The Heirs of Earth (Children of Earthrise Book 1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

For the first time in her life, Leona Ben-Ari was leading the Inheritor fleet to battle.

Her father was not here. He had gone to rescue Bay.

Many of her warriors were still wounded, recovering from their last battle.

Leona herself was bandaged, burnt, still weary after fighting at Hacksaw Cove only yesterday.

But she flew onward. Toward Hierarchy space. Toward the scorpions. Perhaps toward her death and the fall of the Inheritors.

But I will fly onward, she thought. I will face my enemies. I will fight with all my strength and courage. Because ahead of me, in the darkness, there are humans in danger. And wherever humans are in danger, the Heirs of Earth will be there.

She stood on the bridge of the ISS Jerusalem, flagship of the fleet. Her officers stood around her. Like her, they wore brown trousers and blue jackets, uniforms of the Heirs of Earth. No two uniforms were alike. They had no textile factory, no tailors or seamstresses. They had collected scraps of clothes across the galaxy, had sewn some, had stitched and dyed cotton and wool. Their weapons too were varied. Many carried rifles and pistols. Some bore electrical prods, and a few warriors just carried swords and clubs. They looked more like a ragged group of mercenaries than an army. But for Leona's money, they were the best damn warriors in the galaxy.

The rest of the fleet followed the Jerusalem. Sixteen other warships, all smaller than Jerusalem, all freighters in their previous lives, but fierce and ready for battle.

Several starfighters circled them in constant vigil, small vessels only large enough for a single pilot. Emet had designed them himself, had named them Firebirds. A holy name. A name from antiquity. The name of old Earth's starfighters, which the Golden Lioness had commanded two thousand years ago. Like the ancient firebird from legend, a magical bird that rose from the ashes, so too did humanity's fleet rise again.

It was a small fleet. Barely more than a flotilla. Compared to the fleets of powerful civilizations, the Inheritor fleet was laughable.

"Aye, we're not much of a fleet, lass." A deep voice rumbled behind her. "Some would say we belong in a museum. Most would say the scrap yard."

Leona turned to see Duncan walking toward her. The doctor wore cargo pants with jangling pockets, a blue overcoat with many buttons and patches, and a pair of goggles that rested on his great bald head. On one hip, he carried a medical kit. On the other, a pistol the size of his forearm. The doctor was sixty, old for a human these days, and his white beard hung down to his belt. But the squat man was still powerful, his shoulders wide, his back strong. Leona was only twenty-seven, but she doubted she could take him in a fight.

"This is all we have," Leona said. "These few old clunkers. This motley crew of warriors in shabby clothes. But I'm proud of this army. This is the best army in the galaxy. Because this is Earth's army." She wrapped her right hand around her left fist, the Inheritor Salute. "For Earth!"

Across the bridge, the other warriors returned the salute. "For Earth!"

Leona turned to stare through the front viewport. The darkness spread before them. The stars streamed at their sides. They were near now. Near the border. Near Hierarchy space. Near the greatest battle of her life.

I wish you were here, Dad, she thought.

She had wanted Emet to come. But once, long ago, he had flown to battle and left his son behind. He would not abandon Bay again.

You're ready, Leona, the admiral had told her. Command the fleet. You can do this.

She activated the communicator pinned to her lapel, and she transmitted her voice to the entire fleet.

"Warriors of Earth. This is Commodore Leona Ben-Ari, acting commander of the fleet. Yesterday, we received intelligence that the Skra-Shen, those we call scorpions, have ramped up their hostility toward humanity. Across Hierarchy space, which they fully control, they have implemented a genocidal program they call The Human Solution. Their forces sweep from world to world, capturing humans wherever they hide. With trickery and false promises of safety, they lure humans into their ships, only to transport them to gulocks. In these camps, on barren worlds, the scorpions exterminate their prisoners—our brothers and sisters, our fellow humans. We've learned that over the past year, the scorpions have slain millions of humans. Let us observe a moment of silence in their memory."

She stood, silent, head lowered. Across the Jerusalem, the others stood silently too.

Leona spoke again.

"Today, a scorpion convoy will be hauling a fresh batch of human prisoners to a gulock. The enemy will be transporting the humans in cargo starships we've called deathcars. Their flight path will take them close to the border between Concord and Hierarchy space. If the convoy arrives at the gulock, the human prisoners—there are likely to be hundreds—will be slain. It's our mission to invade Hierarchy space, to attack the deathcar convoy, rescue the human prisoners, and transport them back to the Concord. We can be in and out of Hierarchy space within an hour. The scorpions will dare not chase us back into Concord space; they still observe the treaty of nonaggression between the Concord and Hierarchy civilizations. But we are the Heirs of Earth. We are not bound by such treaties. We will complete our mission. We will save our people. We cannot save the millions of humans who cry out in anguish across Hierarchy worlds. But we can save the prisoners in this convoy! And every life we save is a world entire."

