By

  JK Franks

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2023 by JK Franks

  eBook 978-1-7362153-8-8

  Paperback 978-1-7362153-9-5

  Hardback 979-8-9884788-0-5

  Published by JK Franks Media LLC, 2023

  Editor: Debra Riggle

  Email the author at author@jkfranks.com

  Friend him on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/JKFranks

  Visit the author’s website at www.jkfranks.com

  All rights reserved. With the exception of excerpts for review purposes, 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.

  First Edition

  For Skye

  Within you beats a warrior’s heart and an unlimited capacity for awesomeness. Life is an adventure and it is yours to conquer

  .

  It’s not over when you lose,

  It’s over when you quit…

  — Unknown

  PROLOGUE

  Lance Corporal Hadroop slowly lowered the tactical binoculars and adjusted the controls for the correct IR band; he also increased the light amplification to compensate for the fast-approaching darkness. The day had been scorching, but once the white-hot sun dropped below the horizon, a thick blanket of clouds closed in.

  His view was nearly perfect. The binoculars augmented and filtered the view to crystal clarity. Hadroop cursed under his breath and swept the optics from side to side. A grassy plain, broken only by patches of the strange violet-colored vines. In the fading light, he thought they looked more like the color of blood, but he kept that to himself.

  The grass waved in the soft breeze, with it the scent of death, but nothing else seemed to move.

  "Zero contacts, sir. I'm sorry, but I don't see it," the corporal said reluctantly.

  "Well shit, Son, I saw it.” Captain Jordan Hauk said.

  He was in a position no commander ever wanted to be. Backed up with his back to the sea, unable to retreat farther but with an unknown enemy taking out chunks of his platoon seemingly at will.

  “Something moved out there, and it wasn’t those damn vines.”

  Jesus, the world had gone to shit in record time. The captain looked south with a smile that quickly turned into a grimace. He’d spent a couple of summers down here soon after basic. There had been a golf course he and his buddies would occasionally play over near Arkansas. Hit the ball and drink a beer. Now, there were fighting fucking monsters. Not literally monsters, at least he didn’t think so. Truth was, no one had gotten even the slightest glimpse of these and lived. They had seen …other things. Battled shit over at Lackland that was still giving him nightmares.

  Red-7 was a recon team. They didn’t have all the same fancy gadgets as the more prestigious battle groups. Basic heads-up displays, no cutting edge helmets with built-in sensor arrays. Shit, even the suit cams only recorded the last six hours. Command’s thinking was if a battle went on for longer than that, you were incompetent or dead. Hauk looked down at the tiny device clipped to his chest armor plate. The green on-light had gone off probably the previous day. He unclipped it and threw it out into the marsh.

  Something splashed water close by, leaving only a ripple of waves. He hoped it was just a gator, something he could at least understand.

  “Corporal,” he waited until the young officer made eye contact. “Thanks for volunteering. Grab Howell and go find out what it is." Hauk lowered his own binoculars and glanced at his tactical computer wrapped around his forearm. "Be back in half an hour. Maintain comms silence unless you see something—do not engage on your own. You got me?"

  The dark-skinned younger man seemed ready to say something but thought better of it. Soldiers did not challenge orders from the captain, especially with the week they were all having. For the first couple of weeks since the outbreak of war, they had been on a French-flagged transport ship. The rumored target had been somewhere in central America. Then, they were suddenly recalled to this hell-hole on some humanitarian mission.

  Hadroop didn’t necessarily consider the Texas Gulf Coast a hell-hole… not before this at least. Now, that was exactly what it was. They had been fighting and losing every day since the landing craft dropped them off thirty miles away near Galveston. Those thirty miles had turned into hundreds, yet they were nearly back where it had all begun.

