Earth-Net Read online

  Earth-Net

  Title Page

  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

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  EARTH-NET

  (Book 1 of the Dianian Chronicles)

  By

  David J. Garrett

  Copyright © 2017 David J. Garrett

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Lee Ann Barlow

  To my amazing (and patient) family Cara, Harry and Harvey and to my good friends Ben, Scotty, Brad and Mike who helped me. Lastly to my Sister, Anna who donated her valuable time to the cause. Much love.

  CHAPTER 1

  Ray came to, slowly. Lying on her side, blind. No, not blind, blindfolded. She could feel the tightness of something tied around her head, over her eyes. She could smell leafy mold. Definitely still in the forest. She tested her hands and feet. Both bound, hands behind her back.

  Memories trickled back slowly through the fog of the heavy sedative. How had they had failed so badly? So utterly and completely? For the first time in her life she wished she could call out. Cry for help.

  Fighting waves of nausea, she rolled onto her side. Low voices cut through the drug haze. Ray lay still, focusing on the sounds to clear her head. Memories of the recent firefight started to trickle back into her consciousness. The place where the sedative dart had hit her neck, stung sharply. She didn’t know what had happened to her two protectors. Aymes had gone down hard and there had been so much blood. What happened to Jonah?

  Crushing fear overwhelmed her as full consciousness returned. She squeezed her eyes shut. There were so many enemies. So much noise. How could they have survived?

  She straightened her cramped legs and wriggled her feet to test the bonds around her ankles. The small movement didn’t go unnoticed.

  “She’s awake, sir,” a man’s voice, harsh against the quiet of the dark forest. Footfalls vibrated through the dirt. Ray lay still. There was nothing else to do. Rough fingers gripped her forehead, raking the blindfold down around her neck. Pritchard’s face swam into view once her eyes were finally able to focus. The dull glow of a camp light lit his face. Of all people, he was the one she feared most.

  Pritchard squatted down and leaned closer. His rheumy eyes roamed around, lower lip quivering. A dab of spit dangled and threatened to fall on her. A lean, bony finger pushed out, barely touching the fine hairs on her cheek. Fear made the tickle feel like a blade.

  A flashlight from elsewhere, clicked on and illuminated Pritchard further. His bulging eyes, streaked with red veins, oozed at the corners. Breath hissed through his teeth and the dangling spit turned pink from a split lip.

  In the garish light, his complexion looked like lace. Marred with a mesh of tiny white lines. Large surgical scars peeking out from beneath his short-cropped, silver-gray hair. The suture marks were still clearly visible. Ray’s fear surged and she bucked, mashing her cheekbone into Pritchard’s finger.

  He recoiled as if she’d burnt him, teeth drawn back in a rictus. Ray watched helpless as his fist accelerated towards her face. She flinched away, but the blow never came.

  Pritchard’s moved with her so his livid visage obscured everything else. He opened his mouth, strands of spit stretching between his teeth, and screamed an incomprehensible high-pitched howl, directly into her face. Spit and fetid breath sprayed out. Inhuman rage coated her like a sickness. The unearthly, animal howl reached in, ripping at her gut, pulling primal fear up into her throat.

  She thrashed wildly, cutting her hands on rocks and gashing her cheek on a broken tree root. Men grabbed her feet and hands and hoisted her off the ground. She thrashed as hard as she could, succeeding in wrenching her tied hands out of their grasp. Her torso plunged to the earth smashing her unprotected face into the ground. With a sharp crack, her teeth smacked together, biting into her tongue.

  The pain of the impact took some of the fight out of her but still she kicked, trying to free her feet and run. The hands let her feet fall and a heavy weight fell on her back, pressing her down instead.

  Exhausted, she gave up. Tears of rage, pain, and fear streaked her mud caked face. Blood ran from her tongue onto her cheek and chin.

  “That’s enough,” Pritchard said. “Astrid wants her in one piece. No more injuries.”

  Somewhere nearby, a rattle of gunfire echoed through the forest. Could Jonah still be fighting?

  “You can’t run, 634,” Pritchard said, voice calm. There is nowhere for you to go . . . We have to take you somewhere, now. We can carry you, or you can walk, it’s up to you.”

  Pritchard waited, his eyes fixed but hands still shaking. His broken face tilted forward and he hissed, “Answer me, you dumb fuck.”

  Ray nodded as hard as she could with her face pressed into the dirt, terrified he would touch her again. Pritchard rocked back, assessing Ray. “Untie her feet,” he commanded. “If she kicks, tie her up again.”

  Fingers worked at the knots, digging into her ankles until her feet came free. She rolled to a sitting position and looked around at the group. The black sky above the tree tops pressed down. Garish white light from handheld flashlights painted the alien trees ghostly silver. Pritchard’s tall spidery frame loomed to her right. She estimated six other men but it was impossible to know with the flashlights in her face.

  From what she could see, they were all dressed in the standard black of Centauri Deep Space Exploration, Security. The same human men she had seen fighting Aymes and Jonah. If they hadn’t come to Diana, none of this would have happened.

