Dawn
Book Description
When a Hoo-Lii invasion fleet unexpectedly arrives and attacks, they cripple Earth’s space defenses. The Space Force retreats to an asteroid-based fortress. The human space fleet suffers terrible damage and on the brink of defeat, dissident aliens and exiled humans arrive to join the battle as the Hoo-Lii drop a small asteroid on Earth. Will the new allies arrive in time?
Praise for Malcolm Wood
In this fast-paced, lively, and enjoyable finale, Wood offers a wide array of intrigues, battles, and retreats.
—Kirkus Reviews
A satisfying wrap-up to a multispecies sci-fi saga that delivers plenty of aliens and clashes.
—Kirkus Reviews
Dawn
Clash of the Aliens
M. B. Wood
Dawn
Copyright © 2018 Faucett Publishing LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
The ebook edition of this book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share the ebook edition with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
* * *
EBook ISBN: 978-1-68057-058-8
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68057-057-1
* * *
Cover artwork by Michael J. Canales
Kevin J. Anderson, Art Director
Published by
WordFire Press, LLC
PO Box 1840
Monument CO 80132
* * *
Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers
* * *
WordFire Press eBook Edition 2019
WordFire Press Trade Paperback Edition 2019
* * *
Printed in the USA
Join our WordFire Press Readers Group for
sneak previews, updates, new projects, and giveaways.
Sign up at wordfirepress.com
Created with Vellum
Contents
The Story so Far
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Personae
A Societal Glossary
About the Author
If You Liked …
Other WordFire Press Titles by M.B. Wood
The Story so Far
In Book 1, Middle Eastern fanatics paralyze Western Civilization with massive EMPs, creating a post-apocalyptic world that is a sea of chaos and near-anarchy. Refugees create a society under a primitive rule of law. Proud, fierce, and free, Taylor MacPherson and a tight-knit group of survivors known as the Clan take their first steps to restoring law and justice … as a race of hermaphroditic aliens, the Qu’uda, arrives to find a post-apocalyptic Earth.
In Book 2, Taylor MacPherson witnesses a strange light in the night sky, which is a leftover missile-defense weapon that blasts the giant Qu’uda spaceship, stranding it in an unstable orbit. The Qu’uda send one of their own, “Billy,” down to Earth to fashion parts necessary for repairs. A war among surviving human factions comes at a terrible cost to each, and Billy is abandoned by his race; he throws in his lot with Taylor and his refugees. The aliens leave the surface and plan to return and bomb the Earth into a new Stone Age.
Book 3 tells the back story of the clash of the alien races, the Qu’uda with the Hoo-Lii, a rigid society ruled by Hive-Mothers, with a warrior class of mating males and a great under-class of unripened, non-mating males and females. Under their new Hive-Mother, the Hoo-Lii send an exploratory ship to Earth where they encounter the gigantic Qu’uda asteroid-ship, with disastrous results.
In Book 4, Taylor MacPherson’s Clan—now allied with the alien Billy—mobilizes and conquers Ohio to get C-17 planes so they can rescue the Qu’uda survivors stranded on Andros Island in the Bahamas. Using alien fusion drives as engines of C-17 aircraft, a Clan delegation flies to the West Coast and meets up with the remnant US Navy submarine forces. They form a defense alliance, and as part of the deal, install alien fusion drives on submarines and launch them to orbit to construct an orbital defense station.
A Hoo-Lii craft emerges from a warp in space-time and heads toward Earth. Later, a massive Qu’uda vessel approaches Earth and attacks the Hoo-Lii ship already there. The Qu’uda bombard the human space station and in response, the humans respond with nuclear missiles and overwhelm the Qu’uda ship. The humans try to communicate with the Hoo-Lii aliens and in the process, send them water. The aliens accept the water, which is a symbol of submission to them. They depart and promise to return.…
Chapter One
A desk chair crashed through a window in the brick three-story building and arced down to the sidewalk below amid a shower of glass and paper. Two men in white lab coats sprawled in the laboratory building’s entrance. Fresh blood stained their clothing.
In the tree-lined street of suburban Berea, a large crowd of men dressed in shabby work clothes faced a row of brown-clad soldiers lined up in front of the laboratory. The soldiers inched forward, their quarterstaffs held erect, a thin brown line holding back the crowd. Someone in the crowd hurled a rock, which struck a soldier on the head. The soldier staggered and fell. The mob made a sound like that of an angry beast.
