Earth Valor (Earthrise Book 6) Read online

  Townes Van Zandt's "Big Country Blues" came on the playlist. Addy touched Jethro's shoulder.

  "You saved me, Jethro." She smiled. "You saved my life that day I escaped the slaughterhouse. You saved Steve. You saved thousands of people when you stormed the slaughterhouse with me and fought those bastards."

  "Only cost me a leg." Jethro patted his peg.

  "I'm worth it," Addy said. "What's a leg compared to my brilliant smile?" She gave him a toothy grin.

  "Just watch the road!" He cringed.

  Addy yelped and yanked on the steering wheel, just barely making the turn. They skidded on the frozen road before she steadied the truck. She blew out a shaky breath.

  "See? You just saved my ass again." She frowned. "Does that mean I get another leg?"

  "My leg up your ass, if you do that again," Jethro growled, but then his voice softened. He mussed her hair. "You saved me too, Ads. In ways you don't even know, maybe never will. I had some dark years. You brightened them. You're like a daughter to me."

  "Aww, shucks." Addy grinned. "Well, you were always like a dad to me. And I'm not just saying that! I had three dads growing up. My real dad when he was alive. Marco's dad who took me in. And you—a grumpy, crazy old loon who taught me how to shoot and hunt and survive. And let me tell you, that came in handy."

  Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" started to play, and Addy cranked up the volume. As Satchmo's trumpet filled the cabin, they kept driving without speaking, watching the beauty around them. The white hills and valleys rolled into the distance, pristine as in ancient days. No war had touched them.

  The year one, Addy thought. A new world.

  But not yet. Jethro was wrong. This was not the year one; it was the year zero. It was the year that they fought. That they bled. That they killed. There were still many battles ahead, and the enemy still filled the world.

  But we'll keep fighting, Addy thought. We'll drive them out. We'll reach our Year One. We'll find peace. New homes. New families. And you better be there with me, Poet, or I'll fly across the galaxy just to kick your ass.

  Jimi Hendrix replaced the Great Satchmo, and Addy began playing air guitar until Jethro forced her to pull over, and he replaced her at the wheel. The convoy rolled on, seeking a new home in the wild.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "We're on Earth," Marco said, rubbing his eyes. "We're on Earth during the Middle Ages. How is that possible?"

  "Guys!" Hopping up and down, Lailani pointed out the bridge's windshield. "Men with arrows! Big sharp arrows! Big sharp arrows flying at us! Questions later, not dying now!"

  Ben-Ari nodded. "To the armory. Guns. Now!"

  The captain ran off the bridge, heading deeper into the ship. Marco followed, and Kemi and Lailani ran close behind. His wounded elbow was swelling up, and he couldn't move his arm. Kemi and Ben-Ari were both bleeding from head wounds. But fear drove them onward. They ran into the lounge, where the jukebox had fallen over, and the bar had shattered. They leaped over the wreckage, down a corridor, past the crew quarters, and into the armory. All the while, the shouts rose from outside.

  "Slay the demons!" boomed a distant voice.

  "Slay the metal beast!" roared another man.

  Through a porthole, Marco saw the soldiers running toward the ship, their chain mail clanking. They fired more arrows, hitting the hull. Marco blinked and rubbed his eyes. How could this be?

  The black hole must be a time warp, he thought. We're in the past. But how did we end up back on Earth, thousands of light-years away?

  "Guns, helmets, tactical vests," Ben-Ari barked. "I want everyone geared for battle. Hurry!"

  They were already wearing their olive drab uniforms and helmets. They quickly grabbed tactical vests, slipped magazines into the pouches, and grabbed T57 assault rifles, grenades, and plasma pistols. Marco thought the weapons excessive—they were dealing with arrows after all, not marauder claws. But, perhaps, better over-armed than under.

  "We're gearing up to battle medieval peasants inside a black hole," Marco said. "This can't be happening. It's impossible."

  An arrow slammed into a porthole, cracking the glass.

  "That arrow begs to differ," Lailani said.

  "Into the airlock," said Ben-Ari. She was pale, and her temple bled, but her shoulders were squared and her chin was raised. Only the briefest twitch of her lips revealed her confusion, and her eyes remained hard. "We'll scare them off."

