Martian Invasion (Star Breaker Book 3) Read online

  Martian Invasion

  Star Breaker, Book 3

  James David Victor

  Copyright © 2021 James David Victor

  All Rights Reserved

  Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Christian Bentulan

  Contents

  Prologue: Transmission

  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

  Epilogue: Reception

  Thank You

  Prologue: Transmission

  In the depths of night, a singular red light bleeped on a distant antenna array, somewhere far, far above in the starry sky.

  It was but a little thing: a singular light on a singular satellite drone hanging in eternal “wide orbit” around Earth’s sole sister, the Moon.

  The antenna array itself was not anything worth writing home about: it was one of the classic types, with fanning-out solar sail “wings” on either side and a small blocky body in its center. The nose and behind sprouted long tendrils of masts and wires. The only remotely remarkable thing about it was the fact that it performed a geosynchronous orbit with the dark side of the Moon, meaning that ever since it had been launched, it would never, ever, get to again see the green-and-blue orb of the planet that made it.

  But objects like antenna arrays don’t care about such things. If they did care about anything, then it would be about processing, receiving, and transmitting data—which it still did remarkably well.

  One other interesting fact about this particular antenna array, and the reason it had been activated now of all times, (almost eighteen months after the arrival of an automated alien spaceship to the Earth Alliance star system) was that everyone had forgotten that it existed.

  Almost everyone.

  Antenna Array 2418c (to give it its official designation) was an ancient communications satellite sent up there to help bridge the transmissions gap created by the shadow of the Moon. Back when it had first been created, the Senate of All Earth Governments hadn’t even existed. Back then, some intelligence agency from Northern America—one of the deep, dark ones which don’t exist on official documents but are referred to in terms of acronyms and metaphors—had realized that they couldn’t allow a gap in which anything could be happening.

  And so, Antenna Array 2418c was sent up, and the grid of information-capture and surveillance was complete—even if 2418 only surveyed lifeless moon rock and the eternal nothingness of shadow.

  A few generations later, and 2418c became redundant anyway after the senate was set up and the Outer Earth Port was constructed and the first colonies were set up on Mars. Quite simply, no one was that bothered about the backside of Earth anymore. Everyone was more intent on looking out at the stars instead.

  All of these reasons made it perfect for the activation signal that now reached it, through a long, complicated set of relays and subroutines, each one located on almost defunct and aging satellite systems of towers just like this one.

  In the shadow of the Moon, the antennas blinked red several more times. At last! A message had been received. There was a job to be done, and it did it well—handling the data relay as it opened a channel to another, distant satellite and started the transfer.

  Unknown to everyone, and even unknown to Antenna Array 2418c, the double-encoded message went something like this:

  xxC14.0g.23zed.xx

  MESSAGE PACKET CONTINUES . . .

  “. . . are you ready for what comes next? Of course, given the lag in transmission time, you cannot answer my question—but I hope that you can hear my urgency.

  “You will have to be ready. The plans are already set in motion, and it rests on you now to fulfill the dream.

  “The Grand Senatorial Tour has left Earth, and their itinerary shows that they will be at Mars in a month. I have timed this message to make sure that it gets to you well before that.

  “I have faith that you will not fail me, fail us.

  “The New Kingdom awaits.”

  MESSAGE ENDS . . .

  1

  Mars

  “Eyes ahead! Straighten those shoulders!”

  The words of Commander Silas berated Lieutenant Holly Cropper as she stood at the head of her line in front of her crew mates. She thought that her shoulders had been straight as she tried to stand a little straighter.

  In front of her, the commander of the Outer Command of Earth Alliance Marines stood in full ceremonial dress, with the trademark white suit banded in gold trim. He was just as compressed and ascetic as she remembered him. If anything, the distanced holo briefings that she’d had with him over the years had made him look healthier than he did now.

  He’s like a thunderbolt poured into a uniform, Holly thought and wondered if that was what all military professionals were like—or grew to be like, ravaged by battle and training and kept alive through determination and loyalty alone.

  The same assessment could go for the entire planet that she was about to set foot on, she considered. Over the commander’s shoulder, she saw the viewing window slowly eclipse with the ruddy orange and red of Mars.

  Behind her stood the large, brooding shape of her combat specialist, Private First Class Bastion Li, and behind him came the final man of her crew, Private First Class Marshal Smith. Together they made up the scouting and recon patrol that serviced the Wren EA Marine Patrol ship.

  “I guess you could say we’ve come a long way, baby.” Holly heard Marshal snicker under his breath. Always the joker. Luckily, at the moment, Commander Silas had turned his back and was waiting by the door as the marine transport vessel they were on slowly crunched down on the Martian surface to a flare of orange dust. The heavy, mechanical sounds of clunking access doors could be heard.

