Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3) Read online

  EARTH RISING

  EARTHRISE, BOOK 3

  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

  AFTERWORD

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  Illustration © Tom Edwards - TomEdwardsDesign.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  Colonel Yardley was enjoying a rare sunny day in Vancouver when the sky fell.

  At eighty-six, he rarely left the nursing home anymore. It was too damn rainy most of the time, too damn cold, and his damn joints ached whenever his dear friends Jack and Daniels weren't nearby. He had to walk with a cane, damn it. He told people it was purely for style, a bit of dapper sophistication in these days full of green-haired kids with too-tight pants. Perhaps he told himself the same thing. His twisted legs, regardless of his pride, were thankful for the sturdy stick of oak. Those legs still carried shrapnel in them from the war fifty years ago. They had never stopped hurting.

  Fifty years today, the colonel thought. He rolled up the sleeve of his uniform and checked his watch. Well, fifty years in two hours and seven minutes.

  It was unlikely he'd make it to the ceremony without needing to find a place to pee first. Another pleasure of old age.

  He walked on, tapping his cane. His medals jangled across his chest. He wore his old uniform today for the first time since retiring twenty-five years ago. It was too large on him now. He had shrunk several inches since last wearing it, and the uniform billowed like an olive-green tent whenever the wind gusted. But he had refused to replace or tailor it. No. This uniform was the one he had led men in, had killed scum in. And it was the same old rifle that now hung across his back, the very rifle he had shot the enemy with. He wouldn't swap them for one of the fancy new uniforms soldiers wore today. He would wear the same set of greens he had won the Battle of Amsterdam in. The same uniform he had worn when pulling children out of the ruins, saving lives, giving Earth a chance to fight on.

  Tap, tap. His cane pattered on. He had walked only a few blocks, and he had to pee already.

  But at least I'm not on Depends, he thought. Which was more than could be said for some of his friends back at Oceanview Retirement Manor.

  The legion had offered him transport to the ceremony, a bus full of other creaky old farts like him, but damn it, Yardley didn't want to spend all day—his first day out of the nursing home in years—with other veterans. He didn't want to listen to them drone on and on about the old war. He had been living that old war for fifty years now. No. Yardley wanted to see the world. To see this city he had saved. To see the young ones, the lives he had made possible.

  They were all around him on this sunny street between sea and mountains. Children raced along the boardwalk, laughing and chasing seagulls. Sailors were spending their Sunday on their boats, and white sails filled this harbor on the Pacific. In a nearby park, families were enjoying a rare day out. They all carried their boxes of gas masks, but there hadn't been an attack on this city for three weeks, not since the scum had blasted apart a school bus, consuming twenty-three children. Yes, the war still ebbed and flowed. They were still fighting across the deserts of Africa, the forests of South America, on the streets of every major city. Thousands of starships still battled the scum up in space. But the true war—the Cataclysm, that horrible year when billions of people had perished in the poison and fire—that war was over. That war Colonel Yardley and his friends had won. There was a semblance of life now, moments of sunlight between the long days of clouds. There was hope. There was humanity.

  As he walked down Vancouver's sunny streets, Yardley passed by hundreds of soldiers. Soldiers patrolled every neighborhood in every city in the world these days; you never knew where the scum pods might land. As Yardley walked by them, the soldiers saw his insignia. Three stars on each shoulder. The young ones rarely saw anyone higher ranking than a captain in the field, and many had never seen a colonel up close. They stood at attention as he walked by. They saluted. Yardley nodded at them all.

  "Good lads," he said. "Good lasses." Yes, they let women fight these days too, and damn good warriors they were, as tough as the men. "At ease, my friends."

  He could see the ceremonial park now. His back was bent, his legs were frail, but his eyes were still sharp. A hundred old geezers were already gathering on the grass. Every year there were fewer. Yardley remembered the ten-year anniversary of the Cataclysm. There had been thousands of veterans there. Why, just a decade ago, there had been thousands. But over the past few years, more and more of his comrades had succumbed to old age. Some lay buried underground. Some simply no longer had the will to battle their nurses and escape their retirement homes.

  Fifty damn years, Yardley thought. Fifty years since the scum nearly destroyed the world. And still we fight.

  He turned his head and saw the memorial for the school bus on the roadside, a hill of flowers and teddy bears and cards. Tears stung Yardley's eyes to think of the children who had died only days ago, crushed by the aliens' jaws.

  Even now, those asshole scum won't leave us alone.

  He limped onward, leaning on his cane, until he reached the memorial park. A massive starship rose in the center, as old as he was. The HDFS Constitution, the flagship of the North American fleet back in the days of the Cataclysm. Today it was a relic. Holes gaped open on its hull, remnants of the scum attacks. They had never patched up those holes, leaving this starship blemished, its scars a memory of the war. Colonel Yardley had served on this ship. He had been a captain back then, commanding the starboard's artillery cannons, and they had blasted eighteen scum pods in Earth's orbit before the bastards had knocked them down onto the Mongolian plains. The Constitution. Old, beaten up, scarred, and tough as hell—just like the veterans of the Cataclysm who gathered around her.

