Freedom's Siege
Date: 2017-07-13 06:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: **Conquering Worlds is Easier Than it Seems ** But nobody would ever have believed it. An alien craft the size of a cruise ship blips into space between the earth and the moon. It sends no messages. It responds to no calls. The people of earth panic, of course. The spacecraft settles on the moon and bides its time. It's right there, where anyone with a telescope can see it, but it's too far away for earth's nascent space programs to reach. And then, nothing happens. Frenzy fizzles to boredom. Everyone's attention turns back to their lives. Not that it matters, because the aliens are preparing
Publisher: Beezle Media, LLC

Freedom’s Siege

Prequel to the Freedom’s Fire Series

A novel
by

Bobby Adair

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Text copyright © 2017, Bobby L. Adair

Chapter 1

Nobody ever expected a war like this.

Maybe some sad soldier in every army since the dawn of time has said that very thing.  And as those words tumbled out—demoralizing the battered men around him—another thought came to that desperate soldier’s mind, shining there, just behind the eyes, stinging and certain, the next logical step.

We’re going to lose this war.

We’re all going to die.

And everybody I’ve ever loved is going to suffer.

The path to the bottom of despair’s dark hole is paved with logic and facts that make each step down seem like the only sane choice.

Billy Kane had been down that road before.  He’d seen his friends killed.  He’d known for certain he was going to die as well.  But he’d found some things down in that black crater that shored up the weakness in his soul—some things that lit the path back out again, trite ideals with simple names like courage and determination.

To Billy Kane, they were the indispensable ingredients in the concrete that makes a soldier’s heart brave enough to raise his rifle and fire, to march forward into the slaughter.  To fight, to win.

And that’s the thing those eighteen twiggy little gray bastards from Alpha Cen-Crap-Star, or wherever the hell they came from, will never understand about the people of the planet earth.  No matter how dire the outcome looks, we find a way to win.

Because we’re goddamn humans!

We’re not a race that lets big-toothed monsters scare us.  If anything, when we ran out of vicious critters to kill—saber tooth cats, woolly mammoths, giant bears, sharks in the oceans—we started slaughtering each other because we crave violence like a toothless corner-whore craves meth.

We have games about killing, songs about killing, and movies about killing.  We have pretend killing, practice killing, and real killing—lots of real killing—because that’s what humans do.

It defines us.

It culls the weak and makes the species strong.

All that crap sounds good in Kane’s head as he sits in the back of a semi-tractor trailer that used to haul ore down from the mine up in the mountains north of Leadville.  The trailer is covered with a painted tarp that when seen from above—way above—makes it appear empty.  It’s camouflage for the platoon inside, doing everything possible to keep their transport secret as they ride ingloriously to war.

In a way, it feels like a cowardly thing, skulking like this, but maybe covert operations always feel that way.  Or maybe it’s that the platoon is part of a nine-battalion force of highly trained soldiers headed to the moon to root eighteen bulbous-headed aliens out of an unwelcome starship parked there.  Six thousand of earth’s most skilled killers exterminating frail creatures that probably don’t weigh forty pounds each doesn’t seem fair.

But then, humans aren’t just vicious.  They’re clever.  Secrecy and surprise can be just as effective as brute force in subduing an enemy.

Such are the boredom-spawned thoughts that lollygag through Kane’s head after sitting for three hours in a metal bin designed for hauling ore.

Like him, most of the other men in the trailer are quiet, drifting through their thoughts, maybe replaying memories of their last time naked under the sheets with a girlfriend, maybe seeing the smiles of their children in the sunshine of the front yard, watching with proud eyes as daddy strides away in his uniform.

Maybe the men are thinking of their first trip into outer space, a venture into the unknown.  Until this day, a rare privilege for people from the planet earth.

Perhaps they’re thinking about the battle that awaits them on the moon.

Will victory come easy?

Kane’s fingers play across the metal of his M4.  It’s a calming ritual created out of nervousness in just such a situation some years ago.  Maybe it started in Afghanistan, maybe Syria.  He doesn’t remember.  Kane first became aware of the habit when it was pointed out to him by a corporal who got himself shot by a sniper twelve hours later.  Since then he let his fingers busy themselves when they needed to, not thinking anything of it, except that it tended to help pre-battle stresses simmer down to calm.

His fingers graze the handle and trigger guard.  They’re oddly shaped, made to fit the thick gloves he’ll be wearing once it comes time to put the weapon to use.  The trigger guard is just one example of the thousands of little things the scientists and engineers have been obsessing over to make sure humanity’s first military adventure in outer space will end in victory.

He finds the modification comforting.

Chapter 2

The semi’s diesel rumbles as it climbs the steep grade.  Its destination, a molybdenum operation that’s been strip-mining a few peaks at nearly twelve thousand feet on and off for over a century.

Sitting high in the mountains between two nearby ski resorts, the mine goes unnoticed, just as three tall, tin-covered buildings stand invisible in plain sight—unremarkable structures among a dozen others that serve no readily apparent purpose.

Relatively few people on earth understand the workings of a mining operation.  Not one alien on that interstellar cruiser parked up on the moon has a clue what any of the buildings holds.  Throw in the remote location and a steady flow of large trucks both in and out, and the mine became one of the hundreds of spots chosen across the globe to hide a launch site.

Kane and the platoon have been up the road to the site at least a dozen times.  The generals running the show know they’re sending their soldiers into a theater of war in a place no human has ever fought before, a place that can only be roughly simulated on earth.  They chose to familiarize the men with the bits they could.

“Here’s what I don’t get, Sarge.”  It’s Harney talking, First Squad’s sergeant.

Kane looks up from his busy nothings.

“It’s just the eighteen Grays up there, right?”

Kane nods.

“Eighteen Pinocchio-size aliens, right?”

Kane nods again, though nobody knows the number for sure.  “You saw the video just like everybody else.  But then again, that ship’s pretty big, a kilometer long.  Could be a million of ‘em sardined inside, I suppose.”

Harney shakes his head.  “They’re telepathic, right? That’s what the scientist said.”

Kane knows who Harney is talking about, but he asks anyway.  “The one in the video?”

“One of the ones they sent up there last year,” says Harney, clarifying.  “With those others, after the ship landed there, the ones the Grays captured.”

Lieutenant Garcia, sitting across from Kane against the wall of the trailer, nudges Harney.  “You never get when he’s yankin’ your chain, Harney.  He knows there aren’t that many.  Or they’re telepathic.  I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” says Harney.  “I know.  I’m just saying, they’re telepathic, and telepaths can’t lie.”

Kane takes a moment before he responds.  “I’m telepathic, and I lie.”

Harney ignores Kane’s response.  “I saw on TV.  They were saying the aliens read minds so they can’t hide a secret from each other, so they won’t know what a lie is.  That’s all I’m saying.  So if they say they’re only eighteen of them up there, then we have to believe them, right?”

“I think you watch too much TV.”  Kane looks over at Garcia for help.

Garcia says, “It doesn’t matter if there are eighteen Grays or not.  The Grays said they have some other species for slaves up on that ship.  They’re the ones the Grays have been forcing to build those weird structures.  Might be a thousand slaves up there—maybe ten thousand.  We don’t know, but I can tell you one thing, it’ll be the slaves we need to worry about.”

“Slaves don’t count,” says Harney, turning his attention to the lieutenant.  “Nobody gives a weapon to a slave and tells him to go fight the war for them.”  Nobody responds to that, so Harney shrugs like he’s been asked a question.  “Put a gun in a slave’s hand and the first thing he’ll do is kill his master.”  Harney looks back at Kane.  “Right, Sarge?”

“Is that what you’d do?” Kane asks.

“In a heartbeat,” answers Harney.  He glances at Garcia.  “You?”

“If you’ve already killed the master in a heartbeat,” answers Garcia, “I don’t see I’d need to do anything.”

“That’s not the point,” Harney tells him, looking back at Kane.  “Right?”

In a bored tone, Kane agrees.  “Right.  That’s not the point.”

“No,” argues Harney, but his attention is glued to Kane now.  “Would you kill your master if you were a slave?”

“I suppose,” says Kane.  “But it’s complicated.”

“Not for me it isn’t,” says Harney.  “It’s simple.”

“That’s because you’re a killer,” says Kane, thinking maybe it’s time to lighten the mood before Harney goes too far into the oddball theories he picked up from the Internet.  “That’s why LT likes you best.  After he gets killed by a gray Pinocchio, and I’m busy pissing in my space suit while I hide behind a moon rock, you’ll take over the platoon and lead them in.”

“The platoon?” Harney asks, thrown off balance.

“Yeah,” says Kane, just starting to smile.  “Me and Garcia talked about it with the other sergeants last night.  We all agree.  You’re like a little trailer trash Napoleon.  I’m proud to know you.  Hell, I might even name my kid after you.”

Garcia laughs.

