Earthling's War (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 3) Read online

  EARTHLING'S WAR

  SOLDIERS OF 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

  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

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  Illustration © Tom Edwards - TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Chapter One

  Vampire

  He pinned her down in the filthy alleyway, and his teeth sank into her flesh.

  Maria screamed.

  She tried to raise her gun. But Ernesto struck her. Her gun clattered across the asphalt.

  War orphans and stray cats fled, scattering paper cups and old bones. Mice rushed into holes, and a tarpaulin sheet fluttered like a blue ghost. Shanties lined the alleyway. Their walls of rotten plywood tilted inward. Their roofs of rusty steel nearly touched, forming a tunnel, one more twisted passageway through the shantytown labyrinth. And like an explorer in a labyrinth of myth, Maria had encountered a monster.

  Ernesto tossed his head back and howled, blood on his teeth. Her blood. With hands like claws, the fingernails black and curled, he clutched her. A minotaur. A killer hungry for human flesh. A metal plate was bolted into his skull, the screws rusty. His right eye shone with malice, and the left one blazed, milky white with cataracts, an eye like a collapsing sun.

  The fisherman Maria had known was gone. He was no longer that simple villager, her proud and petty betrothed. The war had made him a beast.

  Ernesto lowered his head, sniffed her, nostrils flaring. He licked the blood off his lips.

  "You're mine now, prey," he hissed. "I hunted you. You're mine to devour."

  She struggled against him, her back on the ground. Ernesto was not a large man, not as large as an Earthling. Like most Bahayans, he was skinny, malnourished. But there was a burning strength inside him, and his muscles were like ropes tightly coiled around steel frames. She could not free herself. She could sooner push off a tank.

  He bit again. His teeth dug into her shoulder.

  "Ernesto, stop!" she cried.

  He pulled back. Blood dripped from his mouth onto Maria's chest. His one good eye swiveled toward her face. He blinked.

  "Maria?" he whispered, as if waking from a spell.

  "Ernesto, let me go!"

  He blinked again. A tear fell from his eye.

  "Maria! I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I love you, Maria. I did not come to hurt you." He howled and tugged his hair, ripping out strands. "Why did I hurt you? I love you, Maria! I came to bring you back. To marry you. I love you. I'm sorry."

  But he still did not release her.

  "Ernesto." She forced herself to go limp. "Let me go."

  He still pinned her down, lying atop her. A gust of wind shrieked through the alleyway. Slats of corrugated iron, forming the rusty roofs of shanties, clanged together. Cigarette butts, paper cups, condom wrappers, and shabu needles scuttled across the ground like insects.

  Ernesto seemed like a part of this alleyway. A person woven of filth and decay. Slime covered him. He must have been swimming in Mindao's polluted rivers. Algae and strips of plastic dangled from his black hair. The metal plate in his head was rusting, the edges leaking pus. Perhaps the infection had reached his mind. There was madness in his black eye and molten, eternal fury in the white eye.

  His dark eye shed another tear. His white eye was dry and dead.

  "But I can't let you go. I've been seeking you for so long." He tightened his grip on her. "Maria, I've sought you through burnt forests. Through lands of poison and mutation. Through war and fire. I lived in ashes and filth, and I danced with death. For a year, I've quested. And I found you now. I'm here. Broken, haunted, deformed… but here. To win my princess. To rescue you from this dark place." He gave a laugh that sounded more like a sob. "Our love is like a fairy tale."

  Maria stared up into his eyes.

  Rage blazed through her.

  You murdered people, she thought. You tortured them. You stalked and hunted me and terrorized me. You are no hero.

  But she swallowed her rage. She forced herself to smile. Fighting back disgust, she caressed his cheek. Scars flowed like rivers across his leathery skin. She remembered him burning in the shantytown fire.

  "Ernesto, I love you," she whispered.

  He wept. "You do?"

  She nodded. "I've always loved you."

  "But… what of Sergeant Jon Taylor?" He howled again, head tossed back. A minotaur's howl. It echoed through the labyrinth of alleyways. "What of that filthy pute? You married him! You married him instead of me. I will kill him!" He balled his fists. "I will burn him with my iron. I will make him beg!"

  Maria clenched her jaw. She remembered the last time Ernesto had tried to kidnap her.

  Jon shot out a chunk of your skull, she thought, staring at the iron plate. And if he were here now, he would finish the job.

  But her beloved Jon had been shipped north. He was fighting on the front line now, facing the Red Cardinal in battle. Here in South Bahay, in this city of poverty and pain, Maria must survive alone. At least for now. At least until this damn war ended and Jon could return to her.

  When the war ends, so will this pain, Maria told herself. Jon will take me to Earth. We'll live in a cozy house among trees. I'll give birth to our child in an Earth hospital, not in a filthy alleyway. We'll be a happy family, far away from all this misery.

  Tears flooded her eyes. She was pregnant with Jon's child, and he did not know. She had to continue her work. To fight the Earthlings. To unmask and shame their army. To end this war. So that she could be with her husband again. So she could give birth far from this place of blood and tears.