  His friends approached him. A few leaning on canes. One man using a walker. Two in wheelchairs.

  "Hullo, old farts," Yardley said to them.

  "'Ello, you bastard," said Major Taber, a grizzled old war dog, medals clanking across his chest. He liked to brag that he was descended of Viking warriors.

  "Is that any way to address a superior officer?" Yardley growled at the man.

  Another one of their comrades, Captain Garza, barked a laugh. "The only way you're superior to us now, you son of a bitch, is your superior crankiness. We're all relics now, just like that ship."

  Yardley snorted. "That ship's still tougher than any of the tin cans they're launching into space today. And we old geezers are still tougher than these pups they're sending up there."

  "What are you talking about?" said Sergeant Lora Buroker, walking toward them. "I'm only sixty-nine. I'm still a kid!"

  They all huffed and snorted at her. "You were a pup back then, and you're a pup now!" Yardley said, waving his cane at her, but he couldn't help but smile. He remembered Lora from those days, a fresh-eyed teenage private who had served under his command, blasting scum ships apart with her cannon. She was still a loose cannon, even
now, her hair gone to white.

  The others were congregating on the grass. The HDF had arranged plastic seats, but few of the veterans were sitting. Their legs were tired, but they were busy moving toward their old comrades. They rarely saw other souls during the year. Some had brought their families. Many had no families left. There was certainly no family here for Colonel Yardley. He had dedicated his life to the military, taking no wife, fathering no children. He had loved a few women in his day—there had been the woman he had courted while stationed in Bangkok, and there had been Melissa, slain by the scum. But never a wife. Never a family. He reached over his shoulder to pat the stock of his rifle. That gun was the closest thing Colonel Yardley had to a wife.

  "Well, the old farts are all together again," he said, looking around him. "Smaller crowd than usual."

  "Just the toughest bastards remain," said Major Taber.

  Yardley nodded, but he wasn't so sure. He thought back to the great battles fifty years ago when the scum had first attacked. To his gruff sergeant, slain holding back the scum with his own body, ripped to shreds to let his soldiers flee. To young privates, some as young as fifteen, who had charged into the ranks of the enemy, knowing they would die, knowing they had to die to let others live. Were the old farts the toughest bastards? No. They were the commanders. Those who had led from bridges and bunkers. It had been the young ones, the brave boys and girls, those who had sacrificed their lives—they had been the toughest. Their sacrifices had let Earth survive.

  He looked around him at the crowd of veterans. The others saw their old brothers and sisters-in-arms. But Yardley saw the millions who had died. His friends who could not be here. The finest souls he had known.

  A handful of young soldiers approached, and a trumpet blared, and the veterans moved to their seats. A young officer—damn it, anyone under sixty seemed young to Yardley now—stepped toward a podium. Yardley recognized her dimples and butterfly pendant from countless posters and propaganda reels. Here stood Captain Edun, the latest speaker of the HDF. The officer stood in the shade of the HDFS Constitution and spoke to the crowd.

  "Fifty years ago," Edun said, "we awoke to a terrible reality. Earth had made first contact with an alien species, and they were hostile. Their pods rained down. Their poison polluted our air. Their claws cut our children. Billions died. Entire cities, entire nations fell. But from the ashes rose brave souls. The soldiers of the world's armies united. In blood and fire, they formed the Human Defense Force. They told the enemy: No more."

  "No more!" rose voices in the crowd.

  Captain Edun continued. "Your courage, your sacrifice, your strength, your leadership—they let us deal the scum a devastating blow. They showed the enemy that we could strike them on their own soil. That we will not tolerate their aggression. That we will live. That we will fight."

  Yardley looked around him at the crowd. Like every year, he hoped to see him. The hero of the war. The legendary pilot. Earth's greatest soldier. But like every year, he had not come. Fifty years ago, it had been Evan Bryan, a brash young pilot, who had made it through the scum's defenses. As thousands of starships had burned, Captain Bryan alone had flown through the gauntlet, whipping his way around the scum vessels in a small, one-man fighter jet. That day fifty years ago, Evan Bryan had unleashed the fury of Earth upon Abaddon, homeworld of the scum. The nuclear inferno had slain millions of the scum, destroying entire hives on their planet. It had ended the Cataclysm. It had elevated Bryan to the status of a hero. Since that day, the scum had dared not launch mass destruction against the earth. Since that day, the enemy had waged a war of attrition, slowly stabbing the earth time after time, hoping to destroy the planet with countless small attacks. Since that day, Earth had stood—bleeding, suffering, losing people every day—but saved from complete annihilation through a new doctrine of mutually assured destruction. A doctrine Bryan had birthed in furious flame and devastating vengeance.

  Yardley had met the young pilot, fifteen years his junior, during that war. He had not seen him since. Few people had. The hero had gone into isolation, allowing no interviews, writing no books, remaining in the shadows. All they had to worship was the old photo of a smiling, twenty-one-year-old kid, a photo taken the day before the assault on Abaddon. It was the most famous photograph in the world. It was the photograph that appeared on posters, mugs, T-shirts, flags. The photograph that inspired action figures, video game characters, romance novel covers. The photograph of a smiling, handsome face that gave humanity hope.

