Earth Shadows (Earthrise Book 5) Read online

  EARTH SHADOWS

  EARTHRISE, BOOK 5

  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

  AFTERWORD

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  Illustration © Tom Edwards - TomEdwardsDesign.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  The brand sizzled.

  Addy screamed.

  "You sons of bitches!" she shouted, spraying saliva. "I'm going to carve open your skulls and piss in 'em!"

  The creature pulled the brand back. The ugly red mark hissed on her hip.

  "Prime meat. Lord Malphas will find you delicious." The alien chuckled, then shoved Addy forward. "Move along."

  Addy tugged up her pants, hiding the burning brand. She snarled at the marauder, this bloated creature of claws and fangs and stench.

  "I never forget a face." She pointed at the warty creature. "And your ugly mug is particularly memorable. Someday I will kill you. Painfully. Know this."

  The alien lifted a crackling prod. He shoved it against Addy, and electricity raced across her. She screamed.

  "Move down the line!" The marauder brandished the prod. "Or you'll taste this again."

  Cursing, trembling, and sweating, Addy moved. Thousands of other humans, the survivors of Haven, stood here in a line. The colony lay in ruin around them. Skyscrapers lay toppled. Burnt homes smoldered. Rubble covered the streets. A crashed Firebird still smoked nearby, a charred skeleton in the cockpit.

  All along the line, the marauders sneered, drooled, and licked their jaws. They were as big as horses, but far less pleasant. Six legs grew from their bodies, covered with spikes and tipped with claws. Their jaws could swallow men whole. The skulls of vanquished enemies, dozens of species, clattered atop their bloated abdomens, forming ritualistic armor.

  They made the scum look cute.

  And they were hungry. Hungry for human flesh.

  We're not prisoners of war to them, Addy thought. We're cattle.

  "Move it!" A marauder lifted a prod. "Faster!"

  More electricity crackled across Addy. She yowled and moved faster. An old woman trudged ahead of her, barely keeping up. A boy wept behind Addy, calling for his mother. The line of captives stretched for kilometers. With New Earth's foggy atmosphere, Addy could not see its beginning or end.

  She looked skyward, hoping to see the Saint Brendan swooping in to rescue her. But Captain Ben-Ari's ship was gone. The Firebirds tasked with defending Haven were gone. All she saw was ravagers covering the sky.

  Had the marauders taken Marco and the other Dragons captive too? Had her friends died in the cave? Or had they escaped without her? Addy didn't know which of those three options was worse. Each possibility made her cringe.

  If you're captive here, Marco, I'll find you, she thought. If you're dead, I'll mourn you. And if you escaped without me, I'll fucking kill you.

  The line took her past the burning husk of a warship, a vessel as large as an apartment building. Marauders were spraying webs over it, dousing the flames. Two of the beasts emerged from within the ship, goading forward two bleeding soldiers, survivors of the crash. The men's hands were raised, their faces bleeding. Addy looked away, jaw clenched. She wondered if these creatures were attacking Earth too, if her planet still stood. The great Human Defense Force, the army that had defeated the scum, had been drastically downsized since that devastating and costly war. Did any humans still fight?

  "Move it, meat!" a marauder grumbled, and a prod slammed into the old lady in front of Addy. The woman screamed and collapsed.

  "Grandma!" Addy said, kneeling above her.

  "Move it!" A marauder grabbed Addy, claws tightening around her arms, and yanked her up. "Down the line."

  "She's hurt!" Addy said, glaring into the alien's four bulging eyes. "You son of a—"

  The baton crackled across Addy. "Move!"

  She screamed as the electricity washed over her. She lost control of her bladder. Hot piss ran down her legs. The marauder pulled back his baton and shoved her down the line. Addy tried to dodge the fallen woman, but she stumbled, crushing the woman's wrist underfoot. The other captives followed, trampling the grandmother. More bones snapped. Addy could only pray that the old lady died quickly.