Harney gets it.  “You’re messin’ with me.”

“You think?” Kane smiles for real.

“When’s that baby due?” asks Garcia, changing the subject.

“Next month,” answers Kane.

“Does she know we’re launching into space today?” asks Garcia, referring to Kane’s wife.

“She thinks I’m a miner,” answers Kane.  “I never told her I was in the military.  They told us this was top secret, so I haven’t said a word.  You tell your wife?”

“Didn’t have to,” answers Garcia.  “We’ve been married for six years.  She reads my thoughts.”  He nudges Harney again and smiles.  “I think she’s telepathic.”

“Top secret is probably stupid for this,” says Harney.  “Does anybody think the Grays have spies down here?” He looks at Garcia and grins.  “Besides your wife, I mean.”

“It’s not about spies,” says Garcia.  “If it gets out on the radio or TV, who’s to say the Grays won’t pick it up? I bet they’re monitoring us.  They’d be stupid if they weren’t, don’t you think?”

Harney nods noncommittally, turns back to Kane, and goes back to the original question.  “So what would you do? Would you shoot your master?”

“Of course,” answers Kane.  “But nothing’s ever as clear-cut as you imagine it’s going to be.”

Harney thinks about it for a moment before replying, “So that’s why we’re sending up a few hundred rockets and six thousand men?”

“Where’d you get those numbers?” asks Kane, knowing that his tone is implying that those are the top-secret figures.  At least those are the numbers everybody’s whispering.

“Rumors,” answers Harney, defensively.

“Did you hear it,” asks Garcia, “or pass it along?”

“Just heard it,” Harney answers without taking enough time to recall one way or the other.

Kane glares at Harney, but softens his gaze after a moment.  The information is out there, that much is sure.  If the Grays know, then there’s nothing that can be done about it now.  The attack is on.  The rockets will be launching no matter what.

Kane smiles at the irony of that expression.

No matter what.

Ever since the alien ship blipped out of hyperspace two years ago and floated in a geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic for a few weeks before settling into a seemingly random spot on the moon’s surface, everybody’s idea on the size of the realm of possibility had expanded.

Harney’s not done with his point.  “All I’m trying to say is if we’re sending up all these ships, and all these men to kill eighteen little aliens and their unarmed slaves, it seems to me like we’re overkilling to the max, unless there’s something about this whole operation we don’t know.”  He pauses as he casts a knowing look at both Kane and Garcia.  “Or there’s something they’re not telling us.”

Garcia laughs out loud.  “Are you kidding me with that?”

“With what?” asks Harney, defensive again.

“There’s an alien ship on the moon,” Garcia pauses and then repeats, “an alien ship that’s three times the size of an aircraft carrier.  Until a couple of days ago, when the aliens broadcast the video with the scientists they captured, we didn’t know anything about them or their ship except it could fly faster than the speed of light and—”

Harney cuts in.  “We don’t know that.”

“Know what?” asks Garcia.

“That it flies faster than the speed of light.”

“What?” Garcia is looking for a way to counter Harney’s point.

“We don’t know for sure it flies that fast,” says Kane, “but we can guess.  The ship appeared suddenly out of nowhere.  That means it spontaneously created itself twenty thousand miles out in space—not likely—or it somehow traverses through higher dimensions of existence and decided to stop for a visit in our three-dimensional space—mathematically possible, I guess, but also unlikely.”

Harney looks confused but Kane pushes on to make his point, “Or they devised some method to travel faster than the speed of light, maybe a wormhole or something.  They seemed to appear from nothing because we saw them after they came out of hyper-light travel.  Heck, for all we know, they’re so far ahead of the light reflected from their ship while they were traveling here, our telescopes will still see them coming for years after they’ve already come and gone.

Garcia laughs now.  “Is that possible?”

Kane shrugs.  “I don’t know.  I’m not a physicist.  I’m a soldier.”

“Fine,” concedes Harney, “They fly faster than the speed of light.  What’s your point?”

“My point is,” says Kane, “a couple years ago, we didn’t know that was possible.  We didn’t know aliens existed.  When we sent that probe up there with those six scientists, we didn’t know the Grays would shoot at it.  We didn’t know they’d keep those scientists hostage for a year.  We didn’t expect the Grays to put one of them on TV and tell us they were going to be our new slave masters and that our only choice in the matter was to decide how long it was going to take us to get the hell over it.  I’d say there’s plenty of evidence to support the idea that there’s a lot up there we don’t know anything about.”

“Yeah.”  Harney slumps as he sits, looks up at Kane, and absently says, “You think we’ll get killed? Most of us? Maybe all of us?”

Kane shakes his head and lies, because Harney’s question isn’t the kind you answer honestly in front of men on their way to war in the unknown.  “I’d say we’re sending up a force so overwhelming none of us will get killed.  We’ll scare the piss out of those little gray bastards.  We’ll free the scientists, put the Grays in a cage, and take their ship.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” says Kane.  “We’re sending up so many guys because it’s all about capturing the ship, right? Technology to travel the stars is sitting on the moon for the taking.  That would be huge for humankind.  That’s Star Wars kind of shit right there.  If this were only about winning, the generals would send up a few nukes and leave nothing but a dirty spot on the moon where the aliens’ ship used to be, and we’d watch the whole thing on a big HD screen while we got drunk and ate bratwurst.”

Harney turns to Garcia and asks, “Is that true, LT?”

Lieutenant Garcia backs up Kane’s version with a nod.

Kane only hopes he’s right.  Everything he said could be true.  The stickler in the whole thing is the point that nags at him and everybody who’s been paying any attention since the Grays’ ship showed up two years ago.

Twelve months after the arrival, nearly a year after the alien ship found its spot on the moon, earth’s space-faring governments launched six scientists in the company of a few military types.  They hoped to greet the aliens to the solar system and offer them earth’s friendship.

That didn’t work out.

The Grays disabled the scientists’ lunar lander and captured them.

A year later, a few days ago, the aliens set the invasion in motion.

They broadcast a video of one of the scientists standing with eighteen silent Grays arrayed in a semicircle behind him.  At the invader’s behest, the scientist told earth’s people to accept the role as slaves for the next twenty thousand years so the Grays could shepherd humanity to a transcendent state of being.  If earth didn’t want to accept that, then the little bastards would take humans as permanent slaves by their right of conquest.

Conquest?

There were just eighteen of them with one ship and some number of slave creatures.

No world leader, not one politician at any level of any government considered surrendering to the Grays.

The Grays were arrogant.  They were bluffing.  That’s what everyone thought.

All that message did was unite the world in anger at the diminutive creatures on the moon.

The nagging question bothering Kane was what if they weren’t bluffing? What kind of weapons were they hiding? What if they do have the power to subjugate the entire planet?

Chapter 3

The truck parks beneath a pavilion and the men groan as they unload.

Kane stretches his legs and back as he walks around in the thin, cold air.  He looks west at the sun sinking toward the horizon.  Fateful thoughts cross his mind.  Is this my last breath of air on earth? Is this the last sunset?

The useless crap that goes through a man’s mind before he’s off to war.

If death finds me, so be it.

Kane won’t cower.  He won’t throw his life away, but his mission is much bigger than him, more valuable than the lives of the men and women launching tonight.  The little gray aliens on the moon are proof the universe is a hazardous place, and earthlings are a technologically backward people.

That needs to be remedied.

Garcia walks up.  “I just talked to Captain Chamberlain.  He’s switching spots with us.”

“What do you mean?” asks Kane.

Garcia points to the nearest of the three tall structures.  “He’s taking Alpha.”  Garcia then points to the third tin-covered structure a half-mile away.  “We’ll take his ship, Charlie.”

Kane shakes his head.  This ship.  That ship.  It shouldn’t make a difference.  But a last-minute change makes him feel like something’s being taken from him.  “Our pilot and copilot?”

“Jensen and Dorsey stay with the ship.”

Kane stifles a curse.  The platoon has been drilling with Jensen and Dorsey for nearly eight months.  “Why?”

Garcia shakes his head and looks away.

Kane suspects something.  “You know.  Tell me.”

Garcia grits his teeth and leans in close.  In a voice just above a whisper, he says, “Jensen made the best score through the simulations, didn’t crash once.  At least not when the ship wasn’t so damaged it couldn’t fly.”

“And?” Kane asks.  He never bothered to ask any questions about pilot performance.  He always figured the simulator runs were more about getting the platoon accustomed to the rigors of a moon assault.

“Howard and Booker,” says Garcia, “the captain’s pilot and copilot, killed the whole platoon at least once a week.”

“You’re shitting me.”  Kane says it, but he already believes.  “And Captain Chamberlain can take our guys, just like that?”

“Nothing I can do about it,” says Garcia.  “It comes straight from Colonel Knox.”

Kane mutters a curse.  The Army should have never put a colonel in charge of a company, no matter how important the mission.

