EARTH ROAR

  BOOK 7 IN THE EARTH SONG SERIES

  NICK COOK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Somewhere back in the mists of time, Nick was born in the great sprawling metropolis of London. He grew up in a family where art was always a huge influence. Tapping into this, Nick finished college with a Fine Art degree tucked into his back pocket. Faced with the prospect of actually trying to make a living from his talents, he plunged into the emerging video game industry back in the eighties. It was the start of a long career and he produced graphics for many of the top-selling games on the early home computers, including Aliens and Enduro Racer. Those pioneering games may look crude now, but back then they were considered to be cutting edge. As the industry exploded into the one we know today, Nick’s career went supernova. He worked on titles such as X-Com, and set up two studios, which produced Warzone 2100 and the Conflict: Desert Storm series. He has around forty published titles to his name.

  As great as the video game industry is, a little voice kept nagging inside Nick’s head, and at the end of 2006 he was finally ready to pursue his other passion as a full-time career: writing. Many years later, he completed his first trilogy, Cloud Riders. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  Nick has many interests, from space exploration and astronomy to travelling the world. He has flown light aircraft and microlights, an experience he used as research for Cloud Riders. He’s always loved to cook, but then you’d expect it with his surname. His writing in many ways reflects his own curiosity about the world around him. He loves to let his imagination run riot to pose the question: What if?

  Copyright 2021 © Nicholas P Cook

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published worldwide by Voice from the Clouds Ltd.

  www.voicefromtheclouds.com

  CONTENTS

  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

  Author Notes

  Links

  Also By Nick Cook

  For you, dear reader, who has accompanied Lauren and her team on their extraordinary Earth Song journey.

  CHAPTER ONE

  My mind scrabbled to wake, cobwebs of sleep fogging my thoughts as the warbling sound rose and fell, raising the hairs on my neck. My eyes snapped open into the building glow of sunrise through the curtains and a shockingly loud call of the air raid siren reverberating throughout the cavern where Alice’s log cabin was situated.

  I sat up and my thoughts snapped into sharp focus as adrenaline began to flood my system. In an instant, I was grabbing my flight suit from the back of the chair and getting dressed.

  The bedroom door rattled as someone knocked hard on the other side.

  ‘Another damned air raid, we need to move it, Lauren!’ Ruby shouted through the door.

  ‘Oh don’t you worry, I well and truly heard it. I’m on my way.’

  ‘See you in the hangar,’ she called back. That was followed by the sound of footsteps thundering away down the corridor.

  I pulled on my boots, zipped up my flight suit, and rushed to the door.

  This would make the eighth Kimprak raid in the last month alone, that had targeted Eden that our enemy had somehow been able to locate.

  I sped out into the corridor and raced to the stairs, bounding down them three at a time.

  The kitchen was deserted as I hurtled through it and out of the house.

  The ducks were calling to each other in the simulated early morning as I sprinted along the path. A fine mist was also rising from the grass as the simulated environment heated up the cavern just like a real rising sun would have done.

  I reached the rotating blast door that Ruby had left open to save me some precious seconds, and entered Alice’s lab to find it packed with people.

  As I wove my way through the crowd I spotted Alice, the president of the Sky Dreamer Corp, sitting in front of a bank of video feeds from the cameras on the surface. Jodie, the chief technical scientist, was sitting next to her, her face pensive. Next to her was Niki, our head of security, who looked most tense of all. And it was easy to see why. On the screens I could see blasts of shockwave vapour rippling out into the air from Eden’s railgun point defence system, firing shots straight up into the sky.

  I didn’t even break my stride to get an update from them. That could wait until I was safely onboard Ariel, our anti-grav powered X103, the craft that had become my personal flagship. Somehow along the way, I’d been thrust into taking on the role of commander for the Earth fleet, and defending the base from this latest attack was very much part of my responsibility.

  Instead of any words, Alice, Jodie and I just exchanged tense nods as I raced past them out of the lab and into the hangar. Ariel was already sitting on one of the launch pads, her ramp lowered, REV driving already quietly humming and waiting for me. As I ran up into our ship someone onboard was already raising the ramp behind me because in this situation every second counted. The ramp hissed closed just as I entered the flight cockpit where Erin our pilot was already in her seat. Ruby, our weapon’s officer, in the adjacent seat was scanning the transparent CIC that curved around her.

  Around us, the virtual three-hundred sixty degree curved walls that surrounded the flight deck were currently relaying a live view of the hangar outside.

  ‘How are we doing, team?’ I said as I dropped into my seat and pulled on my harness.

  ‘Another day another dollar,’ Ruby said as she shoved a fresh stick of gum into her mouth.

  ‘The REV drive is still powering up and will be ready for liftoff in twenty seconds,’ Erin said.