  The march took Addy past her old apartment building, the place where she had lived with Marco for two years. The top few stories had fallen, including their apartment. Marauder webs coated the rest, and the aliens were scuttling across them. It had been a difficult two years, living in that cage, watching Marco spiral into the depression and madness of shell shock. But Addy missed those days now.

  We were alive. We were together. Tears filled her eyes. Now I don't know if I'll see you again, Poet.

  "Move!"

  The humans marched on, leaving the ruins behind. They entered a field where the rubble had been swept aside. Scattered fires burned, and metal poles rose from the ground, tall as electrical towers. Webs stretched between these jagged monoliths, and marauders crawled across them, overlooking the smoldering plain. Massive alien vessels stood ahead, rising from mist, boxes of metal the size of warehouses. Alien starships, Addy surmised. They were built from the same dark, jagged metal as ravagers but were much larger. They looked more like transport vessels than warships. The line of human prisoners stretched across the field, leading toward the cubicle ships.

  Addy trudged across the field. Some people still wore their atmosuits, but Addy had lost her breathing mask during the fight. The acidic air of New Earth stung her lungs and burned her mouth. With every step now, she was coughing. Some of the homeless on New Earth survived without masks, but never for long, and Addy felt the ash fill her lungs. Her head spun from the low oxygen, and even in the shivering cold, sweat soaked her. Mud rose around her ankles. The corpse of a child lay before her, its face gone, trampled into the mud. A broken school bus smoldered nearby, human skeletons within it. Addy knelt, lifted a stuffed animal from the mud, and yowled as a marauder jabbed her back with claws. She marched on, moving toward the massive ships.

  "Undress, humans!" a marauder cackled, dangling from a web between metal poles. A red triangle was painted onto his forehead, denoting his rank of command. "We burn your flea-infested clothes."

  "Clothes off!" shouted another marauder, clattering toward them on six legs. "You stink of parasites."

  The humans stood, staring around, hesitant. Claws reached out, grabbing clothes, ripping them off. People shouted. One man fought back, hurling stones. The marauders grabbed him, knocked him into the dirt, and ripped off his arms.

  "Clothes off!" rumbled the marauder on the web.

  A few humans, weeping, began to undress. Others still struggled, only for claws to shred their clothes.

  Fuck this shit, Addy thought,
fists clenched. They captured me. They branded me. They destroyed my city. The clothes on my back are all I have left.

  As marauders moved across the line, ripping clothes off prisoners, Addy took a deep breath.

  Here goes nothing.

  She burst into a run.

  She made it only twenty meters across the field before a web shot out, lassoed her legs, and knocked her down.

  Addy screamed. Her face hit the mud. A marauder began reeling her back, spooling the sticky strand around his front legs. Addy dragged through the mud. She kicked, floundered, and scratched at the webbing, but she couldn't free herself. When she reached the marauder, the creature yanked her up. His jaws opened before her, bathing her with the stench of rancid meat. A human arm hung between his teeth.

  "A saucy one . . ." The marauder's tongue emerged, lined with teeth like a chainsaw. He licked her cheek. She grimaced and looked away. "Delectable. I will enjoy feasting on your flesh."

  "Huckshaw!" The voice boomed from behind, and another marauder advanced. "This one is branded." The alien tugged Addy's pants down her hip, revealing the brand. "She is for the table of Lord Malphas himself. Not for us to eat."

  Staring at this new marauder, fury exploded through Addy.

  She knew him.

  He was larger than the others, and a crest of black horns grew from his head. A red triangle, denoting his high rank, was painted onto his scaly forehead. But mostly Addy recognized the parasitic twin, a deformity the size of a toddler, that twitched on the marauder's side. The twisted creature stared at her, snapping tiny jaws.

  You're the marauder who captured me in the cave, Addy thought, tugging her pants back up. You're the one who stole me away from Marco. I remember.