  “Right! Formal march, ladies!” the commander barked at them as the airlock door opened. Holly rolled her eyes. Yeah, she inwardly groaned. Silas was old school, alright.

  But as the door rolled aside, revealing the short white-metal corridor on the far side, lined with more service personnel in their full defense suits, Holly couldn’t help thinking that Marshal was right.

  We have come a long way, the lieutenant thought. Although there was a part of her that was pretty proud of that fact—there was an uneasy feeling in her stomach at the same time.

  It wasn’t too long ago that I was running around on Hephaestus Station, Holly thought. She had been another grease monkey, trying to earn a few credits on the giant industrial X-platform just outside the asteroid belt.

  Another Breaker, she thought grimly. Her community of asteroid miners, engineers, and haulers would be regarded as little more than pirates by the very Martians and officers that she was about to meet and greet now. Most of the interior worlds of the Earth Alliance thought of her kind as the lowest of the low—and what was worse—until recently, her own Breaker community had regarded her as a traitor.
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  Before she and the crew of the Wren had saved them from the Jackals, that was.

  So yeah, she thought—why not be proud of what she had achieved? Not for this honor that she was about to get but for doing it all herself. For surviving. For winning. Even for thriving in a system that was not designed for people like her.

  “Move out!” Silas said. He led the way down the line of other Earth Alliance Marines. Each and every one of them snapped into a salute as he (and they) marched past.

  “Badiou will be eating his suit!” Marshal snickered once more, earning a cough from Holly. Although she did agree that the regional captain that controlled the Outer Command Patrol units would be surprised at this honor.

  The lieutenant knew that it was all about politics. Today was the third day of some over-bloated, glitzy, camera-hungry solar system event called “the Grand Senatorial Tour.” The tour was supposed to happen once every five years. It should actually be next year that a select few senators of the Council of All Earth Governments were sent off on a junket through the solar system, handing out promotions, civilian awards, and holding conferences with megacorporations on the way. Given the traveling times that it took for the Enhanced Feynman Nuclear Drives to get from one end of the solar system to the other, the entire Grand Tour took ten months to complete. Or it would under normal circumstances.

  But nothing was normal about this year, was it? Holly thought to herself as she followed Commander Silas past the saluting guards.

  The entire Earth Alliance was still quaking at the arrival of the alien ship and the release of the killbot “Jackal drones” on Hephaestus Station. In an effort to bring some Alliance-wide calm, the Grand Senatorial Tour had been moved forward by a year, and it was also not happening in one slow convoy that moved from place to place. Instead, various senators had been fired off to important colonies like Mars and Jupiter all at once. The entire tour should be a lot shorter this way, with events at various colonies happening within weeks of each other instead of months.

  Holly also knew that the interior had to throw an olive branch to the Breakers. They needed to honor one of the Breaker’s own in some public way after the Hephaestus attack, which is where she came in and this awards ceremony itself . . .

  Even though all that was true, it felt good to be striding forwards under a guard of honor as a Breaker woman who’d made it as a marine.

  Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a chorus of bugle blasts as Silas and the three-person crew strode forwards through the end of the corridor. Holly found herself blinking as she looked over a vast amphitheater.

  No, not an amphitheater—a crater, Holly thought as she blinked under the lights. She was standing on a balcony overlooking a two-story-deep plaza. A thick dome arched over all of it. Giant floodlights hung down from the dome, making it almost impossible to see the distant Martian orange haze of the sky.

  The plaza itself was about six hundred feet in diameter with vaulted doorways leading deeper into the Martian surface. Holly knew they would lead to other domes and other structures. This particular one was named the Liberty Plaza, and it wasn’t the largest of the Martian crater domes by any means, but it was one of the main plazas of the Marine Training Academy.

  And right now, it was filled with a mixture of military personnel and Martian civilians who were standing and seated in rows and looking right up at her.

  “Marines!” A lone voice cried out from somewhere on the plaza floor. As one, the first several lines of marines stood up and started clapping.

  “Booyah,” she heard Bastion behind her say in a whisper, as wild elation filled her.

  Yeah, I guess I’ve come a long way for a regular Breaker girl from Hephaestus . . . Holly thought as she led her team forward to the thunder of applause. They stepped out to where the balcony widened and overhung a little way over the central plaza space and more people in uniforms awaited them.

  “Lieutenant Cropper, please step forward,” intoned one of the figures on the platform, a woman north of fifty in a blue dress. The dress was sculpted so that its collar swept upwards around her neck and head. Holly thought it gave her the appearance of a striking cobra.

  The woman inside the dress had brown-black hair that was half constrained with a headband of gold and black that did nothing to stop the wild frizz flying from behind it.