Leona paused. She knew her soldiers were afraid. But she knew they would fight for her. For humanity. She knew that to save even a single life, they would charge into battle.

"If we save only one life," she said, "that will be enough. Every human life is precious. Every human life is a world. The battle today will be harsh. The scorpions will fight well. They will be vicious and terrible in their fury. We will be afraid. Some of us will die. But we will not run. We will face them with courage and strength, and we will win! For Earth!"

"For Earth!" her warriors cried.

Leona took a step closer to the viewport. She clutched her pistol and narrowed her eyes. A holographic display was counting down the kilometers to the Hierarchy. They would be there in seconds.

She touched the seashell she wore around her neck.

I love to sail forbidden seas, Leona thought.

They crossed the border.

They flew through Hierarchy space.

There was no sound, no flashing lights, no assault of a thousand enemy ships. There was just more space. If not for their navigational charts, they would not have known the difference.

Yet here, everything was different.

Here space felt a whole lot darker.

Long ago, Leona knew, the Galactic Alliance had ruled the Milky Way. Once Earth itself, under the leadership of Einav Ben-Ari, had even been a member. But centuries ago, the Galactic War had torn the galaxy apart. Entire civilizations burned. Worlds crashed. The war ended, leaving the Milky Way in ruin. The Galactic Alliance was dead.

For a long time, chaos reigned. Finally a few thousand civilizations formed the Concord, an alliance that spanned millions of stars. The Peacekeepers were founded—a police force to hold the Concord together. Species who joined the Concord tended to respect science, art, culture, and trade. They dreamed of law, order, and peace. After years of desolation, they birthed a galactic renaissance.

Of course, the Concord wasn't perfect. Especially not for humans. But despite the problems, the Concord attempted to restore civilization to the Milky Way, to rise from the ashes of the horrible Galactic War. To bring peace to the galaxy. Today, at the height of its power, the Concord stretched across half the Milky Way.

The Hierarchy was different.

In the aftermath of the Galactic War, the galaxy's brutal, warlike species formed their own alliance. They were apex predators, hunters, barbarians, warlords. They loathed peace. They detested civilization. They lived for conquest and bloodshed. They formed the Hierarchy and soon controlled the galaxy's second half. They became as mighty as the Concord. Perhaps mightier.

At first, thousands of species competed within Hierarchy space, but bitter struggles soon established a pecking order. The Skra-Shen were on top. The scorpions now dominated all aspects of Hierarchy society. The scorpions allowed a handful of other species, the particularly vicious ones, to fight for them. Most species they chose to enslave. Others to exterminate.

Humans were in that last bucket.

But some among us still fight, Leona thought. You will not find us so easy to kill.

"We should be seeing the deathcars by now." Leona narrowed her eyes. "Where are you, scorpions?"

Had she misread the data on the scorpion's memory chip? Had they changed their plans? She was traveling the right way, set to intercept the enemy. Yet she saw only empty space.

"They should be here," she said. "Damn it."

"They might be running late," Duncan said.

She shook her head. "No. I saw their data. They planned this genocide down to the second. Where—"

Boots thudded. An officer raced toward her. "Commodore! Incoming vessels off our starboard bow!"

Leona inhaled sharply. She leaped into her seat, grabbed the helm, and spun the Jerusalem around.

There.

She saw them.

She bared her teeth.

Muck.

Twenty vessels were flying their way. But these were no deathcars. No cargo vessels with trapped humans inside.

These were strikers—scorpion warships.

"They knew we were coming," Leona said. "They knew we had their memory chip." She hit her comm. "All Inheritor ships, assume defensive positions! Prepare for battle!"

They all spun toward the enemy, spreading out. The Firebirds formed the vanguard. The heavier warships flew behind them, cannons thrusting forward like pikes.

From the darkness they came. The strikers. Angels of death.

The ships were shaped like arrowheads, dark and glimmering, nearly invisible in space. Their red portholes shone like wrathful eyes. These were ships built for one purpose: to kill.

The Hierarchy border stretched for parsecs. No civilization could patrol it all.

These ships were waiting for us, Leona knew.

The fleets stormed toward each other. The enemy's cannons began to glow.

"Artillery, fire!" Leona cried.