Garcia taps his watch and points to the furthest tower again.  “Thirty minutes and we need to be down there.  Give the men a few more minutes, and then get them moving that way.”

“Yes, sir.”  Kane’s fuming.

Another ore truck pulls up beneath the pavilion and stops.  More soldiers climb out, Second Platoon.

Three ships will be launching from this site, each with one platoon inside.  Each of the ships is standing inside one of the tall buildings that hide them.  All of the ships’ components were manufactured offsite in airliner assembly plants or on factory lines producing fighter jets when the Grays’ ship showed up and reprioritized much of the world’s thinking.

Despite that, Kane knows there are only so many rocket scientists in the world, and they’re spread thin.  The rushed design and construction of the peaceful ship that took the men to the moon to greet the aliens consumed much of earth’s limited resources where scientists were concerned.

The parallel process—to design and manufacture the assault ships the generals started cawing for the moment the aliens showed up—took the rest.

The end result is Kane knows he’ll be getting into a ship that was fast-tracked through design and never flight-tested.  Worse, it was built mostly by people who’ve never been involved in the construction of a rocket or space vehicle of any type.

It’s their first time.

The odds don’t stack up well for a safe return.

Kane listened carefully to the details when he’d volunteered.  In fact, he’d spent a good deal of time thinking about those details.

The thing about traveling to the moon and back is weight.  You have to build a rocket that can take off, make the trip to the moon, land there, make the trip back, and then decelerate enough on the way down through earth’s atmosphere to protect anyone inside so they won’t be killed.  You’ve got to bring along enough fuel for each of those segments of the mission.  Then you’ve got to bring the payload—the soldiers, weapons, and enough air, water, and food to keep them alive.

Back in the Apollo days, they broke the task into two launches—one to bring up the astronauts, one to bring up the lunar lander.  They didn’t need to get to the moon in a big hurry, so they used a little fuel and a lot of earth’s gravity to slingshot them along their way.  Everything was about efficiency of resources, and getting the most benefit for every ounce of payload.

To NASA, in those days, the benefits were scientific in nature.  And maybe a little glory-hounding.

The benefit of Kane’s mission came down to one thing: Maximizing the number of soldiers the earth could deploy to the moon, ready to bring the war to the Grays sitting up there on their ship, thinking themselves unassailable.

The generals did a little math and figured out if they didn’t budget for return vehicles, reentry vehicles, or fuel to get home, they could launch two or three times more one-way payload, two or three times more boots on the moon.

To make that math work, all they had to do was assume most of the soldiers they sent up wouldn’t need a ride home, because they’d be dead.

Nobody had anything but guesses about the types of armaments the Grays had on their ship.  They’d all seen the shot that disabled the craft the scientists landed near their ship a year ago.  The most popular idea was that they possessed a type of hyper-velocity railgun, hyper even compared to the experimental railguns being built on earth.

And then there were the odd constructs.  The aliens were using their slave labor to burrow beneath the moon’s surface, creating circular depressions, each centered on a small round hole.  But the holes only looked small from earth.  They were all sizes, anywhere from seven or eight inches in diameter up to several meters.

Guesses were all over the map about their purpose, but most figured them to be some type of weapons system.

So, it was decided the more soldiers the generals sent up, the more likely it was humanity would prevail.  And this was a war earth absolutely had to win.

Kane looks at the sky.  The launch is less than two hours away.  Transit time to the moon is thirty-six hours.  In two days’ time—Kane figures—he’ll be dead.

But he’s got a new bride at home, pregnant with his first child.  He won’t let the world be one where that boy grows up a slave to big-eyed aliens.

Chapter 4

Sitting inside, it’s hard not to think of the rocket as a bus.  The men sit in ten rows, three abreast, soldiers in astronaut suits on their way to war.

The cockpit is packed with a dizzying array of buttons, gauges, toggles, joysticks, lights, and video screens.  Pilot Howard and copilot Booker are busy with those buttons and toggles, checking and flipping, going through their lists, and sounding as competent as Jensen and Dorsey, the flight team Captain Chamberlain stole.

Because Chamberlain is a sissy-spit waste of a uniform.

Kane, of course, keeps that thought to himself.

He’s still stewing over the last minute change.

At least he didn’t lose his assigned seat in the first row, with Lieutenant Garcia in the middle, Sergeant Harney on his left, and Kane on the right.  From here, Kane is able to look through the wide, wraparound cockpit windows.

It’ll be a hell of a sight, shooting off the earth and out toward the stars.

At the moment, the only interesting thing outside the windows is the other two rockets, Alpha and Bravo, both preparing for launch.  Both look every bit like spacecraft welded together from an airliner fuselage, four ICBMs, and a trio of solid-rocket boosters.  They make Kane think of giant bundles of dynamite painted white instead of cartoonish red.

That’s a thought he keeps to himself as well.

The tin walls have been lowered to the ground as they were designed to do, and tractors are nearly finished dragging the sections away from the launch pads.  Those walls will be re-erected after the ships take off so evidence of the rockets’ origin can be hidden.

Just in case.

Just in case the lunar expeditionary force fails.

His thoughts turn to his pregnant wife and the son he might never meet.  Dylan.  They had just chosen the name weeks before.  Tears ambush him like they always do these days when he thinks about the helpless boy whose fate rests in his father’s ability to make war on a faraway cold orb.  That boy might possibly grow up without a father to teach him and protect him.

He glances around to make sure the others don’t see his weakness.

Kane pushes all of that out of his mind.  He’s spent enough thought on the inevitability of his death.  He needs to stay focused on the mission.  Mostly, he tells himself Howard and Booker only need to get him to the moon.  Kane needs to plant his feet in that barren gray dirt, and then he and his men will do whatever is necessary.

They’re armed.  They’re trained.  And they’re goddamned determined.

It doesn’t matter if eighteen puppet-sized Grays are up there or if a million are crammed into that ship.  Kane will twist every one of their spindly necks and make a mountain of their hairless heads.  No little extraterrestrial goblin is going to take his son’s freedom.

The anger keeps his sad thoughts from turning to embarrassing tears.

Not that it matters.  He’s wearing a spacesuit helmet.  His outbound comm is muted.  None of the men behind him can see anything but his back.  Howard and Booker are too busy to look back into the cabin.  And Garcia is staring through the cockpit window at the black, star-sprinkled sky, probably thinking about his own wife and three kids.

The comm crackles with new activity.  “Listen up, men.”  It’s Captain Chamberlain.  “Colonel Knox has something he’d like to say.”

Kane listens.  It’s nothing special.  Exactly what you’d expect to hear at a time like this.  Do your job.  Sacrifice is the price of freedom.  We’re the pride of a people, the best of the best, blah, blah, blah.

Kane’s heard a thousand versions of the speech, halftime motivational bullshit.  Such drivel has never been for him, though.  It’s for men who can’t find enough drive in their hearts to put themselves in the right frame of mind to do what needs doing.  Never been a problem for Kane.

Finally, the last of the words crackle through the connection.

The men cheer.

Why not?

Except that they haven’t blasted off yet and they’ve got a day and a half to passively sit strapped in a chair while eleven hundred tons of rocket fuel explodes beneath them.

Kane guesses most of Knox’s babble will be forgotten about three seconds after that first rocket ignites.

A flight controller comes over the line.  “Three-nine-Alpha, prepare to count down on my mark.”

Lieutenant Garcia glances at Harney and Kane.  “We go third.  Get ready.”

Kane looks out the window to his right, seeing Alpha and Bravo rockets bathed in floodlights, each trickling white smoke from beneath, the high dark mountains behind.  Alpha goes in ninety seconds.  Twenty seconds later, Charlie rocket will take flight.

Voices from the flight control channel bleeds over the comm from the cockpit crew’s helmets.  It’s the kind of launch chatter played during the simulations.  It means nothing to Kane, except that the bone-jarring part is coming soon.

One of the screens in the center of the cockpit dashboard goes suddenly black.  Booker curses.

Howard, Howard, leans forward and pounds it with his fist.

Does that ever work?

He pounds it again as somebody from Launch Control comes over the comm and says, “T minus thirty seconds.”

The pilot and copilot look at one another as Kane sees them toggle their comm switches.  They’re talking between each other but leaving the platoon out.

A moment later, Howard looks over his shoulder and says, “To hell with it.  We don’t need that one anyway.”  He settles himself back in his seat.

“What does it do?” asks Lieutenant Garcia.  His line is always open, so he can communicate with the flight crew.

Booker looks back.  “Nothing important.  Nothing to worry about.”  He grins.  “We’re going up, too, and we don’t want to die, either, right?” He laughs.

Garcia laughs too, but it’s forced.

Sergeant Harney laughs, like he truly thinks it’s funny.

Kane says nothing.

“Ten.  Nine…

Seconds pass.

Kane hears a rumble start to grow.  The mountainsides are splashed in yellow light.  Alpha’s engines are starting to burn.