  But right now, before she could defeat a galactic empire, she had to defeat one madman.

  "I love you so much, Ernesto," she lied. "Can you help me stand? Please. I want to hug you properly."

  He nodded. "Of course, my love."

  He stood up, finally lifting his weight off her. He reached down to help her up.

  Maria rejected his hand. She sprung up. With a snarl, she drew her father's knife.

  She had carried this knife through all her battles. A knife with an antler hilt. A knife she had peeled from the burnt corpse of her father.

  In the rainforest, a dreamtoad had shown her a vision.

  It will be the only way to save her. You must use his knife, the toad had said.

  And now Maria knew who the toad had meant.<
br />
  The child in my belly, she thought. She's a girl. And with this knife, I will save her.

  Ernesto saw the knife. He gasped, betrayed shock in his eyes. He reached out to her, perhaps a gesture of peace, perhaps trying to grab her.

  With all her strength, Maria swung her blade in a wide arc.

  Ernesto screamed and pulled his hand back.

  His severed fingertips flew across the alleyway. They rolled across the ground like dice.

  Maria turned, ran down the alley, and lifted her fallen gun. She aimed at Ernesto, pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed.

  Ernesto laughed. He was already leaping toward her, fingertips be damned. Instinctively, Maria hurled her gun, and it slammed into his forehead. He recoiled, screaming in pain, but did not fall. He lunged toward her again, even as blood dripped into his eyes.

  Briefly, Maria considered standing her ground. After all, he was unarmed, he was wounded, and she had a knife.

  But Ernesto was more than a man. The war had transfigured him, possessed him like a demon. He was wildfire taken form. Impervious to pain. He had already survived a gunshot to the head, the shantytown fire, and whatever damage she was doing now. And yet he would not die! Not even slow down! Some unholy spirit possessed him, a dark magic that propelled him ever onward.

  Maria could not defeat him. Not with a knife. Maybe not even with a working gun. Maybe he was beyond life and death, a creature like the Red Cardinal, an immortal manananggal, the vampire of Filipino folklore.

  Maria considered all this within a split second. Then she spun and ran.

  Ernesto followed.

  Rats fled before her. She ran fast, arms pumping, and whipped around a corner. She raced down another lane, sending more animals and orphans into a flutter. When she glanced over her shoulder, Maria saw Ernesto keeping pace. He ran with arms extended like wings, vampiric, a bat filling the road, swooping on the wind.

  Maria looked away. She focused on running as fast as she could. The walls of particle board and rusty metal blurred at her sides. Children watched from inside the shanties, peering between the slats of wood and metal like tarsiers peering among branches.

  "You will be mine, Maria!" Ernesto howled behind her. "I'll cut off your legs so you can never escape me. I'll make you eat them!" He cackled. "Come back and be my legless bride!"

  Maria spun around a corner, raced down an alleyway. Thousands of these narrow, filthy tunnels of despair sprawled across Mindao. A scrawny woman lay on the ground, holding a baby in one hand, a glass shabu pipe in the other. Maria vaulted over the junkie and her child, but Ernesto stumbled over them. He crashed onto the ground.

  Maria reached the end of the alley. A dead end! A tower of stacked shanties rose before her. She cursed and spun around.

  Ernesto pushed himself up, sneering. He advanced toward Maria slowly, arms extended, and a grin spread across his scarred face. In the shadowy slum, his blind eye caught the moonlight. It shone like a star.

  Maria grabbed the wall and began to climb the shanties, sticking her fingertips and toes between slats of particle board.

  She had climbed several feet when Ernesto reached the dead end, leaped up, and grabbed her ankle.

  She screamed and clung to the wall. Rotting drywall crumbled between her fingers. She fell a foot, caught a rim of metal. It cut her fingers. She clung on, ignoring the blood.

  Ernesto kept tugging from below.

  "You're mine, Maria!" He pulled harder. "You will be my wife!"

  Suddenly—hands reached out from the wall! The hands of children—reaching between the rotting slats!

  Maria saw their peering eyes. Children of the shantytown. Children she had interviewed on camera. Refugees whose tales she had shared with Earth. Children she had comforted on long nights, embraced, fed whatever scraps she could spare. Children she had fought for. Children who now fought for her.

  "Holy Maria, climb!" they said.

  They stabbed at Ernesto. With pencils. With forks. Some just with their fingernails.

  Ernesto's mutilated hand slipped off Maria's ankle, slick with blood.

  And she was climbing again. The children's hands reached between the slats, helped her up.

  The shanties were stacked three or four high in this neighborhood. Refugees had been flooding the city, coming from wastelands across Bahay. Millions of people crammed into Mindao—nearly the entire population of Bahay's southern hemisphere. Earth kept its headquarters here, and the city swarmed with Earthlings. That made it safe. At least, as safe as a place could be on this burning planet.

  That also made it incredibly crowded.