  Senator Rosewell, Holly thought, wondering nervously how to comport herself. Beside the senator stood two more EA Marine Commanders in their white-and-gold braid suits. Holly thought one was from the Martian Academy, and the other was the barrel shape of the Commander of the entire Inner Command himself.

  “Go get them, boss!” Bastion Li whispered to Holly as she stepped forward under the stern eye of Commander Silas before her.

  Suddenly, everyone in the entire plaza fell silent as all eyes fell upon Holly Cropper. She could feel their awareness concentrating on her, and it felt brighter than even the floodlights above.

  “You have been called before this community of your peers, Lieutenant, because of your actions in defense of the Earth Alliance Station of Hephaestus . . .” Senator Rosewell began, her voice amplified by the microphone at her throat.

  The Breaker Group Station, you mean? Holly could almost hear her past self say the words, although her mouth didn’t open.

  Funny how the Earth Alliance is eager to claim Hephaestus as one of their own, when they haven’t raised a finger to help us Breakers in the past! Holly thought—and perhaps some of her glare spread to her features, as Senator Rosewater stiffened slightly before her.

  There was another very obvious clearing of the throat by her side as Commander Silas straightened ever so slightly where he stood. Holly could see a vein throbbing in his neck.

  “You and your team showed bravery above and beyond your mission in tackling the enemy.”

  The killbots, Holly corrected and opened her mouth.

  “We couldn’t have done it without the help of the Breakers, ma’am,” Holly said, her thoughts flashing to her childhood friend “El” Durban—and the other Sons of Thor who had turned their guns against the robots at the critical moment.

  “Lieutenant!” There was a sharp hiss from Commander Silas.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Senator Rosewater looked a little puzzled but gathered her aplomb together immediately. “However, they are not here to receive a medal, and you are!” The senator half turned to lift a long, cherry-wood box from a stand that had been hidden behind her. She opened it to reveal four small badges, three silver stars, and one gold one.

  “First, I am very proud to announce that you and your team are all recipients of the Silver Star of Bravery!” she called out. She held the box aloft so that the distant, hovering drone cameras could properly photograph her as she plucked the first silver star from its nest and took a step forward toward Holly.

  There was a flicker of passing light over Holly’s eyes, a sudden gleam from somewhere above her . . .

  “Huh?” Holly automatically glanced upwards to see the giant, fractal-patterned plates of thickened glass of the Liberty dome stretching far above, and the orange-and-brown skies of the Mars beyond.

  And just one flash of reflective light as something swept over the dome. Something small and tiny whose metallic, reflective surface caught and spilled the light.

  A camera drone outside? Holly thought in the instant before the small reflective object hit the top of the dome, followed by a distinctive crack.

  And a sudden explosion of fire . . .

  2

  “Down! Protect the senator!”

  Someone very angry was shouting as the rapture of alarms and screams spread throughout the entire plaza. A sudden, fierce gale was tearing at the lieutenant’s tight-kept hair, spilling it from its pins as she pushed up from the floor (she hadn’t even realized that she had fallen over).

  Decompression! Holly’s heart clutched in fear. The dome’s been cracked!

  She saw gobbets of fire falling down from the ceiling
of the dome, followed by a whirlwind of deep, black smoke. Most of the fractal-patterned panels of the dome were intact—apart from where that thing had struck. There was an eddy in the smoke, a moment of calm, and she could see the panes of shattered glass where something had broken them.

  Missile? Bomb? Holly’s mind raced. What had that thing been? But there was no time as the rush and whine of decompressing oxygen were already everywhere around her as the atmosphere inside the dome attempted to normalize with that outside.

  WARNING! DOME BREACH! ALL PERSONNEL TO AIRLOCKS! WARNING! DOME BREACH . . .

  The automated sirens were wailing as Holly jumped forward, seizing the senator around the shoulders and covering her with her body as the whirlwind of air continued.

  “WARNING!”

  “Sir!”

  “Commander!”

  There was a roar of noise and thunder all around the lieutenant as Martian dust burst into the dome, and the fragments of shouts and voices that swept around her were cut off by the deep, omnipresent cacophony of the Martian winds.

  “Ach!” Holly gritted her teeth as her back felt like millions of tiny hammers were striking it. It was sand and dust from outside, flooding in thanks to the whirlwind of pressures that the cracked dome had created. Underneath her, she could feel the squirm of the senator, and the smell of her expensive perfume filled her nose.

  “Senator! We have to get you out of here!” Holly shouted, but the gales snatched her voice away in an instant. Around her were the other bodies and forms of the generals and guards, but the wind was so fierce that it hurt her eyes. She couldn’t make out who was alive and who was injured.