The Heirs of Earth (Children of Earthrise Book 1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"We shouldn't be here, lass," Duncan grumbled. "Your old man forbade us from flying this far into Hierarchy space."

Leona smiled grimly. "Wrong. He forbade us from flying the Inheritor fleet so far into Hierarchy space. We're not flying the Inheritor fleet."

She clutched the controls, struggling to fly the deathcar. The scorpions used levers, not buttons, on their control panels. Leona needed all her strength to tug them. The deathcar clattered along, jolting, swaying, but still obeying her. Behind her the nine other deathcars followed, Inheritors piloting each one.

"Lass, you know what your father meant." Duncan stared ahead, eyes dark, his hand clutching his pistol. "He ordered us to attack the convoy. To rescue the prisoners. We did that. Now we must fly home."

Leona whipped her head toward him and glared. "I will not! I will not fly home while humans here need us. This deathcar convoy was heading toward a gulock only a light-year away. Thousands of humans might be there. Dying. Needing us. I will not abandon them. Wherever a human is in danger, we will be there."

Duncan grumbled. "I know our words. But we must choose our battles."

"Then I choose this one!" Leona said. "Duncan, I know this isn't what my dad commanded. But if he were here, if he saw what we saw . . . the prisoners naked, tortured, dying . . ." Her eyes burned, and her voice caught in her throat.

Duncan's eyes softened. "Lass, your father knows the cost of war. He knows the pain, the terror. I know his heart. I've been fighting at his side for thirty years."

Longer than I've been alive, Leona thought.

"And will you fight with me now, Duncan?" she whispered.

The old doctor looked at her for a long moment, then finally nodded. "Aye, lass. Now and always. Let's go teach those scorpion bastards a thing or two about human pride."

She nodded, smiled tightly, and clasped his shoulder. "I'm proud to fight with you, Doc."

She turned around, facing the deathcar's hold. Only an hour ago, hundreds of human prisoners, naked and beaten and starving, had filled this deathcar. Now dozens of Inheritor warriors stood here. They had served her aboard the Jerusalem. Now the freed captives were on the Jerusalem, heading back to the safety of the Concord, and Leona's warriors were here. Heading deeper into the darkness. They wore the brown and blue of their order. They held rifles, pistols, electric clubs, and laserblades. They all looked back at Leona, eyes somber. Ready for battle.

"I am proud to fight with you!" Leona said.

"For Earth!" they cried.

"For Earth," she repeated, eyes damp.

For a dream of our home. For humanity. For rising again from desolation.

The convoy flew onward. They were heading deeper and deeper into Hierarchy space, leaving the Concord far behind. Heading toward the gulock. Heading to hell.

The Inheritor fleet was waiting back in Concord space, seventeen warships and their Firebirds. Leona had left Duncan's daughter, Captain Mairead, in charge of the idling fleet. The redhead had raised hell—cursing, spitting, and refusing to remain behind while others flew to war.

But Leona had insisted. Mairead was perhaps the best pilot in the fleet. But she was as wild and fiery as her hair. The Firebug was terrifying in a dogfight, but this mission required finesse. In these deathcars, Leona had taken only her most prudent, responsible officers. Duncan was here, serving as her adviser and confidant. Captain Ramses al Masri, an Inheritor who had fought many battles, stood in this deathcar too, serving as her second-in-command. Three hundred enlisted marines filled the deathcars as well—the bulk of the Inheritor infantry.

Mairead is pissed off that she's missing this battle, Leona thought. But we fly toward horror. Only a madwoman would envy us.

Space stretched on before them.

Leona's hands trembled around the controls.

She sucked in air.

Be strong. Be brave. Like Dad. You can do this.

The faces of the dead danced before her. Corpses floating through space. Emaciated bodies on the floor. Her wedding ablaze.

For Earth. For humanity. For my family. I will do this.

They kept flying through the darkness.

An hour passed, and signals blinked on their radar. Strikers were flying nearby, a hundred in formation. Far too many to fight, even if the entire Inheritor fleet were here. Yet the scorpion starships didn't acknowledge them. The strikers flew by, heading toward the border.

Leona exhaled in relief.

They see only deathcars leading humans to slaughter, she knew. A common sight for them.