“Twenty seconds for us,” says Howard as Alpha’s engines go to full burn, shaking Charlie rocket, the air inside the cabin, and the earth beneath.

And that rocket’s a half-mile away!

A huge plume of smoke flows out and hides the mine and all its buildings.  Alpha’s engines spew sunlight fire, pushing it skyward, slowly—too slowly.

That’s just Kane’s guess.

A handful of seconds pass and Alpha isn’t yet up to a hundred meters.  But it’s climbing.

“Heavy load,” calls Booker over the comm.  He’s watching Alpha, too.

Kane flips his tinted visor down over his faceplate so he can watch without blinding himself.

Alpha seems to get stuck in the sky, glued to the clouds billowing beneath.

Kane starts to say something, but stops.

Alpha leans sideways just as the second countdown reaches zero.  Bravo fires its engines to full burn, and it lurches out of Alpha’s smoke.

Huge plumes of gray roil in the fire of the rockets’ engines.

It looks like high noon outside.

Kane can’t feel his breath or feel his heart.  Every sensation in his body is thrust-rumble, shaking him down to his bones.

One of Alpha’s solid boosters jerks loose—just the lower support.

The booster twists on the upper mount.

Kane shouts.

No one hears.

Not a human in the universe could do anything if they did.

Booker’s head jerks right as he sees what’s happening.  He shouts, too.

Howard looks.  He says something loud and unintelligible.

Alpha is falling.

Bravo, blazing white flame, passes Alpha on its way into the heavens.

Howard is shouting, “I’m going now! I’m going now!”

Kane feels Charlie’s main engines and solid boosters fire.

The rumble from the other rockets was nothing compared to this.

The simulator was a kiddy ride.

Smashed into his seat as g’s start to pile on, it sounds like the thrown-together rocket is coming apart.

Kane pulls his head around to look forward in fear that his neck will wrench off from trying to see Alpha’s fate.

But he knows what’s coming.

A shockwave hammers Charlie rocket sideways in the air and Alpha’s fireball washes past the window.

Kane knows he’s going to die.

He closes his eyes and utters a prayer for his son.

But Charlie rocket’s g’s still push.

Kane is trying to breathe, but it feels like an elephant is stepping on his chest.

The fire in the windows slips past.

Bravo rocket is above, blazing into the black sky.

All the world below is fire and smoke—Alpha’s violent, sudden death.

Someone is cursing over the comm and Kane realizes he’s yelling nonsense.

He grits his teeth, happy to hear voices of living, shouting people.

“We’re gonna make it!” prays Howard out loud.  “We’re gonna make it.”

Kane takes it up.  “We’re gonna make it.”

Lieutenant Garcia sings the chant, as does Harney.

We’re gonna make it.

The ship starts a slow roll, and then Kane is upside down.  Just like in the simulator.  Normal.

Howard and Booker are tense, but working the ship, driving it into the void.

They’re following a curved column of glowing smoke, Bravo’s trail.

The nighttime world spreads out beneath the ship, and Kane looks up to see down to the earth’s surface.

The lights of cities spread across the globe.

“Fifteen miles up,” says Booker over the platoon comm.  “Twenty-six hundred miles per hour.  The fastest you boys have ever moved.”  He laughs again.

Kane decides he likes Booker and stoic Howard.

An explosion shakes the ship.

Harney shouts a curse.

“Solid booster separation,” calls Howard.

“Nothing to worry about,” confirms Booker.  “Totally natural.”

Kane knows that’s true.  That part was just like the simulator.

“Thirty-six hundred miles per hour,” Booker tells them.

“Nothing damaged in the explosion?” asks Garcia.

“We’ll know soon enough,” says Howard.

The g’s are letting up.  Kane’s guessing they’ve made it.  He opens the platoon’s command comm link.  “Sergeants, report.”

Each of the platoon’s other three sergeants takes a moment to check on their squads.

Everyone is fine.

“Tank separation coming up,” says Howard.

“Cutting engines now,” says Booker.

The rumble stops.  The g’s disappear.  Something bumps.

“Main tank separation,” confirms Howard.

The copilot laughs and looks over his shoulder.  “I can’t believe we lived through that.”

Nobody else laughs.

Chapter 5

The failure and subsequent explosion of Alpha rocket wasn’t a surprise to those in charge.  It was only a surprise to Kane and the other soldiers riding the ships into space.

With the moon rising on the day side of the planet, the launches started on the other.  Russia, Japan, and Australia rotated into night and went first.  As earth slowly spun to hide more of its landmass from the aliens above, China, India, and Europe sent their soldiers into the sky.  The Americas launched last.

By that time, the rocket flaws were manifesting themselves in a consistent fashion.  One in seven failed on liftoff, and each of those ships turned into a huge ball of fire.

Of the sixty-eight support and decoy ships, only six exploded.  Thirty-two of the two hundred troop carriers slated to go up never made it out of the atmosphere.  Seventeen percent of the six thousand troops who’d been trained for the mission were already dead by the time Kane’s ship took flight.

A thousand lives were lost because earth was forced to rush production of space vehicles that existed at the foremost edge of its engineers’ technological abilities.

A thousand souls immolated on the altar of complacency.

Staring at the stars through the windshield, Kane sees bright flares, and toggles the flight crew’s comm.  “What’s that?”

“The other ships are starting their burn,” answers Booker, unlocking his chair and spinning to face Kane, Garcia, and Harney.  “Like us, they need to escape earth’s gravity and get on a trajectory to the moon.”  He points out the window.  “See how they’re spread all over the place? We’re all going to be coming in at slightly different angles.  That’ll put lots of space between us, so we’ll be harder to hit when the Grays start shooting.”

“Hey, hey,” says Harney, perturbed and pointing at Howard.  “Is that okay, letting him fly it by himself?”

“I’m just a backup system,” says Booker.  “I drive when he gets tired.”

“Or killed,” adds Howard without turning around.

Booker laughs.  “It’s how you get promotions in the astronaut biz.  The guy ahead of you gets toasted.”

“That sucks,” says Harney.

“That’s how you’ll get my job.”  Kane laughs.  “And that’s how Corporal Bishop will get your job.”

Lieutenant Garcia elbows Harney.  “If you wanted to wait for the guy ahead of you to retire, you should have stayed in school and become an accountant.”

“You guys are wrong,” sulks Harney.

Garcia looks down at the big-faced watch built into the sleeve of his suit.  “How much longer are we going to burn?”

Checking his own watch, Booker replies, “Thrusters should fire for another hour or so.  That’ll get us scooting on up to the moon in record time.”

“I thought the flight was gonna take thirty-six hours,” says Harney.

“That’ll be the record,” says Booker.  “Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles is a long way.”

“Unstrap from your seat,” Garcia tells Harney and Kane.  “Get your helmets off.  Organize the men.  Have them do the same.  Get them out of their seats two or three at a time.  I want them moving around so they can acclimate to the low g while we have it.”

Booker says, “After this burn, we’ll do about thirty-three hours of zero g before we kick the engines back on for a deccel once we get close to the moon.  Nobody knows what kind of defenses the Grays have up there, but I’d expect them to start taking pot shots at us eventually.  You’ll want the men strapped back in once that happens.  We wouldn’t want a bunch of bodies bouncing around inside the cabin once Captain Howard decides he’s the Red Baron and starts taking evasive maneuvers.”  Booker laughs.  “Know what I mean?”

“Just let us know when,” Garcia replies with a grin.

Kane releases his strap and pushes himself out of his seat, turning around and hailing the other sergeants to get the men moving.

Chapter 6

“Wake up.”

Kane jerks to attention and sees Lieutenant Garcia leaning over him.  Kane says, “I dozed off.”

“Boredom.”  Garcia floats himself back into his seat.

The ship is still in zero g.

Kane looks over his shoulder at the rows of soldiers behind.  Some of them are asleep.  Others are talking quietly.  Some are putting their helmets back on.  “Something wrong?”

“We’re almost there.”

Kane looks at the large-faced watch on his wrist.  The time confuses him.  He tries to piece together when he went to sleep.

“We’re about an hour out.”

“God,” says Kane.  “How long did I sleep?”

“As long as you needed.”

Kane shakes his head to knock the cobwebs loose.  “I guess.”

Garcia straps himself into his chair.  “We’ll start our burn pretty soon.”

Kane checks his belts.  Still secure.

“You’ll want to get your helmet back on,” says Garcia.

The helmet is attached to a clip on the seat, just beside the line that feeds his suit oxygen and power from the ship.  Kane detaches the helmet, and pulls it deftly over his head, connects the neck ring to his suit and locks it in place, just like he’s done a thousand times in training.

