, a ship had launched probes on long tethers, only for the steel cables to snap or pull in anything holding them.

  The face, Kemi reminded herself. Marco's face on the asteroid. It had to be a sign. Had to . . .

  The ship gave a loud crack. The lights shut off.

  They flew in complete darkness.

  Kemi couldn't see her crewmates, couldn't see the controls, couldn't see through the viewports. She flew blindly. She wondered if she had passed out, perhaps had died, but she still heard the others call out, heard the ship tearing apart.

  "Goodbye," she whispered. "Goodbye, my friends. Goodbye, Marco. I love—"

  She gasped.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  Light.

  Light ahead!

  She accidentally yawed to the left, and the ship creaked, roared in protest, and the hull dented. She corrected her flight path. She saw it. A point of light like a star in the distance. She flew toward it.

  Was this the bottom of the black hole? Kemi had heard that black holes were created when stars imploded. Was this the star it had swallowed?

  She kept flying.

  If we die, let us die in fire rather than darkness.

  The light brightened. She guided the ship onward. Soon the light filled the bridge, blue and gold.

  Sounds faded. The rattling eased. The ship plunged forward at incredible speed.

  "It's death," Lailani whispered. "We're flying to the afterlife."

  Kemi shook her head. "Not today. Not on my watch."

  She winced. The black hole's funnel tightened around them. The edges scraped their wings, their belly, their roof. Kemi shot forward, increasing speed, flying toward that light at the end of the tunnel. An old saying from Winston Churchill returned to her: If you're going through hell, keep going.

  Kemi kept going.

  The light blazed against them, blinding her.

  Everything was light.

  The black hole vanished.

  Fire roared around them, then faded into smoke, and blue washed over the world.

  "What the hell?" Marco said, speaking for the first time since they had plunged into the black hole. "Where are we?"

  "Sky," Kemi whispered, and her eyes dampened. "We're flying in sky."

  The blue spread around her. A star shone above—a yellow sun. Scattered fluffy clouds glided.

  The ship jolted.

  G-forces yanked on them, and they cringed.

  "We're crashing in sky!" Lailani said.

  Kemi flipped switches and hit buttons. Main power was out. Backup power was fading. One wing was damaged, pieces of it fluttering like feathers. The hull was dented, cracked, shrieking as it lost air. Klaxons blared across the ship, and another battery failed.

  "Lieutenant, can you still land us?" Ben-Ari said.

  "I don't know, Captain." She grimaced, trying to control the descent. The bad wing groaned in protest. Kemi could barely hold the nose up. "It's bad."

  Ben-Ari gritted her teeth. "This is just typical of my father. He bought the ship that has a jukebox and ice cream parlor, instead of a proper military vessel that has parachutes."

  Marco gaped. "We don't have parachutes?"

  "Or ejection seats," said Kemi. "Or an escape pod. Or airbags."

  "But we do have all the milkshakes we could eat!" Lailani said, then cringed as the nose dipped. They all nearly fell from their seats. "Holy shit."

  Wind shrieked around them and through the Marilyn. Kemi yanked back mightily, but the joystick wouldn't move.

  "We're going down!" Marco shouted.

  "Save us, Captain Obvious!" Lailani shouted back.

  They plunged through the sky. Below, Kemi saw the surface of a planet. Grass. Forests.

  Earth, she thought. It's Earth! But how—

  She cringed. They were crashing straight toward a town.

  "Lieutenant!" Ben-Ari said.

  "I see it, I see it!"

  Kemi yanked the joystick, trying to divert their flight. They were going down fast. The town grew closer, closer.

  "It's impossible . . ." Kemi whispered.

  It was a town out of a storybook. Houses of wood and clay, their roofs thatched with straw, rose along cobbled streets. Smoke plumed from chimneys. A church was the only stone building, and bells were ringing in the belfry. Around the town spread farmlands, but Kemi saw no tractors, only people—at least a hundred—toiling in the fields. Beyond a forest, a castle rose on a mountain.

  It's like something out of medieval Europe, Kemi thought. Where the hell are we?

  But she had no time to contemplate it further. They were coming down fast. They were going to crash.

  "Lieutenant, get us away from that city!" Ben-Ari shouted. "We're about to go down right onto those houses
!"

  Kemi struggled with the joystick. "I might be able to divert us to the fields. But there are too many farmers there. We'll crush them!"

  "Better to kill a few farmers than to kill hundreds in the city!" Ben-Ari shouted. The ship was rattling again, the wind shrieking. They all had to shout to be heard.

  "The bells in the church are ringing!" Kemi said. "Look, Captain! It's Sunday. The city people will be heading to church! If I can bring us down on the houses, they'll be empty. They—"

  "That would destroy the ship!" said Ben-Ari. "And we don't know those houses are empty."