  The four stepped into the ship's airlock, and Ben-Ari keyed the code into the control panel. The door opened.

  Fresh air filled the airlock—the air of Earth. Marco would recognize it anywhere. He had spent nearly three years straight now in space, first in Haven and then trundling through a variety of spaceships, and had smelled only stale, recycled air. But here—here was real air, scented of soil, of growing green things, of life. Yet he could also smell smoke, blood, and the bodies he saw in the crushed fields. The devastation of the crash spread like a trail—crushed stalks of wheat, a deep groove in the field, a shattered barn, and dead livestock and peasants. In the distance, a few kilometers away, rose the medieval town, the spires of its cathedral rising to the blue sky.

  Earth, he thought. Earth long ago. How the hell did we end up here?

  And across the field, the armored soldiers surrounded them, bows and arrows in hand. They wore clanking chain mail, and swords hung from their belts.

  "Demons!" shouted one, a paunchy man with a yellow mustache. "Slay them!"

  The soldiers tugged back their bowstrings.

  "So what do we do?" Lailani muttered, holding her gun. "Kill bloody cavemen firing arrows?"

  Ben-Ari stepped forward. She fired a bullet into the sky.

  The boom was probably the loudest sound the medieval soldiers had ever heard. In their fright, they lost control of their bows, and the arrows whizzed over the crashed starship.

  "We mean you no harm!" Ben-Ari cried. "Lower your weapons."

  The men hesitated. They glanced at one another. The big brute with the mustache turned red.

  "Kill them!" he shouted, loading another arrow.

  "Captain—" Marco began.

  More arrows flew.

  The crew leaped deeper into the airlock. Arrows flew in. One scraped across Lailani's arm, ripping her sleeve, and she yelped. More arrows hit the wall behind them.

  "I'm going to kill those assholes!" Lailani shouted and loaded her gun.

  No, Marco thought. Enough have died here.

  He stepped back toward the doorway. The city guards stepped closer, scowling. They drew their swords. Within moments, the crew would be forced to kill them.

  We killed enough people today, Marco thought.

  He winced, guilt already filling him, and fired his gun.

  He hit the mustached guard in the leg.

  The man collapsed, screaming, blood gushing.

  Marco took a step outside and raised his gun again.

  "Run!" he shouted. "Run or we will slay you all!"

  "And steal your souls!" Lailani added, firing another bullet, hitting the dirt by a man's foot.

  The medieval soldiers turned to flee, carrying their wounded comrade. Across the field, the surviving peasants were running too, and the church bells kept ringing in the distance.

  "Infirmary," Ben-Ari said. "Everyone. Now."

  They locked the airlock and entered the ship's small medical bay. Everyone was wounded from the crash, but the injuries were superficial. A gash bled on Ben-Ari's head, but she showed no signs of a concussion. Kemi had split open her lip and bled from her nose, but she hadn't broken anything. An arrow had scraped Lailani's arm, and Marco's elbow was swollen. They tended to their wounds. Worse than the injuries was their hunger; they had been living off crackers and jam for several days now.

  "All right," Ben-Ari said when they were all patched up. A bandage covered the gash on her head. "Ideas. Where are we?" She turned toward Lailani. "Sergeant de la Rosa, do your sensors pick up anything? Radio to
wers? Starships above? Satellites?"

  Lailani checked her tablet. "Nothing, ma'am. But our ship is banged up like a cat that just ran through the doghouse. Our sensors could be dead."

  "Or there's nothing up there," Marco said. "No satellites. No radio towers. No modern technology at all." He blew out his breath slowly. "Arrows. They were using arrows. And you saw that town. We're in the Middle Ages. Somewhere in Western Europe, judging by that cathedral."

  Lailani gulped. "Oh dear. They've never seen anyone Asian before. Do you suppose they'll try to trap me, put me in a circus?" She gasped. "And they'll try to enslave Kemi! She's even darker than I am. And Ben-Ari! Oh God, Ben-Ari, hide your Star of David pendant! They'll burn you at the stake, and—"

  "Sergeant, calm yourself!" Ben-Ari said. "Nobody is putting anyone in the circus, or enslaving anyone, or burning anyone at the stake. All right? We're not in Medieval Europe. That's impossible."