She kept flying deeper, leading the other deathcars, plunging deeper into the empire. There was no up or down in space, but Leona imagined them descending into a pit, plunging down and down into darkness.

Another hour passed, and they saw more enemy ships. These strikers were larger—massive dreadnoughts that could dwarf even the Jerusalem. The largest were the size of skyscrapers, could hold thousands of scorpions, and their cannons were so large Leona could have flown her deathcar into the barrels. She counted five dreadnoughts and hundreds of smaller strikers. They too passed by the deathcars, rumbling on toward the border.

"They're mobilizing for war," Leona said. "Are they planning to invade the Concord?"

"Hard to say, lass," said Duncan. "But they're not moving this many warships for our sake. This is a force to conquer worlds."

Leona cringed. "Damn it."

Again, she wished her father were here. She desperately wanted to speak to him, to hear his wisdom. But she needed her own strength now. Her warriors depended on her. She must be as strong and wise as Emet, a leader they could rally around.

As they kept flying, they saw more and more scorpion ships, all emblazoned with the red stinger of the Skra-Shen empire. Some were warships, others starfighters. Some massive, square ships looked like troop carriers. As Leona flew, she took photographs of the enemy fleets. She had lost her data chip on The Human Solution, but here was new valuable intelligence. If the scorpions were truly planning an invasion, the Concord had to know.

Leona was no friend of the Concord. Both Concord and Hierarchy hated humans. Her loyalty was only to her people. Yet if a war between these two mighty alliances was truly brewing, Leona would choose sides. She would choose the Concord.

Both are evil, she thought. But the Hierarchy is worse. In Concord space, I'm an annoying pest, a mouse to be shooed away. But in the Hierarchy, we're all animals to be slaughtered. I cannot allow the Hierarchy to win.

Soon the ships of other species were flying by them. While the scorpions were the dominant race in the Hierarchy, sitting atop the pyramid, lesser civilizations thrived here too. Some ships were rusty and spiky, carrying the Bazurians—alien mosquitoes the size of wolves. Other ships were fleshy pods like giant wombs, carrying the Scolopendra Titaniae, giant centipedes that had attacked Earth two thousand years ago, that were now rising again. There were rocky ships, red spiral ships, ships that were long and flailing like metal snakes. The Hierarchy was mobilizing, and Leona shuddered.

In the game of civilizations, ours is but a small part, she thought. A great fire will soon burn. I pray that we can survive it.

They had flown for several hours when Leona saw it ahead.

A black, rocky world.

The gulock.

Leona wasn't sure who had invented the word gulock, a portmanteau of gulag and rock, but it fit. The world ahead looked like a frozen lump of stone, orbiting far from its small star. She saw no vegetation, only rocky plains, deep canyons, and black ice. There was no color here, only black and gray. No life had emerged here. No civilization would colonize such a world. But if you wanted to send somebody to hell, here was the place.

Hell is not hot, she thought. It must be frozen like this place.

"Our sensors are picking up a settlement near the equator," Duncan said.

"Not a settlement, Doc." She stared ahead, eyes narrowed, jaw tight. "A slaughterhouse."

The convoy of deathcars flew closer. Leona drew her telescope from her belt. She gazed at the slaughterhouse below.

A brick wall surrounded the complex, topped with spikes shaped like scorpion stingers. Round concrete huts spread in rows like soldiers. There were four guard towers, crude structures built of stone and soil like giant termite mounds. Larger domed buildings rose in the camp too, perhaps barracks or abattoirs.

And there were humans.

Leona inhaled sharply.

She saw them in a courtyard, a hundred or more. Naked. Some were walking, others crawling. They were holding pickaxes, chiseling at stones. A few scorpions stood guard.

The deathcar's control panel—a sphere embedded into the dashboard like an eye—shone and crackled.

"The gulock is hailing us," Duncan said.

Clicks and hisses emerged from a hidden speaker—scorpion language. Leona tossed her jacket over the translucent sphere, hiding her from view, and pulled out her translator. She held the electronic device to her ear. It picked up the clicks and hisses, translating them.

"Late as usual!" a scorpion was saying, speaking from the planet. "What the abyss happened to you? Your ships are dented and full of holes like the hive of a rotting drone queen!"