  "But Master Orcus!" The first marauder, the one who had licked Addy, whined at his deformed superior. "Malphas has many to feed upon. Let me break this one. Let us feast on her together! We will enjoy her fear, and—"

  Orcus—the marauder with the parasitic twin—lashed his claws, smacking down the smaller Huckshaw. The hungry marauder whimpered and fled. The parasitic twin growing from Orcus's side laughed.

  Orcus advanced toward Addy, eyes narrowing. Intelligent eyes. Eyes filled with unending cruelty. He grabbed Addy, ripped off the webs that bound her, and shoved her back into the line.

  "You are lords' meat." Orcus hissed, and his nostrils flared, inhaling her scent. The parasitic twin snapped his jaws, desperate to bite her. "I can see why, delicious one. You smell of such delectable fear. Now off with your clothes."

  Growing from his side, the parasitic twin cackled. "Off, off!"

  The claws reached out to tear Addy's clothes—her old security guard uniform.

  "No!" she said. "I'll do it."

  She undressed, eyes dry, staring blankly ahead. She was not shy. She had been naked in public while in the army, showering with dozens of soldiers. Her body was still strong, her limbs long and well-muscled. Scars, old and new, covered her—some from the war against the scum a few years ago, others new, the work of these marauders. The ugly brand, marking her as prime meat, still sizzled on her hip, bits of cloth and mud clinging to the wound. Tattoos covered her arms: the Maple Leafs logo she had inked there in high school, the symbols of platoons she had served in, and a star for every scum she had killed. At twenty-five, battle hardened, Addy no longer had the soft, slender body she had joined the army with at eighteen. She had the body of a warrior. A survivor.

  And I will survive this, she vowed. If the others still live, I will find them. And I will fight again. Today I am a prisoner of war. But I am still a soldier.

  The marauders piled up the prisoners' clothes and burned them. The smoke stung Addy's eyes and nostrils, and sparks sizzled against her skin. The aliens shoved the naked humans farther down the line, closer toward the towering ships.

  Halfway across the field, they paused again. Tall, slender marauders worked with razor-sharp claws, shearing the prisoners' hair. Addy grimaced, caught in their grip, as they shaved her head. She had always prided herself on her hair, long and smooth and the color of dawn. She had never cared much about beauty; her hips were too wide, her nose too big, and her body was now too scarred. She had always cared more about her strength than her looks. But her hair had been her one source of pride. Now the aliens burned it in the piles. They sent her onward, her head shaved, her scalp nicked and trickling blood.

  The other prisoners walked with her. Children. Mothers with babies. Old men and women. Captive soldiers. All were naked. All were shaved bald, their scalps bleeding. Sheep to the slaughter. They moved into the shade of the metal cargo barges, ships the size of cathedrals.

  "Now into the ship!" rumbled a marauder. "Go! In, meat! Move!"

  The prods crackled. Prisoners screamed. One by one, they climbed a metal ramp, entering the jagged alien starship.

  "Move!" A marauder jabbed Addy in the small of her back, and she screamed as the electricity shocked her. "Inside!"

  She could not stop herself.

  Naked, bald, beaten, she knelt and grabbed a stone. She hurled it against the marauder.

  "Fight!" Addy shouted. "Humans, fight them! With tooth and nail, fight!"

  Her stone hit a marauder in the eye. The creature roared. A few other humans raised bricks, remnants of toppled houses, and tossed them.

  "Fuck the aliens!" shouted a man.

  "Fight, fight, for humanity!" cried a woman, leaping toward a marauder with a shard of metal fished out from the mud.

  Most people here were elders and children, but many too were veterans. With Addy, they hurled stones. They shouted. They raised sticks from the mud.

  "The scum butchered us!" Addy shouted. "We will never more be butchered. Never again!"

  "Never again!" they cried.