She grabbed the controls and pulled the triggers. The Jerusalem jolted as the massive cannons fired. Torpedoes roared forward, streaming through space, leaving trails of fire. Around her, the rest of her fleet unleashed its fury. Missiles stormed forth.

The shells slammed into the strikers.

Explosions filled space.

Shards of metal flew. Smoke blasted outward. And the strikers kept charging—dented, cracked, but still very operational.

Leona stared, teeth bared, breath fast.

Those shells should have torn them apart.

"Fire ag—" she began.

The enemy returned fire.

Plasma bolts streamed forward and crashed into the Inheritor fleet.

The Jerusalem's bridge jolted, knocking Leona to the floor. Fire blazed. Smoke blasted from the controls. Alarms blared and people ran everywhere. Through the viewports, Leona saw plasma slam into her other ships, cracking hulls. Warships floundered.

"Fire!" she cried, struggling to rise. "Take them down! Fire everything!"

She limped toward the controls and fired the cannons.

Torpedoes flew from the Jerusalem. Three missed, but the fourth slammed into a striker, and the enemy ship cracked open. The other Inheritor ships were firing a barrage of shells, torpedoes, and photon beams, but the enemy kept charging. The strikers were cracked, a few were burning, but the damn ships still charged.

More of their plasma flew. An inferno of fire blasted toward the human fleet.

Leona screamed, gripped the helm, and yanked with all her strength. She turned the port shields toward the enemy.

"Brace for impact!" she cried.

The plasma bolts slammed against them.

The Jerusalem rocked.

The ship flipped over in space and spun.

"Port cannons!" she cried. "Starboard cannons! Fire!"

The shells rang out, but the strikers kept flying.

With blazing light and raining fire, the enemy ships reached them.

A striker rammed the Jerusalem, and the hull dented. If not for the thick graphene shields reinforced with magnetic fields, the Jerusalem would have shattered. Leona fired the side cannons, shoving the striker back. The ship rammed them again, and the Jerusalem—this mighty frigate—spun through space like a discarded toy.

The enemy ships swarmed around them. The Jerusalem fired from all sides. Above her, Leona saw the ISS Bangkok take heavy fire and crack open. The ISS Jaipur was burning, listing, its cannons dead. Starfighters were streaming back and forth.

"We have to fall back!" Duncan was shouting, singed and bleeding. "Lass, we have to retreat!"

"No!" Leona cried.

She tugged on the helm, teeth gnashing, desperate to halt the Jerusalem's spin. The strikers stormed all around them. The battle streamed with lines of fire. The bridge rattled.

There above, Leona saw it. She frowned.

A striker was charging toward another Inheritor warship. Its exhaust pipes flared on full afterburner, white and blue.

Leona reached up, grabbed a control panel, and pulled herself to her feet. She fired.

Her heat-seeking missiles flew toward the pulsing afterburner of the striker above.

The missiles flew into the striker's exhaust.

The enemy ship exploded.

A million metal shards flew everywhere, interspersed with scorpion claws.

Leona roared with triumph.

"We can destroy them!" she cried and hit her comm, broadcasting her words to the fleet. "Hit their exhaust pipes! Hit them when they're on afterburner! That's their Achilles' heel. Firebirds, hit them in the exhaust!"

"Missiles up their asses!" cried Captain Mairead "Firebug" McQueen, voice emerging from Leona's comm.

Duncan's daughter was a fiery young woman. She was rash, rude, and reckless. But she was also the best damn pilot in the fleet, commander of the Firebirds.

Mairead flew her starfighter right by the Jerusalem. The young pilot looped around the frigate, a showy display. As she swung by, Mairead waved at Leona.

"Firebug, enough playing!" Leona said. "Get to it."

Mairead nodded, her red hair flouncing. "Got it, boss."

Her Firebird flew onward. The other starfighters followed.

The remaining Inheritor warships—at least three were disabled—were still firing, but they were slower than the enemy. And the strikers were loath to expose their exhaust pipes. The Firebirds were fast, but they were taking heavy fire. The strikers seemed to realize that the smaller starfighters were their main threat, and they began to focus on dogfighting.

"Why haven't we launched all our Firebirds?" Leona shouted. "I'm still seeing three in our hangar."

"Our pilots are down!" Duncan shouted back. The bridge was still burning around them. "The hull is cracked! The enemy hit us right at our launch pad."

Leona cursed. "Take the bridge, Duncan."

"Commodore?"

"You have the bridge!" she cried.

She ran off the bridge. She raced across the Jerusalem's hold, the vast chamber where the tanker had once shipped gasoline and water. A hundred Inheritor marines were here, but they would be of little use now. She raced between them and toward the hangar.