  ‘All weapon systems are online and the prototype Hammer and Lightning torpedoes are already loaded,’ Ruby added.

  ‘Looks like the first field test for them won’t be in a simulated attack but the real thing,’ I replied.

  Ruby nodded as I finished fastening my harness buckles. ‘Delphi, turn on the Battle Command Centre please.’

  ‘Initiating the Battle Command Centre,’ our ship’s AI echoed.

  The view of the hangar shrank to a central screen, flanked left by a 3D map view and on the right the tactical options that were currently blank. On the zoomed out map view, three meteoroids ringed with red circles were heading straight down towards Eden. Fired shots from our defence grid marked in green were blazing up to meet the enemy asteroids. I could also see that a dozen of our X-craft that had been patrolling up in orbit were already chasing them down. Thanks to learning from previous experience those X-craft were keeping their distance as they harried the enemy as per their standing orders. The alien mechanised race had already proved themselves to be a formidable enemy and we weren’t taking any chances now.

  As I settled into my seat I felt a subtle shift in the gravity field.

  ‘Fusion plant is running hot, REV drive is at speed, and hangar bay doors are open,’ Erin said.

  ‘Okay, then get us into this fight,’ I said, casting a longing glance at the empty cup holder on my seat’s arm and wishing I’d taken a few extra seconds to grab some coffee on my way here.

  ‘Already on it, Lauren,’ Erin said as she pushed the throttle forward.

  The view of the hangar began to slide past—something that would never get old for me—and we began to rise into the air.

  ‘Okay, Ruby, you better coordinate our ascent with Eden’s defence grid,’ I said. ‘It would be better for all of us if we didn’t stray into the path of a railgun round and manage to get ourselves shot down by our own side.’

  Ruby practically eye-rolled me. ‘Give me some credit, Commander, that’s already been factored into our flight path.’

  I nodded. The three of us had become quite the flight team, especially Erin and Ruby who could anticipate my orders before I’d even had a chance to issue them.

  We exited the launch shaft into the jungle and there was a brief glimpse of tree trunks and thick foliage before we sped up past them. Then, in less time than I could blink, the jungle canopy was falling away beneath us.

  Streaks of hypersonic rounds blurred up from the surrounding area with distant booms as the railgun grid continued to fire its salvos upwards. Each of those shots left a white track on the tactical map display a bit like the ancient arcade game, Missile Command.

  But my attention was already focused on the three pulsing red circles that were heading towards our world and that were surrounded by twelve of our X-craft from Earth fleet.

  ‘Ruby, please turn on the fleet-wide channel,’ I said.

  She nodded and a moment later whoops and clap
ping were coming over our speakers as one of the red dots blinked out of existence on the 3D map.

  ‘Take that, you bastards,’ someone with a Mexican-Spanish accent said.

  I cleared my throat with a cough. ‘This is Commander Stelleck. Let’s hold off on the celebrations for the moment. I’m still reading two Kimprak meteoroids left and we all know that all it takes is just one of them to crash with their bot-payload for all hell to break loose.’

  ‘Roger that, Commander,’ the Mexican guy replied, his tone meek.

  I made a cutting sign across my throat. Ruby nodded and the comm light on my chair’s arm blinked off.

  ‘Wow, talk about busting their balls, Commander,’ Ruby said shaking her head at me.

  ‘I just want them all to keep focused until the last of those meteoroids have been taken down. Hopefully, there will be plenty of time later to celebrate down in the Rock Garden and I, for one, will be slapping their backs with the best of them. But right now we have a job to do.’

  Ruby nodded.

  She really got me now and so did Erin. But the thing I was most relieved about was that I no longer seemed to suffer from impostor syndrome from being the commander tasked with the huge responsibility of being in charge of the Earth X-fleet. The battle over Antarctica had seen to that. There, I’d seen front-line action with our ships, and although we’d had our noses badly bloodied, with help from, of all people, the USSF with their TR-3B fleet we’d manage to win that day. The fruits of that victory, namely an Angelus starship bequeathed to the human race, was now sitting hidden with a holographic camouflage field back in Antarctica. But for me, on a personal level, it had marked the turning point where I no longer cringed when I heard people refer to me as commander and could even refer to myself using that title. Yes, I come quite some way in my acceptance of a role that had been thrust upon me. If Tom had still been here, I was certain he would have approved and probably have said, see, I told you so.

  On the tactical map a dotted white line had appeared in front of Ariel and was heading up into space depicting the flightpath that Ruby had already negotiated with the Eden Defence Control team.

  As we followed it, Ariel began to rapidly gain altitude and my comm light blinked on again.

  ‘Niki’s on the line for you,’ Ruby said.

  I toggled a switch on my chair’s arm. ‘Hey, Niki, how are things looking from your side of Eden?’