Leona spoke through the translator. Her voice emerged as clatters and clicks. "Rawdigger scum attacked us on the way. We destroyed them. Our video feed is broken, but the humans are still ripe for the harvest."

The gulock answered. "Bloody Rawdiggers! The traitors cannot be trusted. Land the humans in the port. Hurry up! We've got quotas to fill, damn it. Bring them down now or we'll blast you out of the sky."

Leona looked down. She could now see cannons extending from the guard towers, nasty surface-to-air guns. There were also several strikers parked at a spaceport.

I was definitely wise not to fly here with the Inheritor fleet, she thought.

"I'm bringing them down to harvest," Leona said.

The transmission died.

She looked at Duncan. "The scorpions are nasty buggers, but thankfully, they're not particularly bright."

"They make up for that with meanness," the doc replied. "Let's be careful down there."

"If I were careful, I'd have stayed home." Leona allowed herself a shaky smile. "The time for caution is over. It's time for bloodshed."

"You sound like your father," Duncan said. "At least when he was young and full of piss and poison."

Her smile widened. "I'm his girl."

As they entered the thin atmosphere, the deathcars rattled, and fire blazed around them. Soon they were flying through the dark sky, heading toward the camp. As Leona descended toward the port, she glimpsed a pile of skinned human bodies, red and dripping. The pile twitched, and she realized that some of the flayed humans were still alive, left to perish in the night.

She struggled not to gag.

No terror now. Right now focus on your mission.

"Sick bastards," Duncan said, clenching his massive fists.

"They'll pay, Doc," she said. "Get ready."

She flew toward the spaceport, a rocky field that lay within the camp's walls. Her deathcar thumped down by several strikers. A guard tower rose nearby, topped with cannons the size of oak trees. Scorpions stood atop the tower, and more scorpions crawled across the ground. The other deathcars landed behind Leona, raising clouds of dust.

A scorpion clattered across the field toward Leona's deathcar. Red spirals were drawn onto his shell, denoting him an overseer.

"Come on, come on, you lazy scum!" the alien said. "Unload the vermin. We've got skins to harvest!"

The scorpion grabbed the deathcar's hatch and yanked it open.

The alien froze, staring at Leona and a hundred Inheritor warriors inside.

"Hum—" it began before Leona put a bullet through its brain.

"For Earth!" she cried, leaping out from the deathcar.

"For Earth!" cried her warriors.

Hundreds of Inheritors stormed out from the ten deathcars—the entire marine force of humanity. Their bullets flew, and their cries shook the gulock.

"For Earth! For Earth!"

Leona shouted with them, firing Arondight, screaming as she tore through scorpions.

"For Earth!"

A planet she had never seen.

"For Earth!"

A planet lost in the darkness, its coordinates unknown.

"For Earth!"

A world some thought only a myth.

"For Earth!"

Her homeworld. The beacon of her heart.

The scorpions raced toward them. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. The Inheritors stood with their backs to the deathcars, firing their railguns, and bullets slammed into the aliens. A few scorpions braved the barrage, reached the troops, and lashed their pincers. Inheritors fell, shouting, firing their guns even as they died. Hot shards of exoskeleton flew. Blood splattered the field.

"Release the motorcycles!" Leona shouted. "Charge through them!"

Three deathcars opened their hatches, and the motorcycles emerged.

The metal beasts roared forth, fire spurting from their exhausts. Cannons were mounted onto their handlebars, blasting out bullets. Blades were attached to their wheels, spinning madly. Inheritors in black armor rode the machines, howling for war. The scorpions rose to meet them, but the motorcycles tore through the beasts, their scythed wheels ripping off claws.

A scorpion raced over the corpses and vaulted toward Leona. She raised her rifle and fired. Her bullets slammed into the beast's head, but it kept flying toward her.

Leona leaped aside, and a claw scraped her side, cracking her body armor. She cried out, swung Arondight, and slammed the barrel against the alien. The scorpion crouched and thrust its stinger.

Leona howled and swung Arondight again, parrying the lashing stinger. It hit the ground beside her, sputtering venom. Pinning the stinger down with her rifle, Leona drew her sidearm and fired a bullet into the beast's leering jaws. Blood and brain and shell splattered.