Using the crude controls on his wrist, he runs a diagnostic on the suit’s systems, a habit drilled into him during training.  The story the instructors like to tell was that more than one hard-nosed dumbass, “just like you,” skipped the diagnostics and jumped into his exercise, assuming that because he could breathe, everything was fine.  The problem is, the empty spaces in the suit hold enough air to sustain a man for a few minutes.  So it’s easy to think the air system is running when it’s not.

Once the air in the suit turns toxic with carbon dioxide, the dumbass collapses.  The lucky ones passed out close to someone who understood what was happening and knew what to do about it.  Most of the dumbasses weren’t lucky.  They died or caught a bad case of brain damage.

“For you idiots who don’t know it, brain damage is incurable.”  The instructors were never kind.

Early on in lunar assault training, Kane’s unit took a tour of the ward where the Army kept the brain-damaged soldiers who’d made one mistake or another.  Most of them looked like they’d been poured into their wheelchairs every morning, only to spend the day fumbling and drooling.  The visit made an indelible impression on Kane.  He always ran his system diagnostics, and he regularly checked his O2 and CO2 levels whenever he had his helmet on.

Harney, already awake, in his helmet, and strapped into his seat on the other side of Garcia, points out through the cockpit windows.  “That’s earth, right?”

“Yep,” says Booker.

Kane is more interested in what Howard is doing.  Howard is actively checking his instruments.  He’s tense.

“Why are we headed toward earth?” asks Harney.

“We spun the ship ten hours ago,” says Booker, who busies himself with some toggles on the ceiling that cause a bank of monitors to swing down from above.  He glances at Howard.  “Good to go.”

Howard spins his chair around and orients himself at a set of controls Kane hadn’t paid any attention to before.  Now Howard and Booker have their backs to the cockpit windows, using video feeds to fly the ship backward.

Garcia glances at Harney and says, “They pointed the rocket nozzles toward the moon.”

“So we can decelerate,” adds Kane.  He paid attention in training when they were explaining all of this.  Harney hadn’t.

“I see the other ships,” says Harney, “just like when we left earth.”

Booker looks over his shoulder to see out the window.  “Yeah.”

“We’ll be there first?” asks Harney.

Garcia thumbs over his shoulder.  “I’m sure there’re plenty out there we can’t see.”

Just then, one of the ships behind them explodes in a spray of silent fire.

“Holy shit!” shouts Harney.

Kane tenses.  He comms the platoon.  “Helmets.  Now!”

Howard glances back to see the fiery explosion dissipate into the void.  He looks at the rows of men sitting in front of him now.  He focuses on Lieutenant Garcia.  “I’m muting you guys now.  Going to fleet comm.  The Grays are awake.  Hold tight.  It’s going to get rough.”

Over the platoon comm, Kane orders, “Cinch up those straps.  We’re starting evasive maneuvers.  Expect to get jerked around a bit.”  He looks over at the lieutenant, who is talking with someone, probably their new commander on another of the ships.  Harney is on the comm with his squad, talking fast enough so they won’t have time to think about the incoming fire.

Kane switches to the platoon command comm, just him, the other three sergeants, and Garcia.  “Keep a close eye on your men.  Make sure nobody panics.  We’ll be in our own pile of dog shit soon enough.  Right now, there’s nothing we can do except relax and trust our pilot to get us there.  Clear?”

“Clear,” they respond in near unison.

Kane takes a few slow breaths to maintain his calm.  Just like his men, he doesn’t like being under someone else’s control.

Booker leans a little to the left of his monitor bank and catches a glance at Kane before opening a connection.  “Howard says I should leave a line open to you three.”  He points a finger across the front row.  “You know, so you can keep the platoon informed, so they’ll feel better.  It doesn’t seem like it, but he’s all touchy-feely that way.  Ask questions when you have them, and I’ll answer unless I’m busy flying the ship and saving your life or something.”  Booker chuckles.

“Thanks,” says Garcia.  “Kane, can you pass along info to the platoon, so we’re not all three talking.”

“Yes, sir.”

Booker says, “We’ve got incoming, and the captain is going to start his crazy pilot shit here, any second.  Hope you boys had your Dramamine.”

“Evasive maneuvers!” Kane announces.

The ship’s engine rumbles and the ship pulls hard to the right, but just for a moment.

“Expect more of that,” says Booker.

“Like riding a roller coaster,” says Kane into the platoon comm.  He can hear the men.  He’s got them turned down to barely audible, but if anything gets out of control he’ll know right away.

“Deccel burn in ten seconds,” says Booker.

Kane relays the information.

Out in the space behind them, another ship explodes.

Two streaks of light slip past, just missing the hull.

“Tracers?” asks Kane.

“Lasers,” Harney tells them, tension in his voice.

“You only see lasers in the movies,” says Garcia.

Harney turns toward Garcia, ready to argue.  “There was this experiment my science teacher—”

“You don’t see laser beams in space,” Garcia tells him with enough finality that Harney stops talking.

“They’re shooting some kind of super high-velocity projectiles,” says Booker.  “They’re not tracers.  They’re glowing because they’re hot as hell from the acceleration.”

“Railguns?” asks Kane.

“Confirm that,” says Garcia.  “It’s coming over the company line now.  They’ve got forty or fifty of them mounted on the ship.”

“Shit,” says Harney.

“Their fire rate is slow,” says Garcia.  “Like they’re hand-loading them one shot at a time.”

The ship pulls hard, upward this time.  Metal groans.

A light streaks past the cockpit windows, close enough to reach out and touch.

Some of the men shout and curse.  They all saw it, too.

The ship pulls hard to the right.

“We’re in good hands,” says Booker, reaching over to pat Howard on the shoulder, making a show of it for the enlisted men.

Between the monitors, Kane sees Howard’s face.  He’s focused on his monitors, still tense, but determined.

The ship jukes, then swerves into a long arc.  The rocket engines stop burning.

“What’s that?” asks Garcia.

Booker glances at them between his monitors.  Kane sees his humor is slipping.  “Don’t pass this bit back to your guys.  At least I wouldn’t.  The first wave is getting shredded.”

Harney mutters something.

“We’re not going straight in,” says Booker.  “We’re going to slingshot around the moon and deccel as we come around the other side.”

Garcia nods.

Harney asks, “Why?”

“So we won’t be an easy target,” answers Kane.  “If we slow down to landing speed coming directly at the Grays’ ship, the slower we go, the easier we’ll be to hit.  If we decelerate behind the moon and slide in over the horizon, we won’t be a target for long.”

Booker laughs.  “That’s right.  Tell you what, Sergeant, after Howard bites it, you can be my copilot.”

Another projectile flashes light into the cockpit.

More and more glowing projectiles are in the sky.

Garcia says, “For single shot weapons, the Grays are throwing up a lot of ordnance.”

Chapter 7

The black sky is filling with odd, shimmering shapes, the shattered remnants of ships.  Some are still venting flaming gases.  Others are spreading like poorly wrought fireworks.

The pilot jerks left, and then right again.

Another miss.

The hull sounds like it’s being pelted by hail and chunks of metal big enough to feel through the seat’s frame.

The men in the platoon are straining to keep their brave faces on, but they’re all afraid.

Most are keeping it to themselves.

A few others are starting to lose it.  Kane directs their sergeants to mute them off the platoon comm and calm them down.  Even Garcia has gone silent, eyes closed, hands gripped tight to his armrests, lips mouthing a silent prayer.

Trying to keep his voice on a level tone, Kane asks Booker, “What’s the story?”

“Busy as hell,” he answers, as he points to one of the large screens.

Howard turns the ship in response.

Kane finds the end of Booker’s humor worrisome.  It underscores the impotence he feels being stuck in the rocket, unable to take a shot at those little gray shits in their interstellar cruiser, mercilessly pounding the fleet with their railguns.

He hates them even more now that he realizes his one consoling hope—through his training, the launch, and what might soon be his death—won’t work.  If the fleet doesn’t make it through the hailstorm of defensive fire, no nuclear-tipped missiles will either.

No backup plan.

The rapidly shrinking lunar expeditionary force is the earth’s only hope.

“Most of the ships are damaged,” says Booker, seeming to breathe a little easier, all of a sudden.

That doesn’t sound like good news to Kane, so he doesn’t understand.

Booker seems to sense Kane’s misunderstanding and adds, “We’re the lucky ones.”

Seeing so much debris out the windows, Kane silently agrees.

“A few more minutes,” says Booker, “and we’ll be out of the line of fire.”

Howard pulls on the controls and Kane is mashed into his seat as the ship is pummeled again.

Debris from another ship flies past the windows.

Howard curses, losing his cool for the first time.

The ship swings in another direction.

Up.  Down.

It barrel-rolls, and Kane is disoriented.  He sees the earth.  And then the edge of the moon.  And then space again.

Heavy thuds pound the hull.

Kane closes his eyes and steels his nerves.  It feels like the end.  Out of the darkness, in his mind, he hears the gentle thump-thump of the heartbeat of his unborn child.  The thought is broken by yet another impact.