  ‘We’re narrowing down our field of fire with the defence grid to one of the two remaining meteoroids. With the coordinated, concentrated burst that we’re about to fire we should be able to atomise it before it gets anywhere near entering Earth’s atmosphere. The only problem is that those Kimprak meteoroids keep dodging our fire with their damned manoeuvring jets. Anyway, heads up, because we’re firing a barrage in three, two, one…’

  From far beneath us on the jungle floor, there was a massive ripple of expanding shockwaves in the air that spread out like rain hitting a lake’s surface. Then at least fifty projectiles, speeding almost too fast for the human eye to track, streaked past Ariel into the sky. The Battle Command system that I was using to control and monitor the battle tracked every single round on the tactical map.

  Another thirty seconds ticked past and then one of the two remaining meteoroids blinked out of existence.

  ‘We have confirmation from the fleet engaging the meteoroids that one of them has just detonated,’ Ruby said. ‘But as usual, there’s still a cloud of Kimprak bots still heading down towards Eden.’

  ‘Nice shooting, Niki,’ I said. ‘Sounds like the time has come for us to try out our new prototype torpedoes to mop up the rest.’

  ‘Then we’ll keep up the barrage. Good hunting, Lauren,’ Niki replied.

  ‘You too. Out,’ I said as I toggled the comm channel off.

  As stars filled the view ahead of us, two tactical options appeared that had been processed by the Battle Command system, Alpha and Beta. Both involved pulling our other X-craft that were already engaging the meteoroids back and then us firing a Hammer torpedo for the Alpha option and a Lightning torpedo for the Beta option.

  ‘Okay, looks like the time has come to put the Forge team’s hard work to the test,’ I said. ‘Delphi, initiate option Alpha.’

  ‘Initiating Alpha,’ Delphi replied.

  At once, the green markers for our fleet about two hundred klicks ahead of us began to separate leaving a clear firing zone for us.

  ‘Ruby, over to you,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Commander,’ she said with the wide grin of someone getting to play with a new toy.

  Her hands flew over the CIC screen lighting up icons. Then she took a breath as she pulled the trigger on one of the weapon control joysticks.

  A slight shudder passed through the ship as a lone torpedo was launched from one of the hatches and appeared on the virtual cockpit above us. A split-second later its rocket engine ignited with a flash of red and the large bulky Hammer torpedo with shark’s teeth painted onto its nose—something the Forge team insisted was absolutely necessary for maximum performance—sped away from us.

  Ruby sat back in her seat with her hands locked behind her head as she chewed her gum. ‘I’m so looking forward to seeing what a Hammer torpedo can do to those bastards. Its warhead is packed with two thousand kilos of shrapnel, each piece of which is the size of a cannonball. Basically, it's the equivalent of firing a supersized shotgun round at the Kimprak.’

  ‘If the demo proving flights against that boulder field are anything to go by, they should be pretty devastating,’ Erin replied.

  ‘We’re about to find out now for sure,’ I said, as we all watched Hammer torpedo speed towards the final meteoroid, the live view being relayed from its nose camera.

  Already, puffs of jets were coming from the meteoroid’s sides as it tried to dodge the torpedo with its name on it.

  Then, with a pulse of light, the video blinked off as the torpedo detonated into shards on the 3D tactical map. Each fragment began spreading outwards in an expanding ball creating a huge debris field as the meteoroid flew towards it.

  Erin was drumming her foot on the floor like she always did when she got stressed. Strangely that was never in the middle of intense combat, just moments like this when all she could do was wait with the rest of us. Ruby, meanwhile, was watching her readouts with slightly narrowed eyes like a cat watching its prey as the meteoroid entered the expanding shrapnel cloud of what were effectively cannonballs still travelling with the momentum that they’d inherited from the torpedo.

  The effect was instant as the meteor ploughed into them. It was torn apart in multiple fragments that spun away and fragmented again and again as they struck more of the shrapnel cloud.

  Ruby whistled. ‘Impressive. I’ll take three dozen to go because we’ve just achieved with just one Hammer torpedo strike what a whole barrage of railgun rounds managed to do.’

  ‘Yes, but as good of a start as this is, we still need to land the knockout punch,’ I replied. ‘Hidden in the remains of that meteoroid will be a whole swarm of those Kimprak self-replicating bots that we still need to take out before they make it to the ground.’

  ‘A Lightning torpedo is ready to do exactly that,’ Ruby replied, itching to try it. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

  I nodded. ‘Then you better go ahead.’

  She grinned at me as her fingers flew over the console and then pulled the trigger.

  Once again Ariel shuddered. This time, an elongated black torpedo with a blue nose cone and an appropriate lightning graphic painted down its side, launched from our ship. Moments later, it was streaking away towards the cloud of incoming rock fragments and the Kimprak killing machines hidden among them.