  A surge of raw grief wrenched at her faltering control. Why hadn’t they just killed her, too? Tears and blood dripped from Ray’s chin. The bloodied patches on her black CDSE overalls glistened in the flashlight beams.

  Complete failure. Jonah and Aymes were probably dead. She had no way to escape and no way to get back to her friends. She was going to be imprisoned, probably killed, and her friends and love ones were going to be slaves.

  Ray slumped forward, watching her blood drip darkly onto the leaf litter, black in the deep twilight. Strong hands lifted her to her feet. She didn’t fight.

  “Get in,” somebody commanded, and she stumbled forward, too tired and stricken to care anymore.

  Ray was manhandled into the passenger hatch of a transport, and left sitting in the muddy boot well. The pink sky of the Sunset Ring lay behind her right shoulder, peaking through the armored windows of the transport. This was the furthest she had ever been into the Darklands. The Sunset ring marking the transition between permanent day and permanent night, a feature of many moon planets. The transport rumbled forward. Further into the darkness.

  Ray’s thoughts doubled back, trying to find ways that Jonah and Aymes might have survived. She didn’t actually see Jonah killed. Maybe Aymes was just knocked down. Maybe they had both escaped in the smoke. Hopeful visions of Jonah bursting out of the bushes, guns blazing, fluttered unconvincin
gly in her recovering mind.

  She’d had a knife, but it was gone. She checked her hip with the back of one tied hand, to be sure, but felt no reassuring mass. Pritchard continued to watch; tracking her every move. Ray gave up and slumped against the base of a seat. The situation was hopeless.

  The bright lights of another vehicle splashed through the side windows, painting the men around her white, scouring the walls with their shadows. They drew to a stop and Ray recognized the sound of a window opening.

  “You got her then, sir?” a voice echoed from outside.

  Pritchard nodded in Ray’s peripheral vision, leaning into the driver’s cab. “Collie, Yates, Burgerman, and Miles bought it. A few more missing, but we got her. You’d better call ahead and tell the boss that she is a bit banged up. Astrid could be upset. You know how she gets.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man responded. “Reece to Life two, Site three.”

  “Life two receiving, go ahead Reece,” crackled from beyond Ray’s vision.

  “Incoming, Life two. We have the package. Minor lacerations. ETA two point five hours.”

  “Roger that, Reece. See you in in a while. Oh, and Reece?”

  “Yes?”

  “She wants her whole. Better be careful.”

  “Roger that,” Reece responded. “Out.”

  One of the men sitting with Ray turned to look at Pritchard. “Should we knock her out again, Sir?”

  Pritchard thought for a second before shaking his head. “Only if she decides to fight. There’s nowhere she can go now.” He nodded to the driver. The engines whined back into life, and the truck bumped down the uneven dirt road.

  Ray’s panic started to elevate again. At least when conscious she had the illusion that she could fight or at least, try to get one good kick in. It gave her some hope. She found the idea of being unconscious around these men appalling.

  Pritchard was right, however. There was no way she could fight her way through six armed men, open the door and run. Even without her hands tied. She swallowed the rising terror. Choking it down for what felt like an eternity. Finally, the driver glanced back at Ray and caught Pritchard’s eye.

  “Uh, Sir,” he said.

  Pritchard leaned forward over the back of the driver’s bench and looked.

  “Nearly there, Reece. Perhaps we’d better knock her out now. She might try to fight while we get her inside.”

  Ray set her face like stone despite the desperate panic. Somebody strong lifted her into a seat and pressed her face hard against the window. She felt a prick in her arm. The world slid and tilted and she slumped, her face sliding against the cold glass of the window.

  She couldn’t tell if the vehicle started turning or if she was falling. The muted colors inside the transport began to run together and sound retreated.

  She imagined she saw a group of children running in a pack down the road outside her window. The cool glass felt nice.

  Ray smiled at the dream children, wondering why they were running in the dark, so far from home. A pair of identical, black-haired girls, looked up at Ray and smiled. Ray smiled back. A taller, female figure at the front shouted, and the children looked away. The tall woman’s red ponytail bounced in the lights from the truck as she and the children ran away into the darkness.

  “I thought I was the only redhead on Diana,” Ray thought, before all turned to black.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jonah Fielding lay back on his bed with his eyes closed. An array of bright points of light, implanted within his synthetic corneas, illuminated the inside of his eyes. If the room had been dark, the emitted light would have made his closed eyelids glow red, a sure sign that a person was interacting with their Visual Impression implant (VI).

  A shadow passed between Jonah and the lights glowing on the ceiling of the shuttle port sleeping rooms. He opened his eyes to the familiar silhouette of Master Sargent Aymes.

  “Get up sleeping beauty we’re going for a run.”

  The detail in her jagged face appeared as his eyes adjusted to the light. Aymes pulled him effortlessly to his feet as he offered a hand.

  “Aye aye, Master Sargent” Jonah responded. “Shall I wake the others?”

  Aymes nodded once and turned towards the door. She had to angle her massive shoulders and duck her head to avoid the frame.