“Forward.” Chris Kucinski made a chopping motion with her hand. She was a tall, thin woman, her auburn hair streaked with gray, who wore the brown uniform of a soldier.
“On the double,” she said.
The line of soldiers smashed into the crowd.
Quarterstaffs rose and fell with flail-like intensity to a rising chorus of screams. As the soldiers advanced, bodies fell, twitching and bleeding. The crowd sagged and broke under the soldiers’ remorseless advance.
“Hold up,” Chris shouted.
The soldiers halted, a solid line across the street.
The mob retreated, scattering amongst the houses and side streets. Moans and cries echoed up and down the road. The metallic smell of blood filled the warm, spring air. Splashes of bright red blood splattered across the fresh, green grass.
Chris turned to her aide. “Get the medics, then find out who organized this.” She paused as the corners of her mouth turned down. “Is Doctor Encirlik okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. We got here just as the first rioters broke through the laboratory’s front door.” The aide pointed at the two men in white lab coats in the main entrance. “They went down as we arrived. Two rioters got in and they locked themselves in one of the labs.” As he pointed to a second story window, a piece of lab equipment came sailing out. “Which they’re still trashing. It’s only a matter of time before we get them out.”
&n
bsp; “Break the door down if necessary. We must stop the damage as quickly as possible. This is our only source of pharmaceuticals. We must protect it. Move it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The aide ran off, shouting orders.
Chris stepped into a room and sniffed. It smelled faintly of ether and other chemicals.
A boarded-up window was the only evidence of the recent attack. An exhaust fan droned steadily. In the background, a peristaltic pump clicked while timers ticked. Pale beige walls, cracked and crazed, were barely visible behind the mass of equipment. Black, chipped counters lined the lab’s walls, which were covered with glassware and vials.
“Doctor Encirlik?” Chris said.
“Oh? Er, yes,” Meltem Encirlik said.
The small, dark haired woman’s eyes flashed. She had few lines on her thin face, which made it hard to tell her age, and her slender body was encased within a voluminous white lab coat.
“I’m sorry. My nerves are still shot.” She buried her face in her hands.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said. “You arrived just in time. Thank you.”
“We received a tip.”
“Praise be to Allah,” Meltem said. “Those rioters seemed well organized. I had no idea there was so much resentment about me getting paid for my drugs,” she said. “They called me a thief, an exploiter.”
Meltem had began selling pharmaceuticals to cover the cost of research and made possible an increase in the output of medicines. The small machine shops and specialty fabrication businesses found the university would pay anything to have the right equipment made. As a result, costs had skyrocketed.
She was always over budget until she began selling the laboratory’s antibiotics and drugs, which had grown by leaps and bounds. It was almost by accident she became one of the wealthiest persons in the Confederation, for she seemed to have the knack for making smart business decisions. The money made it possible for her to continue research, which included growing stem cells from skin samples for the life-extending stem cell-grafted DNA (SCG-DNA) technique.
However, she kept this work secret.
“Did you recognize any of the rioters?” Chris asked.
“One of the faces looked familiar. I think he might be a delivery person from one of the shops that makes our equipment.”
“Sources say our old friend Monahan may have had his fingers in this,” Chris said.
Meltem paused. “It wasn’t spontaneous?”
“Far from it.” Chris stopped at the door. “It was aimed at you and your husband. You have enemies.”
“I haven’t thought about that. Thanks for coming so quickly. In another fifteen minutes, everything would have been destroyed. I thought I was going to die.”
Billy Potato burst through the door of the laboratory and altered direction with an agility most humans would find difficult. He came to an abrupt halt before Meltem’s desk. “I found out how to make a biocomputer for humans,” Billy said without any preamble in his typically clipped speech pattern.
Billy was five feet tall, which was large for an alien Qu’uda. He always wore a wide-brimmed hat, which covered the sparse bristles that passed for hair on his head. His body was pear-shaped and his shoulders blended into his neck and head. His ground-sweeping cloak hid his peculiar gait, which came from having an extra joint in his lower limbs.
Meltem put down her pencil. She had been working on restoring pharmaceutical production. Dry but necessary work. She welcomed his interruption. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Billy. “I went through the files from the Egg-that-Flies and found there is a way to adapt our neural growth technology to mammalian cellular tissue, which you humans possess—”
“Yes, yes, I know that,” Meltem said. “Tell me, how do you grow a biocomputer for a human?” She had been astounded when she’d discovered Billy’s genetic makeup included a DNA vaguely resembling that found in amphibians.