  "So are starwhales," Lailani muttered. "But I remember us flying on the back of one."

  Marco spoke slowly, considering each word. "Black holes have immense gravity fields. They're formed when stars implode. Their gravity is so strong they swallow everything that comes by them—ordinary matter, light, even spacetime itself. If the black hole we entered was sucking up time, that might explain how we ended up in the past."

  "But not how we ended up on Earth," said Ben-Ari. "We were thousands of light-years away."

  "Well, some believe that black holes can act like wormholes. Portals through space as well as time." Marco scratched his chin. "But the odds of this black hole being a portal to Earth—out of all the billions of planets in the solar system—seems like an incredible coincidence."

  "Maybe it's not Earth," Kemi said. "Maybe it's another planet that looks like Earth. Maybe the native lifeforms here just look human."

  Marco shook his head. "No. Impossible. While it's true that some alien species are humanoid—they have legs, arms, heads—we've found none that look exactly like humans. The Nandakis are the most humanlike species we've found, and even they're pretty damn alien. There are certainly no aliens who have the same armor, weapons, and architecture as Medieval Europe. Hell, humans aren't even alike between continents; aliens won't be this similar across planets. This is Earth all right. Good old Terra."

  "Or a hallucination," Kemi said, staring out the viewport. "A shared dream."

  "You know what I'm not hallucinating?" Lailani said. "My stomach. It's clinging to my back. We're on Earth? Great! That means food. Let's go hunting. We might be too early to find a Taco Shack, but a nice juicy deer would sure hit the spot."

  Marco wanted to urge caution, to recommend staying aboard the ship for now, but his stomach gave a plaintive growl.

  "All right," Ben-Ari said. "Sergeant Emery, Lieutenant Abasi, you two go into that forest." She pointed out the porthole at the trees. "And stay away from that town. See if you can find anything to eat. Hunt and gather. Do not approach any of the locals." She turned toward Lailani. "Sergeant de la Rosa, you and I will stay here to guard—and try to repair—the ship."

  "This ship ain't flying anytime soon, Captain," Lailani said.

  "She'll fly again if we have to kidnap the local blacksmith to weld her together," Ben-Ari said. "And we'll keep working on those sensors. I want to know exactly where—and when—we are." She turned toward Marco and Kemi. "Why are you two still here? Go! Hunt! Gather!"

  Marco nodded. He and Kemi left the ship.

  As they walked through the field, they saw peasants weeping and collecting their dead. The devastation still spread across the field: a ditch, almost a kilometer long, strewn with corpses. More peasants were approaching, tearing their clothes, and wailing in despair.

  "How many people do you think I killed?" Kemi whispered.

  "Kemi." Marco took her hand. "Look at me." He touched her cheek. "Look at me, Kemi."

  She looked at him. Her eyes were full of tears.

  "I'm a murderer," she whispered.

  "Kemi, you saved lives. You saved hundreds of lives in the town."

  "You don't know that," she said. "You can't. I didn't see anyone on the city streets. What if they were all here in the fields or in the church? I could have landed on their empty houses, and—"

  "Kemi, listen to me." Marco squeezed her hand. "Listen! You made the right choice. You had only a few seconds, and you made the right choice. We all did. We made that choice together."

  "Yet I was the pilot, I had the controls, and . . . Oh God, Marco. They're dead."

  He embraced her. "It was an accident. You saved us. You saved me. We all would have made the same call. What happened is horrible. People died. But you couldn't stop that. Ben-Ari knows this. Ben-Ari led my infantry platoon in battle. She led many of us to die. She knows that sometimes leaders must sacrifice the few to save the many. All right?" Marco caressed her cheek. "You're right to grieve. But you should not feel guilty. You took some lives to save many lives. It's a horrible choice we all had to face in these wars."

  Kemi sighed, tears on her cheeks. "Also, I broke my mechanical hand." She raised the prosthetic and flexed the fingers. "In the crash. There's a connection loose in the middle."