But the ship doesn’t come apart.  It shudders and veers to the left, long and consistent.

“We’re trying to get an orbital angle,” Booker shouts.  “We don’t want to overshoot.”

The rocket engines start to rumble loudly.

“We’re burning to slow down,” shouts Booker over the noise.

Kane feels the g’s again, just like liftoff.

The noise of the rocket engines is all he can hear.  His bones rattle so hard it feels like they might jiggle right out of his flesh.

“We made it!” Booker’s shout somehow carries over the noise of the engines.

Chapter 8

It feels like twenty, maybe thirty minutes, burning the rockets to slow down, but Kane sees out the window they’re passing behind the dark side of the moon.

The orbital maneuver is working.

The Grays can’t see the ship.

The men in the platoon are feeling their confidence return.  They’re joking, and talking about getting even.

Kane links in and tells his men, “Get yourselves ready, boys.  The worst is past.  We’ll have our turn soon enough.”

“Gonna stomp on a little gray fucker’s head,” jokes Harney.  Some of the men laugh.

“We’re about fifteen minutes out,” Kane tells them.  “We’ll land two or three clicks out and go in on foot.”

“How many ships made it through?” asks Harney.

“Don’t worry about that,” Kane replies.  “You make sure your giggle-girls are ready to fight.”

“Hey,” says Harney, “nobody in my squad’s a giggle-girl.”

“Nobody but you,” laughs Garcia.  He opens a private comm link between Kane and Booker.  “I can’t raise anyone on the tactical link.  I think the booster antenna on the hull was broken off in the descent.  Can you guys raise the other ships?”

Booker talks quietly, even though he’s on the comm link.  “Just between us, we’re not getting contact with anyone either.”

“What does that mean?” asks Garcia.

“It could mean we’re behind the moon and it’s blocking line-of-sight transmission.”  He points to his screen.  “I don’t see anyone in front of us.  He glances back through the windows.  “You guys see anyone else out there?”

“No,” answers Kane.

“Don’t tell me we’re the only ones that made it,” says Garcia.

“Can’t say,” Booker tells him.  “Maybe we’re the only ones who took this maneuver around the moon, and the rest of them are on the other side giving the Grays what-for.  Maybe we’ll be late to the party.”

Kane doesn’t like that idea.  In fact, he almost likes it less than the helpless feeling he had when they were under fire and other ships were being blown to pieces.  Like every soldier in the cramped cabin, he’s ready to kill the murdering little gray monsters.

Chapter 9

The ship spins one last time.  Having shed its excess speed with the power of the engines, it can move in the moon’s light gravity with its maneuver thrusters.

Now skimming the surface, a few hundred feet up, moving slowly, Howard is having trouble keeping the ship moving in a straight line.  He’s talking to Booker in a private conversation.

Kane gets that the damage to the ship is making it hard to fly.  Red and yellow streaks are coming off the moon from somewhere over the horizon.  The Grays are still shooting.  The sky is so full of debris, it’s impossible to tell what the aliens are shooting at.

That makes Kane anxious.  Too many good men are dying.

Howard only needs to coax the ship a little closer.

“We need to move this thing along,” Garcia tells Booker, echoing Kane’s thoughts.  “Get us some speed.  Lose the caution.”

“Caution?” Booker shoots Garcia a harsh look and the laugh that follows is anything but happy.  “You’re lucky you’re not outside pushing this thing right now.  The main engines are still good, but maneuvering thrusters aren’t working worth a damn.”

“Go faster, then,” Garcia tells him, not backing down.

Booker grits his teeth, takes a second to respond calmly and says, “If we put on too much speed, we’ll overshoot and probably fly right over the damn ship at point-blank range.  That won’t end well.”  He closes out Garcia’s request with, “We’re doing the best we can.”

“We’re just anxious to get into the fight,” says Kane.  “Know what I mean?”

Booker nods.

In a more peaceful tone, Garcia asks, “What’s the plan, then?”

Booker says, “We can’t get a fix on how far that Gray ship is over the horizon.  I think we’re close.  Our plan is to fly at this altitude—we’ll speed up if we can—and as soon as we spot the Grays, we’ll drop down below their line of sight.  The horizon will keep them from shooting at us.”

“How far will we be?” asks Garcia.

“Not to go all scientist on you,” says Booker, “but standing flat-footed on the moon, you can see maybe a couple kilometers to the horizon.  At this altitude, maybe we’ll see ‘em fifty kilometers out.  It’ll give us a chance to sneak in close.  Maybe two or three clicks.”

Garcia seems satisfied with the answer.  “You and Howard should come with us.”  His eyes scan across the ship’s control panels.  “I don’t think the ship is going to get us back to earth.”

“We need to stay with the ship,” says Booker.  “We need to see what’s damaged.  We need to know what she’ll do.  Besides, if you guys don’t pull this off, we have our orders.”

“Your orders?” Kane asks.  He’s suspicious.  “You’re not talking about returning to earth, are you?”

Booker shakes his head.  “Just like you guys, we volunteered for this.  We knew what we were getting into.”

Garcia makes the guess first.  “You’re going to go kamikaze?”

“If you guys don’t capture that ship… “ says Booker, but he doesn’t finish the thought.  Instead, he says, “All those railguns that destroyed our fleet, those were fired from their ship.  That’s a lot of firepower from one ship, but you know what?”

“Is that rhetorical?” asks Kane.

“Yes,” answers Booker.  “All those weird underground structures the Grays have been building, the ones with the little holes in the middle.  Do you know how big those holes are?”

“A few feet?” guesses Kane.  “A few meters?”

“Ten meters across,” says Booker, “The biggest ones are that large.  Fleet command now thinks those are railguns.  It came across the comm back when we were getting hammered up there.”

“Why would they need guns that big?” asks Garcia, too stunned by the revelation to make the deduction himself.  “They did just shoot most of our ships down with the small caliber batteries?”

“They aren’t for shooting down our ships,” says Booker.  “Command thinks they’re going to use them to bombard earth.”

“Christ,” mutters Garcia.

“Exactly,” says Booker.

Kane is running through the scenario in his head, and it’s immediately clear to him that if those big railguns can fire a projectile at anything near the speeds of the smaller variety, then earth is in trouble.  The Grays will be able to rain a meteor storm down on earth’s cities, and there won’t be a thing any human can do to stop it.

Those eighteen Grays don’t need an army.  They’re going to lay siege to an entire planet that won’t end until enough people die to break humanity’s resolve.  And earth will surrender itself into slavery.

Damn those little gray bastards!

“Those larger caliber railguns,” says Booker, “they’ll hit with the force of a small nuclear device.  The Grays will be able to take out small towns with a single slug.  A few dozen hits might obliterate New York or London.  We don’t know if those guns are operational, but you can bet they eventually will be.  We need to stop them, no matter what.”

“No matter what,” echoes Kane.

“Got ‘em,” shouts Howard over the comm, just as he sends the transport into a dive.

Chapter 10

Booker says, “The Grays’ ship is about twenty clicks out.”

Kane is watching the moon’s surface come up fast.  He says nothing, but squeezes his armrests and tenses, hoping they’re not crashing.

The pilot levels out a dozen meters above the dusty surface.

“Any idea how you’re going to get in?” asks Booker.  “It might be just you guys making the assault.”

Thumbing in the direction of the platoon, Garcia says “We’re all carrying C4, enough to split that ship in two.  I think we can make a hole big enough—”

“Shit!” shouts Harney.

Kane blinks instinctively as a glowing projectile arcs over the horizon and streaks past.

“How the hell did that happen?” shouts Garcia.  “They can’t see us.”

Booker doesn’t answer.  He’s fully engaged again.  He’s pointing to the right where an ancient meteor left a depression in the moon’s surface, several miles across.

Howard veers.

The engines rumble.

He’s going to goose it.

“They’re using the moon’s gravity,” says Kane, “to curve their shots over the horizon.  They saw where we were before we dropped down.  They only need to guess our altitude.”

Another projectile streaks past.

Two more go by, high.

“They’re really after us,” says Booker, like he’s trying to find a joke where there isn’t one.

The ship picks up speed under the influence of a familiar rumble.

Kane sees another flurry of projectiles come over the horizon and grow in size.

Harney spews a string of curses.

The projectiles seem to be coming right at the ship.

And in the last second, right before everything goes black, it looks like one is coming right at the ship’s windshield.

Chapter 11

“Hey, you all right?”

Kane looks up to see Garcia standing over him with the black sky above.  “What happened?”

“We got hit.”

Kane realizes he was unconscious.  He struggles to sit up but can’t.

“You’re still strapped in.”

Kane looks down and pops the clip in the center of his chest with his fist to loose the constraining straps.

Around him, he sees the ship looking like a giant ripped it open lengthwise with a can opener.  Soldiers are in their seats.  Parts of them, anyway.  Most look dead.  Some are up and moving.  Debris is scattered across the pristine gray surface in every direction.  “Jesus.”