  Kemi grimaced. She stared below. She couldn't fly higher. In a minute, maybe two, they were touching down. She stared in horror. The city streets were empty. That had to mean the houses were empty too, everyone at church. Didn't it? She looked at the farms. The farmers were pointing at the sky. If she landed there, she would crush them. She knew it! But maybe she could still save herself, save the crew of the Marilyn, save her friends.

  "Kemi, you better make a decision!" Lailani said.

  What to do? Kemi gave a wordless cry. What to do? Landing in the fields, she would kill dozens. Landing atop the city, she would crush the houses—maybe they were empty, and maybe she would kill hundreds.

  They were close now.

  They were almost on the roofs.

  The crew shouted.

  Kemi winced and yanked the joystick sideways with both hands.

  "Hold on!" she screamed.

  They swerved. They nicked the chimney of an old tavern. They scraped the town's defensive wall. They skimmed the fields, then slammed down, crushing stalks of wheat, and plowing over fleeing farmers.

  The peasants tried to escape, but the starship was too fast. The Marilyn tore through dirt, wheat, and human flesh. Corpses hit the windshields, ripping apart, and Kemi screamed, shoving the brakes, trying to slow them down. The crew jolted in their seats like rag dolls, heads whipping back and forth, only their seat belts holding them in place. Kemi banged her face against the joystick and blood filled her mouth. The starship drove through a barn, crushing horses, and the windshield cracked, and dirt and hay and blood filled the bridge.

  They slowed down.

  They came to rest in the field.

  For a moment, they were all still, limp in their seats.

  Kemi lowered her head, and sobs racked her body. Blood poured from her nose.

  I killed them. I killed the farmers. I saved us but I killed them . . .

  "Is everyone all right?" Ben-Ari finally asked, bleeding from a gash on her forehead, and she cradled her hand against her chest.

  Lailani moaned and unbuckled her seatbelt. "I feel like I just fell through a black hole."

  Marco grimaced. "I bruised my elbow, but I'm fine. Kemi? Kemi, are you all right?"

  She looked at him. A tear flowed down her cheek, and blood dripped from her split lip. "I killed them, Marco." A sob shook her body. "I killed the farmers."

  He embraced her. "It's not your fault. You saved hundreds in the town."

  "Maybe," she whispered. "I want to believe that. I do. But what if those houses were empty, if everyone was at church, if we could have saved the lives in the field . . ."

  Captain Ben-Ari looked out the cracked windshield, then back at the crew. "The real question is: What are farmers doing inside a black hole?"

  Shouts sounded from outside.

  Lailani hopped toward the windshield, cringed, then turned toward the others.

  "Um, guys? There are a bunch of very angry dudes running toward us. And they have arrows."

  A whistle sounded.

  An arrow—an actual arrow tipped with metal—slammed into the windshield. A second arrow shot through a crack, whizzed only centimeters away from Kemi's face, and hit her seat's backrest.

  Kemi plucked out the arrow in disbelief. Ahead, she saw them—a dozen men or more, wearing chain mail, bows in hand. They were all running toward the ship.

  "Where the hell are we?" she whispered.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Addy drummed on the steering wheel, singing along to the Allman Brothers' "Ramblin' Man," driving the truck through the snowy mountains of Northern Ontario.

  "Never pegged you for a country music girl," Jethro said, riding shotgun. The bearded survivalist wore his homemade peg leg, replacing the limb a marauder had munched on. He was busy polishing a rifle that was propped up between his legs, one real and one wooden.

  "First of all, it's southern rock, not country," Addy said. "Second, be careful with that rifle, or you're likely to blow your balls off." She bobbed her head and drummed on. "I was born a Ramblin' Man . . ."

  Jethro raised an eyebrow. "You were born a man?"

  She groaned. "That's what everyone will ask you if you keep playing with that rifle. Put it aside! Jesus H. Christ, there will be time for guns later. Sing with me now." The song ended, and Creedence came on the speakers. "My own mix tape."

  "I'm not big on classical music," said Jethro.

  "Classical music is the shit." Addy's head bobbed along. "No computer sounds. No robots. Just humans pulling strings and beating drums." She kept drumming on the steering wheel.

  "You should do less drumming and more steering." Jethro stuck his rag into the crevices of his rifle. "Roads are slippery. Dangerous."

  She rolled her eyes. "Says the man who's cleaning a loaded gun."

  "She's not loaded, just got a magazine stuck in her." Jethro pulled the magazine out and stuffed it into his pocket. "Better?"

  She nodded. "Slightly less suicidal, yes."