She froze.

Damn it.

The strikers had scored a direct hit. The door to the hangar was locked. Through the window, Leona could see the devastation. The hangar was cracked open, exposed to space. She would need to—

A blast hit the Jerusalem.

They spun.

The hull dented, and warriors cried out.

Leona cursed. She swung her rifle, shattered a glass cabinet, and pulled out a spacesuit. She dressed hurriedly, cursing every second that passed. Finally she leaped into the cracked hangar, then slammed the door behind her.

Bloody hand prints covered the floor and walls. A hole gaped open in the airlock; the vacuum must have sucked the wounded crew and pilots into space. There were three Firebirds here. Two were damaged and smoldering, but the third was unscathed.

Leona climbed into the starfighter.

The small, agile ship—no larger than a fighter jet from ancient Earth—roared to life.

Leona fired the Firebird's guns, ripping open what remained of the airlock, and roared out into space.

She soared.

The battle spun around her with light and fire and shattering steel.

The damage was terrifying from here. Two Inheritor ships were gone—just ruined husks filled with death. Two others were listing, taking heavy fire, cracking open. The rest were overwhelmed, and the strikers were swarming everywhere. The Jerusalem's shields were pockmarked, falling apart, covered with ash.

Leona gripped her joystick. She had clocked many hours flying in these small starfighters, far more than flying the Jerusalem. In this humble round cockpit, she felt at home. A striker charged toward her, plasma firing. Leona soared high, dodging the assault, then streamed forward and around the enemy. For a split second, the striker revealed the chink in its armor. Leona fired a hailstorm of bullets toward the blazing afterburner.

The striker shattered. Shards of metal and scorpion shells spread across space, peppering warships.

"Firebirds, rally here!" Leona said. "Warships, give us cover. Let's show these bugs human pride."

"Ooh, look at the fancy commodore, flying with us peasants," said Mairead. But as the redhead flew by in her starfighter, she gave Leona a wink.

The others joined her, twenty birds in all. As they rallied, the strikers turned toward them. Plasma hit a Firebird, tearing it apart. The pilot fell from the shattered cockpit, burnt and screaming. Another striker plowed through their formation, taking out two more Firebirds.

Leona chased the striker, firing her machine guns. Her bullets grazed its side before finally entering the exhaust.

The striker shattered.

"Kill them all!" Leona cried.

And the Firebirds charged.

They were small ships, far smaller than the strikers. They were weaker. They barely had any armor. They fired mere bullets and slender missiles, not roaring plasma.

But they were fast.

They were damn fast.

Years ago, Emet had bought a hundred space-racers from a bankrupt drag race operation. He had lovingly restored the machines, working long hours in the hangar. Today they could zip through space with the speed and grace of hornets.

They swarmed around the strikers, rallying behind Leona. The afterburners glowed. The bullets slammed into the turbines. Striker after striker shattered. As the Firebirds fought, the Inheritor warships kept firing their shells, pounding the strikers. The enemy ships could not regroup. Whenever they tried to charge at the Firebirds, missiles from the warships knocked them aside, exposing their weak spots. Bullets flew. More strikers burned.

Leona and three other birds chase the last two strikers around the Jerusalem, unleashed a barrage of bullets, and the enemy ships collapsed. Dead scorpions floated through space, ejected from the wreckage.

Leona slumped back in her seat.

The battle was over.

"We won," she whispered, finally allowing her hands to tremble, her breath to shake. "The Heirs of Earth are victorious."

She spent a moment surveying the aftermath. Her heart sank.

Three Inheritor warships were ruined. Many Firebirds had fallen.

I knew those soldiers, she thought. Sons and daughters of Earth. Proud warriors. Friends. Gone.

And they hadn't even found the convoy of deathcars yet.

Leona would need to gather damage reports. To collect the dead. To tend to the wounded. To repair the ships. To clean the blood. To continue her mission. To—

Her hands trembled around the joystick. Her Firebird rattled.

Fire rained upon her wedding day, and the albino scorpion laughed, raising Jake's severed legs.

She knelt, blood dripping between her thighs, painting her wedding dress.

Around her, the dead danced.

She breathed.

"One," she whispered.

She breathed again.

"Two."

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Three."

And she was back. She tightened her lips.

She returned to the Jerusalem. She walked through the battered hold, moving between her warriors, and onto the burnt bridge. She had just sat down at the helm when she saw them. There—in the distance ahead.

There they were.

She inhaled sharply.

The deathcars.