But how could that be? She wondered. He came from a different star system.
Billy wobbled his upper torso that was the Qu’uda gesture equivalent to a shrug. “Not easy to do.”
“How long does it take? What kind of equipment is needed?”
“The information is still in Qu’uda-speak.” Billy waved his hand at the computer. “I will put it in there. You have everything you need to make biocomputer in this laboratory. You will have to start with a piece of neural tissue from person who is to receive biocomputer—”
Meltem raised a hand. “First, we’ll do it on a dog. Then I’ll practice on a cadaver.” Hand on chin, she stared without seeing into the distance. “A biocomputer would be like having an assistant that knows everything.…” She shook her head and focused her eyes on Billy.
“I will bring data files when translated. I must go now,” he said. “I must contact the Hendersons.”
“Ah, yes, the deep-space telescope. How’s it going?”
“I find out soon. The equipment for the automated observatory has now arrived on back side of the Moon.” Billy was referring to the optical and radio telescopes that would peer into space from a location free from the Earth’s electromagnetic noise and atmosphere.
“Now, what’s this for?” Malachi “Ki” Mapes pointed at a control surface.
Ki let go of a handhold and drifted in the zero-gee A trace of perspiration gleamed on his mahogany brown, almost bald head. The only indication he was the commander-in-chief was the four stars on the nametag attached to his dun-colored one-piece work suit.
Floodlights augmented the normally dim, yellow light of the control room of the Little-Egg-that-Flies. It was hot, which made it comfortable for the Qu’uda. Sweating human technicians were paired with their Qu’uda counterparts to label the controls in English and take inventory of the damage. Readout panels and control surfaces covered every wall of the small room. Handles protruded at convenient locations for zero-gee operation.
The room was at the front and center of the nose of the ship. The control room had not been designed to hold more than a few persons at any one time. Even though the asteroid-based battleship was in stable orbit around the Moon, Ki wanted to move it to the L1 Lagrange point on the sunward side of Earth where it would become the future defense station to guard Earth against any attack coming from that direction.
“The battle technician says it was for beam weapons,” Cha KinLaat DoMar said. “No longer usable.” The beam weapons which deflected debris in transit were located at the front of the Little-Egg and had been used against the humans. The nose of the ship had taken the brunt of the nuclear blasts prior to its capture.
“It seems like things are under control.” Ki turned to Colonel Bud Inez. “After you get the controls labeled, start making an operational manual. I’ll also need a listing of what you require for repairs.”
“Yes, sir,” Bud said. “We also need to go over the internal bearings of the habitation module.” The living quarters rotated within the ship to provide artificial gravity for its crew. “We tried to spin it up but an overload warning kicked out the command. It may be jammed. I hope there’s nothing wrong with the bearing itself.”
“Let me know when you have it fixed.” Ki eased his way out of the control center. He never really felt comfortable in zero gravity. He always felt he was about to vomit.
We’ve got a helluva job ahead of us, converting the Little-Egg into a permanent space station, he thought. Since we no longer need its fuel tanks, we can convert them into internal docks and workshops for our spaceships. Then we’ll have real defense capability, a second defense station with permanent living facilities.
The trip through the asteroid spacecraft seemed to take forever to Ki. Since the front part of the ship had been fused smooth, the only access was through the drive service hatch at the rear.
We’ve got to get a new hatch, and soon, thought Ki. This takes too damn long. He wanted to get back to the comfort of his own ship and its gravity. His ship was familiar from long use; firs
t as a submarine and now as an orbital space station. We need more shuttles, something like the Qu’uda have on their mother ship, the Egg-that-Flies.
It still astonished him the shuttlecraft’s compact fusion drives could lift several hundred tons at a time into orbit. That aroused in him twinges of both envy and admiration.
Even so, he thought. It’s going to take the other Qu’uda a while to get the supplies and provisions on board for their trip home. And those Qu’uda sure do want to take a lot of souvenirs with them. The young Qu’uda, the “wrigglers,” and the older Qu’uda are fascinated with our stuff.
The Home Seekers faction, led by DalChik DaJuga, archivist for the Keepers-of-the-Egg, had not sought confrontation with the humans. They opposed the Defender faction who had come to bombard the Earth into a Stone Age condition. When DalChik learned the eggs sent down to Earth had hatched and most of their “wrigglers” were alive and well due to the efforts of Bilik and the humans, she was more than grateful. The wrigglers had learned English from human children and wanted to take familiar play items home with them.