  "Just this morning," Captain Edun said, "we received news from deep space. A brave company of soldiers defeated a hive of scolopendra titania on the moon Corpus, killing its king. The spirit of you veterans continues to inspire the younger generation of fighters, leading them on to victories."

  The captain continued speaking from the lectern, now recounting stories of the great battles of old, of the soldiers' heroism. Yardley soon found his bladder so full it consumed all his attention. To distract himself, he looked around at the civilians who had gathered for the ceremony. Some were families of the veterans, others just people who had come to the park for a sunny day out, who now peered at the old geezers around their rusty rocket. Some of these civilians were missing limbs. One man wore bandages around his face, and a tube in his neck was helping him breathe. They too knew war. They had known war all their lives. A young boy stepped closer to the crowd and saluted the veterans. He was missing one arm.

  It's for them that I fought, Yardley thought. Not for glory, not for heroism. For these people. For life.

  "Look, Mama!" said a boy in the crowd, pointing at the sky. "It's raining purple!"

  Eyes rose to the sky. A woman cried out.

  Air raid sirens wailed.

  Yardley looked up. He saw them in the sky as he had seen them fifty years ago. The pods of the scolopendra titania. The scum.

  For the past fifty years, the scum would send one or two pods a week into this city—just enough to terrorize the population, not enough to risk another nuclear assault on their world. Today thousands—tens of thousands—of pods screamed down toward Vancouver, this jewel of the Pacific.

  So, Yardley thought as people stared, screamed, fled. We destroyed one of their hives. So they will destroy one of ours.

  With flashes of light and roaring fire and clouds of poison, the pods crashed into the city.

  Outside the park, pods slammed into a glassy skyscraper. The tower shattered, belching out dust and debris. In the port downhill, purple pods slammed into the water, boiling it, raising tidal waves. Ships burned and sank. More pods slammed down across the city, and towers fell one by one like houses of cards. In the distance, pods rained onto the mountains, spilling out noxious fumes that rolled toward the city.

  This was not an attack to terrorize, to punish. This was an attack like those fifty years ago. An attack to utterly destroy.

  People were fleeing the park. Pods slammed into trees, and fires raged. Across the park, the slimy eggs—each the size of a car—cracked open, and the massive centipedes emerged.

  "Run to the shelters!" cried Captain Edun, leaping off the podium.

  "Stand back, veterans, stand back!" shouted young soldiers, racing into the park, firing their T57 assault rifles and falling to the swarm of scum. Blood sprayed the grass.

  For the first time in decades, Yardley—eighty-six years old, with bent legs full of shrapnel, with a crooked back and just a few wisps of silver hair—unslung his rifle from his back and aimed his weapon.

  "What say you, fellow old farts?" he said to his friends. "One more battle before the end?"

  They looked at him. Old men and women, some in their nineties, two of them older than a hundred, only one among them a spry spring chicken at sixty-nine. They too raised their weapons. Some leaned on canes, others on walkers. A few sat in wheelchairs. But all raised their trusty old rifles.

  "T57s?" said Major Taber. The old man scoffed. "Let's show these young whippersnappers what a good old R14
can do." He hefted his rifle.

  "Let's teach these kids a thing or two," said silver-haired Captain Garza.

  "Like in the old days?" said Master Sergeant Jensen, tossing aside his cane.

  "Like in the old days," agreed Yardley.

  Across the city, pods kept slamming down, and towers kept falling. Thousands more pods kept hailing. In the park, the young soldiers fell. The centipedes swarmed toward the old veterans from every side, forming a noose around them.

  "For Earth, friends," said Colonel Yardley. "One last time. For Earth."

  "For Earth!" they replied, a hundred raspy voices.

  As the scum scurried forth, tens of thousands of the creatures, as the city collapsed around them, a hundred veterans, relics of the old war, fired their guns. For one moment, for this last battle, they were young again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Marco stood on the bridge of the HDFS Miyari, watching the great bastion of humanity's might shine among the stars.

  "Nightwall," he said. "The mightiest military fortress we have. Our light in the dark. Our fist on the frontier. Our bright sword in space."

  Standing beside him, Addy scratched her backside. "You think they got beer there? Fuck me, I haven't had beer in months."

  It was only the two of them on the bridge. Three if you counted Osiris the android, who sat at the controls, piloting the ship onward. Four if you counted Sergeant Stumpy, the Boston Terrier they had rescued from the ravaged mining colony on Corpus. It felt too empty here. Too silent. Too many gone, too many left shattered on that dark mining hell. They had traveled to Corpus as a company of two hundred armed, deadly warriors. They flew onward as a handful of haunted survivors.

  Marco kept expecting to hear Benny "Elvis" Ray, one of his best friends, announce he would drink Addy under the table. He kept waiting for Sasha "Beast" Mikhailov to burst onto the bridge, to speak of how Russian vodka was far superior to beer. He wanted Caveman to be here, to speak of his flowers, for Jackass to talk to him of books, for Corporal Diaz and Sergeant Singh to offer Marco wisdom and guidance.