“Yeah,” says Garcia.  “We took one right through the bow.”

Kane sees Booker’s seat sheared at chest height.  He sees Booker’s legs sticking beneath the remains of the instrument panel.  It’s an easy guess that the top part of his body went with the rest of the seat.  Howard’s seat is completely gone.  Harney’s is empty.  “Sergeant Harney?”

Garcia shakes his head.  “He’s like a cockroach.  Unkillable.”

Relieved at that bit of news, Kane looks at the metal hull, completely gone just above the top of his seat back.  He realizes if he were two or three inches taller, he’d be missing half his skull now.  “How many?”

“Dead or alive? What are you asking?”

“Alive?” It’s always better to sound like an optimist.

“Seven and you?”

“And me?” asks Kane, looking down at his arms and legs for wounds.  “What does that mean?”

“We’ve got seven who can make the attack.”  Garcia reaches behind Kane and pulls on an umbilical, and shows it to Kane.

Kane shrugs.  It looks just like the one he connected to when he was seated, only it’s longer.  It has to be the one from the ship’s emergency kit, there in case anyone needed to go EVA and make a repair en route to the moon.

“Your breathing apparatus took a hunk of shrapnel,” says Garcia.  “You can’t unplug.”

“What?” Kane reaches around to feel the bulky backpack integrated into his suit.  He finds a fist-sized hole through the left side.

“You were lucky.”

“No, I wasn’t.”  Connected to a broken ship.  Forever, or so it seems.

“You were.”

Looking around at the remains of the ship, Kane asks, “The life support system still functions?”

“The tanks you’re connected to weren’t punctured.  With the rest of us off the system, you’ll have enough to keep you alive for three or four weeks, I’ll bet.”

Kane shakes his head.  “Whatever you’re getting at.  I’m not going to sit here and… ” He looks around again, not knowing what the and is, and sees that the ship has come to rest beside a hunk of stone as big as a house.

Garcia points at the outcrop.  “About a click that way on the other side of this pile of rock is the alien ship.”

Kane starts doing the estimates.  He can probably go five minutes unplugged before his suit’s air starts to turn toxic.  If he does it right, he might cross a click in low g in three or four minutes.  Then he’d have a minute or so in the fight before he started to suffocate.  It’s a crap plan, but it’s better than waiting in the company of frozen corpses, staring at a black sky and waiting to die.  “Did any other ships make it this far?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” says Garcia.  “Get a repair.  Switch suits.”

“Yeah.”  It doesn’t take a genius intellect to make that leap.  Kane looks around for a man in the platoon who might have sustained a head injury, someone who can donate a functioning suit.  “If I can get inside an airlock or something.  I just need to get out of the vacuum for five minutes.”

“I don’t know if anybody made it but us,” says Garcia.  “You can tune into the fleet channel on the ship’s system.”  He shakes his head.  “We can listen.  We can’t send.”

“What does that mean?”

“Some other ships are still in the fight, but we’re the only ones on the surface.”

“Out of two hundred?” Kane witnessed the carnage coming in, but he can’t believe it was that bad.  He looks up.  “How many are out there?”

“Five, six.  Not sure.”

Kane looks at his feet and heaves a sigh.  “Do we have a plan?”

Garcia slaps him on the shoulder.  “Good.  You’re not ready to give up just yet.”

Chapter 12

The umbilical that attached Kane’s suit to his chair was only four feet long.  The one he’s connected to now is forty feet—long enough.

Kane is perched atop of the rock formation and tethered to the ship on the ground below.

A kilometer away, across a rocky plain pocked by circular depressions, each with the barrel of a railgun peeking out, sits the alien ship, enormous and unassailable.  Its guns are still firing at the few assault ships still up there.

For that—for every soldier they’ve killed, for the wicked plans they spin to enslave the people of the earth—the Grays need to die.

Before Lieutenant Garcia, Sergeant Harney, and the other five started out for the alien craft, they helped Kane search the ship’s wreckage to find one of the platoon’s machine guns and a grenade launcher.  They also came up with seven or eight hundred rounds for the machine gun and a few dozen grenades for the launcher.  The platoon brought a lot more ammunition with them, but most of it blew out into space when the ship got hit.

Kane doubts his tiny weapons will damage the alien behemoth, but that’s not his purpose.  He’s the diversion, and when the moment comes, he’ll be the mosquito annoying the giant so the men on foot won’t be noticed.

Garcia and the other men are nearly halfway to the ship.

There’s no cover between here and there, so they’re spread out and bouncing across the surface in a low-g skip that's worked well on the moon since the days of the Apollo missions.  It doesn't look dangerous, not intimidating in any way.

But looks aren’t important.  The lunar expeditionary force—what’s left of it—isn’t here to frighten.

Each of those men is hauling enough C4 to blow a huge hole in the side of that ship.

And then, if the Grays do have an armed slave army in there, each soldier is carrying over a thousand rounds plus hand grenades.  They’re prepared to kill their share.

A door opens on the side of the alien ship.

Kane has seen it before.  After the scientists’ lander was disabled a year ago, that door opened, and it stayed open for two weeks.  As those scientists slowly breathed through the oxygen in their tanks, they came to the inevitable conclusion, the same one reached by everyone watching from earth.  The scientists left their lunar lander and entered as prisoners.

This time, though, the door is not empty and inviting.  Humanoid shapes in space suits smeared in modern tribal war paint are marching out in ragged order.  No, not marching at all.  They’re a mob.

They don't look like the frail Grays from the video.  These look like men, squat and thick.

They’re the Gray’s slave army, armed to fight.

Kane aims his machine gun, ready to shred the closely packed enemy.

He notices they don’t appear to be carrying rifles, not slings, not even bows.  Not ray guns or anything of the sort.  Their weapons look like broadswords, halberds, and axes, no two alike.

Over the comm, Kane asks, “You see this, LT?”

“Got it,” Garcia answers.

“Tell me when to shoot.”

“All I see are mêlée weapons,” says Garcia, “Hard to believe.  Let’s hope this is exactly what it looks like.”

Other men chime in on the channel, ready for some little gray fucker abuse, itching to fight, wanting it to be a slaughter.

“Here’s how we’ll play it,” says Garcia.  “Ronson, Mitchell, you’re with me.  We’ll start shooting, single shots, not enough to scare them.  Just enough to piss ‘em off and make ‘em come at us.”

Garcia, Ronson, and Mitchell are the three on the left flank of the soldiers.

Garcia says, “Harney, you four lay low.  When the aliens charge us, you take your four behind them and rush that open door.  Once you get inside, blow that ship to hell.”

Kane nods to himself.  He approves of the plan.

“Kane,” says Garcia, “once that big bunch of assholes gets close, you unload on ‘em.”  Then he laughs darkly.  “But don’t shoot any of us, okay?”

“Not a problem.”

Garcia stands tall and fires his weapon.  Ronson and Mitchell do likewise.

It’s strange seeing the flash of the M4s without hearing the report.  In fact, not hearing anything but the sound of the platoon’s survivors over the comm, breathing as they move, and talking in curt phrases to coordinate as they get down to the business they trained for.

Kane levels his gun, and stabilizes his position.  Those alien slaves are a kilometer away.  Easily in range with no air to slow the rounds, but he’ll have to aim high even with the moon’s light gravity.  He doesn’t want to accidentally shoot any of the three soldiers standing between him and his targets.

“Ronson,” calls Garcia, “fall back.  Run if you can.  Make a show of it.”

Ronson retreats a dozen meters, stops, fires a few rounds, and then falls back again.

The alien slaves are coming.  They’re taking the bait.

Kane wants to mow them down, but he’s got to be patient and let the plan play out.

More slave soldiers pour out of the alien ship, bringing the total to maybe three hundred.  They efficiently bounce across the moon’s surface, moving faster than Garcia, Ronson, and Mitchell are retreating—much faster, in fact.

“LT,” calls Kane, “the ones in front will be on you in another thirty or forty seconds.”

Garcia stops, evaluates for a moment, and says, “Ronson, Mitchell, take a knee and fire.  Kane, let ‘em have it.  Harney, as soon as those last ones clear out of the door, go.”

Kane fires a short burst, and the tracers fly high.

He adjusts, pulls the trigger again, and finds his mark.

Some of the alien slaves fall.

Some of the tracers veer into space.

“What the hell?” Ronson shouts over the comm.

Kane fires two more bursts.  More aliens go down.  More tracers veer off.

Some of the downed aliens get up.

“They’ve got some kind of field,” Garcia deduces right away.

Garcia is standing and looking through the scope on his weapon, not firing.  “Kane, keep shooting!”

Kane rakes a long burst across the mob of charging slave soldiers.