  Jethro was right, though. The road was damn slippery, and as Addy made a sharp turn, she had to grip the wheel with both hands, press down on the brakes, and curse a couple dozen times. Plow service was in short supply in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and ice and snow covered the mountain road. The wilderness spread around them: snowy slopes, forests draped with ice, and frozen waterfalls. This wasn't the Rockies, perhaps, but the land was rugged enough, the way treacherous. A perfect place to hide a few thousand people from the marauders.

  Those thousands of people traveled behind her, a line of vehicles across the highway. Trucks. Two buses. Beat-up sedans. Motorcycles. A handful of armored vehicles found on battlefields. They were rebels, farmers, and mostly survivors of the liberated slaughterhouse. And they needed a place to lie low, to lick their wounds, and to keep up the fight.

  Until Marco comes back here with the Ghost Fleet, she thought. You better hurry up, little dude.

  "There." Addy pointed. "That hill. Mark it on the map. We'll build a lookout there. We'll raise an antenna too and try to find more rebels."

  Jethro nodded and drew an X on a folding map. "And that valley below could make a good camp for a hundred people."

  Addy shook her head. "No. Too visible. We need caves. If we can't find caves, we'll use the tanks and blast our own caves."

  "We have diggers," Jethro said. "The same big-ass drills I used to build the Ark." His eyes darkened. "I still say we should have stayed in the Ark."

  Addy groaned. "We've had that conversation a thousand times. Are you still going to sulk like a homesick baby? The Ark was dangerous! The marauders would have found it sooner or later. Fuck, even I found it just by following the train tracks. It was a death trap."

  Jethro scowled. "It was ten thousand square feet of radiation-proof, bomb-proof security, complete with enough food and power to keep hundreds alive for two years."

  Addy nodded. "Yes, and the marauders would have torn through it in two hours. Jethro, if you're going to whine the whole trip, I'm going to pull the car over. Don't make me pull over, Jethro!"

  He grumbled. "I know, I know. It's just that . . . I spent my life building that place. Decades, Addy. I've known you since you were . . . what, two or three?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "I was fourteen, Jethro. Fucking fourteen when I started coming up to your farms to shoot cans off fences and hunt. You thought you were teaching a toddler to shoot?"


  He tugged his graying beard. "Whatever, two, fourteen . . . Point is, you were a little pissant girl, and even then I was building the Ark. Waiting for the day we'd need it."

  She laughed. "You talk as if I'm some old lady now. I'm only twenty . . ." She frowned and counted on her fingers. "Twenty-six, I think? Fuck me. I don't even know what year it is anymore."

  "It's the year one," Jethro said.

  Addy raised both eyebrows this time. "We've traveled back in time? When do we get to meet baby Jesus? We can bring him gifts of gun oil and tank diesel."

  "It's a new world, Addy." Jethro stared out at the wilderness ahead. "Civilization is gone. Our cities fell. Our fleets collapsed. The old ways are dead. It's the year one—the start of a new era. It's what I've been waiting for all my life."

  "Since you were two?" Addy said. "Or did you only start digging bunkers at three when you learned to shoot guns?"

  "Since a scum killed my wife and three little boys," Jethro said.

  Addy's jaw dropped. She closed it. She took a slow breath. "Jesus, Jethro." She looked at him. "I'm sorry. That's horrible. I never knew. You never said anything." She touched his arm. "Seriously, man. I don't know what to say."

  Jethro nodded, staring out the windshield at the frozen hills. "I don't talk about 'em much. I think about 'em a lot. My wife—beautiful, courageous woman. Hair like fire and a personality to match. A warrior. My boys were too. Little but fierce. Would have been about your age now, I reckon, the oldest a bit older maybe. God, they loved fishing!" He laughed. "Those little rascals could spend all day at the lake, come home with a big batch of sunfish and bass, and we'd fire up the grill. Those were good years."

  Addy still didn't know what to say, how to comfort him, how to say anything without sounding like a complete idiot. "Sounds like it," was all she could manage. God. She couldn't even imagine such loss. She had lost her parents, lost many friends, but somehow losing your kids seemed a special kind of cruelty. Unthinkable. Unfair. Impossible for her to comprehend.

  "The war against the scum was still going on," Jethro said. "But we carved out a good little life up north of the cities. The aliens didn't bother us and we didn't bother them. Until one day, one of those centipede bastards made it onto our farm." He clenched his fists. They shook. "It sneaked into our home at night. Went into the boys' room. It devoured them. It fucking devoured them like a python. My wife fought it. Shot the creature three times before it killed her too. I finally blew its brains out across my oldest boy's room." He lowered his head. "I couldn't live in that old house anymore. Not after what happened. But I knew that my life had new meaning." He looked back up, his eyes now damp and red. "That I could save other families. Other kids. So I devoted the following twenty years of my life to building the Ark. To preparing for another alien invasion. To saving whoever I could."