  “Wake up Pham,” Jonah yelled. Most of the sleeping heads turned, including Pham’s. “Move quick boys and girls or I’ll dump you over the rail half way to Alpha Centauri. Anybody fancy a swim in the rings of Saturn?”

  “That’s a lot less than half way,” someone grumbled.

  “True enough,” Jonah thought as he followed his unit out the door and into his last afternoon on Earth.

  Jonah and Aymes led the way as they pounded through the concrete and steel of the spaceport in a double column. The landing pads spread gray and featureless along a scrap of land on the sea coast of Belgium, a few clicks north of what used to serve as the border with France. They skirted the perimeter, trying to ignore the hulking craft waiting to carry them out of the atmosphere and away into space. Aymes ran in silence, but the rest chatted away like monkeys.

  “So how come we got added to this mission?” PFC Pham puffed between breaths. “On the news they said that this was just a diplomatic trip, designed to show off the hypersleep tech. Politics and shit.”

  Jonah shrugged, “No idea. All I know is that it was sudden. There wasn’t going to be an escort ‘till two weeks ago.”

  The unit trundled on, speculating, until they neared the center of one of the larger expanses of concrete.

  Aymes held up a fist and the double column slowed to a standstill. Aymes and Jonah exchanged a look. Aymes with her hands on her broad hips and Jonah with his hands behind his head. Sweat stained the gray T-shirts and blue PT shorts of the UN marines as they puffed in the summer heat reflecting off the acres of shuttle port concrete.

  Aymes scanned the edges of the landing pad.

  “Listen up,” she commanded. “Firstly, shut your pie holes. I know for a fact that you were all given the option to decline this mission, so I am assuming that you are all dying to be shot into space. The second thing, stays within this group, clear?”

  The group nodded and cast speculative glances at one another. The reason for the morning run was now obvious. Aymes wanted to be well away from the prying eyes and ears of the bunk rooms.

  Typical Aymes. She had her orders, which she would follow to the letter, but she always made sure she explained the mission fully to her unit. “Better to die with your eyes open,” was one of her personal mottos.

  “We are here because of a leak,” she explained. “A Centauri Deep Space Exploration white paper was leaked by a whistle-blower, last week, and it seems word has gotten out to the Dianian civilians. The paper came from CDSE legal and relates to the status of the Dianians. Some pen sucking junior lawyer was given the job of checking on their rights. Whether they were classified as human or not. It turns out, two hundred years ago, they were in too much of a hurry building Earth-Net to think about it, so they never bothered to classify them as anything.”

  “What’s the difference, Master Sargent?” Pham interjected. “They look human enough.”

  “If they can get the Dianians classified as non-human, they will own them just like they will own Earth-Net and Diana. The UN is pushing a bill through to solidify the status of the Dianians but it’s going to take a while. In the meantime, we are there to uphold UN law.”

  “Look after the civis, Master Sergeant? Win the hearts and minds?” Phil Myers piped up, winking to his running mate. Phil was a short, swarthy, wiry man renowned for his endurance not only when running but during other physical endeavors as well. Aymes caught the wink and pinned Myers with a glare.

  “We are there to uphold UN law, as I said, which could easily mean protecting CDSE personnel from unhappy civilians. There have already been protests about the buyout. It could mean simply wiping the captain’s hairy ass for five
years. You … Myers . . . are there to follow orders, just like any fucking mission,” Aymes commanded, eyes boring into his forehead.

  “And Myers,” she continued, “this is a no fraternization mission. No fingers up the girls’ skirts, OK?”

  Myers, always the joker, couldn’t stop himself. “I’ve heard you don’t need to go anywhere near their skirts.”

  Most of the marines snickered nervously. There was plenty of ribald humor regarding Dianian women and the fact that they didn’t need to breath. Handy for certain sex acts that were a particular favorite of the men in the unit.

  Joking with Aymes was dangerous territory. It could go either way. Aymes’ heavy, unkempt eyebrows puckered into a deep V. Myers was not lucky today and the snickering died instantly.

  “If I see or hear about you with your cock in anybody’s mouth, I will make you suck off every man in this unit, every morning before breakfast. I’ll turn you into a fucking alarm clock…is that clear, Private Myers?”

  Myers turned bright red and looked straight ahead clearly regretting his lack of judgment. “Yes, Master Sargent.”

  Aymes eyeballed the motley collection before letting her hulking shoulders relax slightly.

  “You might think this is going to be some kind of holiday, but I don’t. I don’t know why you all said yes to this mission, but I agreed because Captain Spiranos smells a rat. These CDSE assholes would push their own grandmothers off a cliff to save fifty bucks but they need protection just as much as anybody. When we wake up, we watch each other’s backs and keep our heads on a god damn swivel. If anybody’s junk,” Aymes pointedly looked at Casey Renton, the woman marine most notorious for her sexual exploits,” and I mean anybody’s junk, distracts them from the mission … I’ll fucking cut it off.”

  Aymes eyeballed the front few faces in turn, the unit all stared straight ahead looking anywhere but directly at Aymes. Her giant shoulders relaxed the rest of the way and she resumed a regular speaking voice.