  Yet even bullets could not penetrate the marauders' skin. The stones and sticks bounced harmlessly off the aliens. Claws grabbed one man, lacerated his hands, and scattered fingers into the mud. A woman screamed, leaped onto a marauder, scratched at his eyes, and died in the creature's jaws. Sticky webs lassoed Addy, pinning her arms to her sides. The aliens shoved her along the line.

  "You're lucky you're prime meat," a marauder hissed into her ear. His rancid breath made her gag, and he licked her from her navel to her shaved scalp. "Otherwise I'd be feasting on your brain right now."

  "Yeah, well, I was always a C student, so I'd probably give you indigestion."

  The marauder struck her. She grimaced as a claw scraped her cheek.

  "Still you jest. Still you don't understand. But soon you will beg, human. Soon you will beg for mercy."

  The claws shoved her onto the ramp, and Addy found herself entering the dark ship.

  Her breath froze. Her heart sank. Even as a hardened veteran, she shivered.

  Many decks filled the ship, stacked one atop the other, rising up into shadows. A network of webs provided access between them. Each deck was just a slab of metal, wide and flat like shelves in a closet. The marauders were moving everywhere, climbing up and down shafts, herding the humans onto the decks. Hundreds of prisoners were already here, crowding together in the shadows. The air was hot, rancid, and soupy.

  A marauder with gray horns scuttled down a web, grabbed Addy's head, and sniffed her skull. He barked something at another marauder, this one burly and dark, who wrapped Addy with a web. She floundered, shouting and scratching, as the creature scuttled up the strands, carrying her to the third deck. There the alien shoved her deep into the ship.

  "Stand with the others," the marauder said, saliva dripping. "At the back. Move!"

  Grumbling and tugging off the cobwebs, Addy shuffled farther along the deck. The floor was raw metal, and the shadows were thick. Webs stretched along the ceiling, allowing marauders to scuttle back and forth. The skulls glued to their backs brushed Addy's head, and she grimaced at the thought of her own skull, carved open, glued onto one of these beasts.

  So that Lord Malphas asshole thinks he can eat my brain, Addy though
t. Takeout all the way from Haven. She coiled her hands into fists. I won't let him. I'll die fighting if I must.

  The marauders goaded her to the back of the ship, where Addy joined hundreds of other prisoners. The marauders kept cramming more and more humans in. Soon people were pressing up against Addy, naked and sweaty and trembling. The heat became intolerable, and the stench of human sweat filled the air.

  "We can't breathe!" shouted a woman.

  "We need room!" cried a man.

  The marauders laughed, spat from above, and lowered their prods. People screamed. A woman fell near Addy, crackling with electricity. Addy had no room to kneel. She reached down, grabbed the woman's hand, and tried to pull her up. The marauders kept shoving more prisoners in. Elbows and shoulders hit Addy, knocking her back. Feet trampled the fallen woman, and a bone snapped.

  "A woman is down!" Addy shouted. "She has no room to stand!"

  The marauders kept shoving humans in. More feet trampled the fallen woman. More bones snapped. The fallen woman screamed, then fell silent as a foot hit her neck. And still the marauders shoved captives onto the deck.

  Soon they were too crammed to move at all. Damp bodies pressed against Addy from every side. A potbellied man shoved against her back. A child trembled at her side, crushed between people, struggling to breathe. A woman stood at her front, pressed against her.

  "Enough!" Addy shouted. "We can't breathe!"

  The marauders only laughed. And still they shoved more people in.

  Addy couldn't breathe. The child beside her passed out, but prisoners pinned the boy in place, and he remained standing. New prisoners joined the deck, shoving against them. Somebody tried to fight back, managed to carve open some space, but fell and screamed underfoot, trampled by the others. The people pressed so tightly against Addy now that they were crushing her. One woman, shorter than her, had her face crushed against a man's chest, gasping for air. Addy was thankful for her height; she was tall enough to breathe above most prisoners, but even that air was stale, putrid, hot. An old man collapsed, pinned between a few prisoners, finally falling down. The corpse soon cracked under the captives' feet.