  "We'll fix it," Marco said.

  "You don't understand." Kemi winced. "The mechanical hand comes with a powerful battery. Enough to send out ten thousand blasts of energy strong enough to knock out a mule. And a connection is loose, Marco. If somebody shakes my hand too tightly, it could kill both of us." She looked close to shedding more tears. "There isn't an engineer within light-years to fix it, and it's connected to my nerves, Marco. I can't even remove it, not without ripping out my nerve endings. If the battery jiggles out of place, releasing all its energy, the blast can kill anyone near me. I'm some kind of walking time bomb now, and what if my hand ends up killing somebody else, and—"

  "Kemi!" He touched her cheek. "Just . . . don't shake anyone's hand for a while, all right? We'll fix your mechanical hand. I promise you. It'll be fine."

  She nodded, wiping away her tears. She turned away from the destruction and faced the forest. "Let's find food."

  They crossed the farmlands and entered the forest. Birch, elm, and oak trees rose from crumbly soil, rustling in the breeze. A stream flowed between them, gurgling over mossy stones. Bluebells carpeted the forest floor, and the sweet scents filled the air. Birds and crickets sang. Despite the hunger, the horror, and the confusion, the place soothed Marco. They walked in silence down a dirt road, seeking something to eat.

  This is a nice change, he thought. Until now, whenever he reached another planet, it had involved underground mines full of terrors, searing deserts full of massive centipedes, or worlds with endless storms. He had seen such terrors in space. Hybrids creatures in the mines of Corpus, half human, half centipede, twisted and screaming. A ball of skin, twitching, growing his own face, then screaming as Addy tossed it into a vat of molten metal. Aliens tortured in the depths. His friends dying in the sand of Abaddon. Those memories never left Marco. Every night, they returned to him. But here, finally, was a world of beauty. Of trees and flowers and fresh air. A place with no monsters.

  "Do you remember how we used to walk like this in Toronto?" Marco said.

  Kemi smiled thinly. "In the cemetery. The only green place still left in the city. Bluebells would grow there too." She lowered her head. "Maybe even that cemetery is gone now. Maybe the whole city is gone." She sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm not exactly a ray of sunshine today."

  "Look around you." He gestured at the forest. "I don't know where we are. I don't know how we got here. But it's beautiful. I just wish Addy were with us."

  "And my parents," Kemi said. "I miss them. I'm so worried about them. About everyone on Earth."

  "I haven't seen Earth in nearly three years," Marco said. "Unless this is Earth. Unless we're home now. Just in a different time."

  "Or a very, very convincing Renaissance fair," Kemi said, finally showing some teeth in her smile. "I think we should buy so
me outfits here—a suit of armor for you and a gown for me. And swords! We'll take them to a real Ren Fair when we get home. I'll drag you there. Drag you!"

  "Only if you go with me to the Star Trek convention."

  She laughed. "Hey! I love Star Trek even more than you." She gave him a Vulcan salute. "May the Force be with you!" She winked.

  "That's Doctor Who," Marco said, and he laughed too.

  "I thought it was Space Galaxy?" Kemi said.

  She leaned against him as they walked, and her hand slipped into his.

  Yes, this is like being home, Marco thought. This is like the old walks we used to take. This is the Kemi I loved. The Kemi I still love.

  They kept walking, stomachs growling. They kept searching for food—mushrooms, nuts, berries, anything. They found nothing in this forest. The only animals were sparrows, finches, and robins, birds too small and quick to shoot. Even if they could hunt them, they would provide barely any meat.

  "I don't suppose we'll run into any coffee bars out here," Kemi said.

  "Maybe if we wait a thousand years, a Tim Hortons will open up." Marco patted his rumbling stomach. "I'm looking, buddy."

  An hour passed. Then two. Then three. Still they found no food alongside the trail, and they dared not step off it. It would be too easy to get lost in these woods.

  "We might have to go into the city," Kemi finally said. "We can buy food at a market."

  "How?" Marco said. "We don't have any money. And we're dressed like aliens. We're likely to get put into a gibbet—or just shot with more of those arrows."