She looked around her. Many Inheritors lay dead already. Doc was fighting at her side, bellowing, swinging a club with one hand and firing a pistol with the other. The motorcycles were still roaring, charging through the lines of scorpions. But as Leona watched, a scorpion leaped onto a motorcycle, tore the rider apart, then tossed the machine into the air. The motorcycle slammed down onto two Inheritors, crushing them.

Sudden wails rose, deafening, a sound like howling ghosts.

Leona looked up at the guard towers. Klaxons were blaring.

"They're calling for reinforcements!" Leona shouted. "Hurry, free the captives! Get them into the ships!"

She had only moments, perhaps, before more scorpions arrived. She ran, fired Arondight, and tore off a scorpion's legs. She reached a fallen motorcycle, its rider dead. Ignoring the terror, Leona pulled the dead man off, then mounted the motorcycle and roared forth.

She charged across the spaceport. The whirring blades on her wheels tore through lines of scorpions. She fired the machine guns mounted onto the handlebars, ripping a path through the enemy. When she rode too close to a guard tower, a scorpion swooped from above. She swerved, fired her rifle, and knocked it aside. She kept roaring forth.

Another scorpion jumped down from a guard tower. Leona swerved, and the scorpion hit the ground and scuttled after her. She spun around, burning rubber, and fired blast after blast. The creature fell, torn apart.

Leona raised her eyes toward the guard tower. The cannons rose there, monuments of metal. They were made to fire on invading ships; they could not point downward. But the klaxons were still blaring, and scorpions were still emerging from domes and holes, charging toward the spaceport.

Leona narrowed her eyes, aimed the motorcycle's machine gun, and fired a barrage at the guard tower's top. Machinery burned, and the alarm died. But she knew it was too late. If there were any more scorpions on this planet, they would soon swarm. If there were more strikers in this star system, they would soon attack.

Duncan ran toward her, bleeding from a gash on his forehead. "Lass, there are too many scorpions! More than we expected. They knew we were coming. This is a trap!"

Leona growled. "Then we'll break the trap! Roll out the flamethrowers."

Duncan turned toward the deathcars. "Flamethrowers!"

Inheritors emerged from within, wearing heavy black armor. They wielded massive flamethrowers and spurted forth an inferno. Scorpions shrieked, falling back. They were apex predators, intelligent and vicious, but they still had animal instincts, and they still feared fire.

Leona kicked her motorcycle back into gear. She rode across the scorpion lines, firing bullets.

"Riders, with me!" she cried. "Shove these bastards into the fire!"

The other motorcycles joined her. They roared back and forth, guns firing, herding the scorpions toward the flamethrowers. The arachnids shrieked, burning. Their exoskeletons withstood the flames, but their inner flesh was melting, dripping from cracks in their armor. A few scorpions tried to flee past the motorcycles, only for the machine guns to mow them down.

"Good," Leona said. "You're trapped between machine guns and fire. Now die, you mucking bastards."

Tears of fury burned as she fired her machine gun, as she drove more and more of the beasts into the flame. The scorpions fought hard. Many emerged from the gauntlet, claws lashing, and tore down Inheritors. Even from the flames, they thrust their stingers, spraying venom that melted through armor, skin, and bone. And still more emerged from holes, never ending.

Leona clenched her jaw.

Can we not defeat them? Are we not mighty enough?

She grabbed a grenade from her belt. She hurled it, and three scorpions tore apart, their shards flying. At her side, Duncan swung his electric club, knocking a beast down. Around her, a few Inheritors were running out of bullets. A few flamethrowers were sputtering.

Icy fear gripped Leona's chest, and she stared at the scorpions that still lived. They were crawling over their own dead, licking their jaws.

"More humans to harvest," one hissed.

"More skin pelts!"

The beasts laughed, shrieked, and lunged into battle.

Leona fired her last magazine, taking down a scorpion, and then drew her knife.

We cannot win. Her breath shook. I was wrong to come here. She raised her blade high and bared her teeth. But I will die fighting.

Suddenly a distant cry rose beyond the smoke.

"The Heirs of Earth!"

A second voice rose.

"The Heirs of Earth are here! The Heirs of Earth rise!"

Hundreds of voices cried out together. A gust of wind blew the smoke away, and Leona's eyes dampened.

"The prisoners," she whispered, tears in her eyes. "The prisoners are rising up."