  When Maria climbed onto the roof, she saw countless shanties spreading across the city. An ocean of them, flowing to the horizons. They were just makeshift dwellings. The refugees and the poor built them from whatever plywood, scrap metal, and debris they could find. The millions huddled inside this sprawling maze as the countryside burned. Most roofs were corrugated iron, rusting away. Cloven artillery shells formed tiles on other roofs. A sea of rust surrounded Maria, burnished in the sunset.

  Only two splashes of color broke the monotony. The Azure Cathedral rose beside the river, a shimmering edifice the color of sky, rising from the slums. It was the finest building in Mindao, so resplendent it could rival even Earth's grandest cathedrals. Then there was New Manila, a complex of concrete towers along the coast, envisioned as a luxury district. The concrete was stained now, its paint long gone, replaced with graffiti and mold. Countless refugees and junkies hunkered in the shadows of those towers. New Manila was a symbol of Mindao's lost hope, of the city they had begun to build, of the war that had shattered their dreams.

  Cathedral and concrete towers—heart and bones of Mindao. The Blue Boulevard stretched between them like an artery, a neon strip of brothels and bars where Maria had once worked. The first of its lights were turning on, luring Earthling soldiers with promises of cold beer, hot girls, and dark secrets. The Blue Boulevard catered to every sin—home to midget wrestling, lady boxing, prostitutes of every kind, and all the drugs a broken soul could drown in. Thousands of bargirls worked there, enough to service an infantry division. To Maria, the red lights district seemed even more miserable than the shantytown.

  Standing on the roof, Maria took all this in within only a few seconds. Then she looked back down at the alleyway.

  Ernesto stood below. He began climbing after her, knocking aside the little hands trying to stop him.

  Maria ripped a sheet of corrugated steel off a roof, revealing children huddling inside.

  She tossed the metal sheet. It slammed into Ernesto like a guillotine. He screamed and fell onto the alley floor, buried under the slab.

  Maria ran.

  She leaped from rooftop to rooftop, hopping over narrow roads. But not for long. Ernesto was still alive. He seemed impossible to kill. He would never stop hunting her. If he climbed onto the rooftops, he would see her. And she would die.

  Maria hopped across just a few more roofs, then descended back into the labyrinth. Among the rickety stacks of shanties, she disappeared into the crowd.

  Kiosks lined the road, selling everything from greasy noodles to exotic pets to shabu crystals. City folk bustled back and forth, children scampered underfoot, and squatters lay against plywood walls. Mopeds rumbled, belching smoke. Men raced by, pulling rickshaws, shouting, "make way, make way!" Even a jeepney managed to squeeze by. The jeepneys had once been army jeeps, damaged in the war and sold for scraps. The Bahayans had repaired them, painted them with psychedelic colors, then set them loose across the city like iridescent beetles.

  After the jeepney had clattered by, an elderly woman limped down the road, clanging a pot, selling pagpag to anyone who could bring their own bowl. Pagpag was scraps of meat plucked from landfills, washed, fried, stuffed into plastic bags, and sold for a handful of pesos. Edible garbage. It often carried diseases, but to the hungry orphans, it was manna from heaven. Children ran after the old woman, penniless and begging
, earning smacks from her cane. Without a peso to spare, they would have to hit the landfills themselves for rotten scraps.

  Maria took in the scenery, the garish colors, the intoxicating smells. Life went on. Nobody knew about Jon fighting in the north, or Ernesto pursuing her, maybe not even of the terrifying Santa Rosa massacre. Mindao—a city of refugees, junkies, and squatters. A city where children ate trash, where girls sold their bodies to soldiers, where riverpox and syphilis ran wild. A city of so many tears. And yet—also a city of life. The children of the slums laughed as they played. A girl was cooing over her pet cat, a raggedy old tabby with one eye. A few women were gossiping and giggling, while several old men sat under an awning, playing Go. A young girl danced on a barrel, a boy played the flute, and a crowd cheered.

  Here is a testament to Bahay's spirit, Maria thought. Even in this time of war, even rotting in the bowels of hell, we laugh. We play games. We gossip. We find joy and hope.

  She was only a Bahayan. They were the most downtrodden people in the galaxy—smaller, weaker, poorer than Earthlings. Her people had no mighty starships, no glittering cities of glass and electronic wonders, no beautiful golden hair and powerful bodies like gods of Olympus. But standing here, gazing upon her people, Maria had never been prouder to be Bahayan.

  She placed a hand on her belly.

  When you're born, my daughter, Jon and I will raise you to love both cultures. You will unite Earth and Bahay. You will bring peace.

  A howl tore through her reverie, distant and echoing.

  "Maria!"

  She stiffened. So Ernesto was still alive. He sounded several blocks away. And he was still hunting her.

  She walked along the maze, twisting left and right, keeping to the shadows, vanishing in a crowd of millions. For now, she had shaken him off. But she knew he would find her again. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow or in a week. He would never end his hunt.

  But there was a place where he could not reach her.

  A place where even Ernesto would dare not tread.

  To end this war, to save her world and husband, Maria would have to enter the lion's den.