“Whatever it is deflects the bullets,” says Garcia.  “But the shield is only in the front.  Mobbed together like that, some of the bullets ricochet into their guys from the side.  Keep shooting!”

Kane lets loose.

“Spread wide,” Garcia tells the others, “Shoot ‘em from the flanks.”

Harney and his three men have covered half the distance to the open door on the side of the ship.

It doesn’t appear the mob attacking Garcia’s position knows they’re being flanked.

Kane’s M240 runs dry.

Damn, those bullets went fast.

At least half the alien slaves are down.

He lifts his grenade launcher, aims, and fires at the remnants of the mob.

Like the bullets, the grenade is deflected and disappears into space.

Kane aims at the aliens’ feet and fires again.

The round explodes and cuts a swath of death through their ranks.

Garcia’s rifle is flashing at a steady pace.  Ronson and Mitchell are firing, roughly from the mob’s left.  Their fire is effective.

Harney and his men are nearly at the ship’s door, but they come to an unexpected stop.

“Harney,” Kane calls.  “What’s up?”

Looking for the cause, he sees movement through the wide door on the side of the Grays' ship.

Another mob of alien slaves, armed just like the first ones, comes rushing out.

Harney’s men start shooting.

Into the comm, Kane says, “LT, Harney’s men are under attack.  I’m going to redirect fire toward the door.”

“Do it,” Garcia tells him.  “We got this bunch.”

Kane shoots the next grenade toward the ship’s open door, right into the midst of the horde massing just outside it.

The grenade finds its mark and explodes with full effect.

Slave soldiers are down by the dozen.  Others are up, but with tears in their protective suits, spewing precious oxygen into the void.

They won’t last long.

Kane rapidly fires twice more, and then carefully aims a fourth, trying to get it inside the open door.

He pulls the trigger.

The grenade deflects into the mob outside.

That damn field again.

Kane takes another shot just as he sees a familiar streak erupt from one of the behemoth’s batteries.

Before he can think to duck, it blazes past his head and impacts the ground somewhere behind him.

He feels heat through his helmet, and the rock beneath him shudders.

Kane takes a wild shot at the battery that fired on him.  The round goes wide.

The aliens shoot again.  The streak comes at him at impossible speed and impacts the stone under his feet.

Chapter 13

Kane opens his eyes and sees a black sky dotted with a billion tiny stars and thousands of twinkling shards, all that’s left of earth’s mighty armada.

He’s on his back.

His comm is silent.

Pieces of shattered ships move across the sky, every one in a different direction at a different speed.  Some spin and shimmer like jewels in the sun’s stark white light.  Others are dark, and only reflect enough light to cast hints of their size.

In the next days or weeks, those artifacts of humanity’s last grasp at freedom will be caught in the moon’s gravity and fall.  Others will burn up in the earth’s atmosphere.  More might slip into solar orbits and follow an elliptical path around the sun for a million years.

Earth is out there in the void, a quarter million miles away, half-blue, smeared with white clouds, half-black, with continents traced in artificial, gossamer light—earth’s cities, sewing life in the darkness.

Kane sees the twinkling outline of the California coast, and sees the country’s eastern seaboard just crossing into morning.  Dawn’s early light crawling across the world.

Soon, his wife will be up.  She’ll be getting ready for work, and she’ll be watching the news.  Every channel will be talking about only one thing, the fleet that went to the moon, and the brave few who took the journey, sacrificing all they had for the freedom of earth’s people.

Kane talks into his comm and gets no answer.  The ever-present static tells him it’s functioning, but no human voice carries on the electromagnetic waves.

He tries to move, and realizes he’s pinned beneath the wreckage of the ship that brought him to the moon.  Scattered around lay the bodies of his men, many of them.

He wonders if Garcia and Harney killed enough of the Grays’ slave army to get inside the behemoth and detonate their explosives.

They were close.  The numbers looked bad, but the battle was going their way.

Kane can’t move his arm, so he can’t see his watch to see how long he’s been out.  He can’t even check his oxygen to know how long he has left to stay alive.  It might be minutes.  It might be days.  Garcia might have succeeded and he might be coming to the rescue.

Or I might be the last of the armada.

Kane struggles against the weight pinning him and realizes it’s not the weight keeping him down.  The problem is worse than that.  He can’t move his arms or his legs, and he can’t feel them.

Not like this.

Please, God.  Not like this.

A rescue he hoped for just moments ago, he now doesn’t want to come.  A life of paralysis is unbearable for a soldier.

Kane’s doesn’t want his son to grow up pushing his father’s wheelchair and changing diapers.

Despair comes easy now.

Kane chokes on tears.

He curses himself for his weakness.

In truth, he’s not likely ever to leave the moon alive.  He won’t face his end like a coward.

He breathes deeply and accepts the fact that everything is out of his hands.  All he can do is watch the beauty of earth so far off in space, and pray that his wife and soon-to-be-born son—Dylan—will live free.

The dawn is past the Appalachian Mountains now, and the sun is edging its way over the Mississippi.

A light flashes in the dark part of the country where Kane guesses Montana should be.

The light is bright and sudden, disappearing like a flash of lightning.

But it doesn’t go away completely.

At its center, a circle of fire, yellow-orange, shrinking down to a blot of red.

Kane prays he’s just witnessed the eruption of a volcano, but he knows even as the thought materializes in his head it’s a wistful lie.

As if to confirm the lie, the ground beneath him shivers.

A streak of red shoots into the sky.

It’s a shot from a railgun, one of the big ones the Grays built into the moon’s rock.

Kane watches the enormous projectile shrink as it speeds away, growing dull as it cools.  As large as it is, as fast as it’s moving, it’ll impact earth with the power of a nuclear bomb.  And it’ll look just like the one that hit Montana a moment ago.

Earth’s first great space armada is now only sparkly space junk.

The lunar expeditionary force has failed.

Kane failed.

And earth is being bombarded in a rain of artificial meteors that will continue to fall until the Grays have killed enough innocent people to break earth’s will.

Then the planet’s governments will surrender.

Seven billion humans, arrogantly sitting at the pinnacle of their achievements, are soon to be the conquered slaves of just eighteen effete Grays who parked themselves on the moon with a few technological advantages in their possession.

My son will grow up a slave.

Kane wants to cry out in rage.

How could we be so self-centered-stupid?

Had earth just prepared, had people stopped killing one another for just awhile, they might have seen this coming.  They might have done something.

Even in high school, Kane knew there were a septillion stars in the universe.

A septillion, a number so large it’s beyond comprehension.

To imagine it, Kane has to think of stars like eggs, a million to a carton.

If he took a billion of those cartons and put them on a really big pallet, and then put a billion of those pallets in a warehouse, then he’d have one septillion.

A billion, billion, million.

With so many stars, and so many planets orbiting them, how could anyone believe earth to be unique—life, unique.

The universe had to be teeming with civilizations.

Another spot on the earth flashes bright and slowly shrinks to a pool of red.

It was never a question of whether the aliens were coming.  They were always coming.

THE BATTLE BEGINS

Freedom’s Fire, available now!

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More about Bobby’s other writing…

Slow Burn Series (9 books), a best-seller!

Slow Burn is Bobby’s flagship post-apocalyptic zombie series, but so much more than a zombie book.  Follow the adventures of Zed as he wakes up one morning to find that something’s a little different in the world.  As the world is going to shit, Zed meets up with Murphy, and they try to navigate their new reality through a world of the “slow burns” before they are completely consumed by the virus.  Great reviews, with over a million books sold, readers LOVE this one.

The Last Survivors Series (6 books)

A collaborative series with fellow zombie author T.W. Piperbrook, this series has a little more of a Sci-Fi feel, popular with folks who like Game of Thrones.  It explores what happens 300 years in the future after the apocalypse, when man has rebuilt and gone back to an almost medieval society.

Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (trilogy)

A really great terrorism thriller with awesome reviews.  It focuses on the devastating Ebola outbreak and the possibility of weaponized Ebola by terrorist organizations and nationalized resources like blood with Ebola antibodies.  A more in-depth and complex observation of the real world.  This series follows an American college student teaching in Uganda as the country comes under attack from the deadly virus as he tries to make his way back to the safety of his family back in the United States.

It’s also historically and medically accurate, so you’ll learn a little about the history of the disease as well…did you know that Ebola has been airborne in the US in the past?  Or that it can survive in semen for 90 days or more after a person is declared “Ebola-free?” (This is Kat’s favorite!)

Black Rust, Black Virus (first two in a series)

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Dusty’s Diary: One Frustrated Man’s Zombie Apocalypse Story (first in a series)

Fun and crass…be careful if you’re easily offended!  Has some great advice about what to pack in your post-apocalyptic bunker (don’t forget the porn!).  Dusty’s Diary has an uncertain future…people like it, so I’ll probably write more in the future.  This is a short story.

Text copyright © 2017, Bobby L.  Adair & Beezle Media, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties.  Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

This book is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.