  For the corporal, the fact they were fighting and losing was less terrifying than what they had been fighting; at least here in the wetland marsh, the damn mechanical monsters couldn’t get them. Well…at least they hadn’t managed to yet. He passed by the sentry and motioned to one of the men watching from the front line to follow. Howell fell out and hurried over. Hadroop gave him the crib notes version of the plan. He watched as the young man’s face fell. There was no easy way to tell someone they were about to put their life at risk just to appease their commander's curiosity. Still, he trusted his captain. Hauk had led them through countless battles, and Red-7 was already an elite squad with the victories to help boost all their confidence.

  Hadroop led them out into the marsh. Dark, blood-warm water swirled around his legs. The battle suit kept the water away from his skin, but his light duty helmet didn’t block out the musty smell of decay. He heard movement off to the right and swung up his tactical rifle. Captain Hauk’s calm voice was immediately in his ear.

  “Nothing to worry about, Corporal, just some of the local wildlife. Howell is covering your six.”

  The man’s calm reassurance did little to calm the corporal, but Hadroop was a solid soldier. The last week shook him, like all the men. All but the captain. Hauk himself had seemed unfazed by everything that had gone down since the day the missiles fell. That was just the kind of man he was, though, hard, implacable. Some said he was made of stone, but Hadroop knew better. He felt a light tap on his left shoulder and glanced back to see what the other man had seen. There to the right, fifty yards offshore, a body floated. He sighted in to make sure it was human. They had seen things, shadows or glimpses of things that looked human from a distance but clearly weren’t.

  “We have a body, Captain.”

  He got no response. Something bumped his leg, and he stepped back quickly, pointing the rifle down into the water. Another body was slowly rising but still totally submerged in the shallow water, It stared lifelessly back up at him. It had been a young woman, just a girl. Her long black hair waved in the light current he’d made walking past. The lower part of her face was gone, as was her right shoulder. One breast showed putrid white flesh. Even in the failing light, he could tell the girl had once been beautiful. Now she was just damage and ruin and food for the beast that inhabited this swampy piece of real estate.

  “There’s another one,” Howell said, his New England accent clipping the words off.

  Hadroop hadn’t made up his mind on Howell yet. This was a test. The boy seemed competent but always looking to get out of assignments.

  The lieutenant moved a leg and felt another fleshy object. He reluctantly changed the optics settings to one that filtered the visible objects by density. Dialing it in, the bodies all emerged in his vision like ghosts from the fog.

  “More bodies, lots of bodies, Cap.”

  Jordan Hauk watched his men through the binoculars. They were solid soldiers, but lack of sleep and constant battles had them all on edge. Bodies in the water weren’t a surprise, but he let his men deal with their fears in their own way. Somewhere in this expanse of grass and water was supposed to be a landing craft. The last ‘fuck you’ from the Alliance naval ship Arago. When the ANS Arago pulled out four days before the rendezvous, the encrypted message still enraged the Army captain. Vague coordinates followed by, ‘Your extraction vessel is here, good luck and au revoir.’

  “Bastards!” Hauk spit out into the mud.

  He swept the glass once more to the left. He’d seen movement. Of that, he was sure. Just a flash of motion that flared a primal response in the more ancient parts of his brain. Would they be prey or predator? If this mission had shown him anything, it was that his unit could be both. Maybe it was just one of the multitude of native animals they’d already encountered. A deer or coyote, maybe a fast cow? Were cows ever fast? It could have been an animal; shit…it could have been nearly anything.

  Jordan Hauk was not what anyone would call a victim, yet even he was aware of the mind-numbing lack of hope this mission had. Not just for likely failing to meet their objective; he had little chance of even getting the rest of his men out alive. He let out a breath and spat. No, he would not be prey today. If there was something out there, he was going to kill it.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Lieutenant Deborah Riggs stared at the holodisplay. Earth, home, was quickly becoming a hostile environment. She was out of her league up here on this massive ship. She understood only a few of the onboard systems and none of the capabilities. Deb was a drop trooper. As the saying went, ‘It took a special kind of stupid to get fired out of a ship like a bullet, hoping you hit your target and survive long enough to fight.’

  She smiled. Those were Kovach’s words—now his body was back in the med bay being prepared by the medbots for his final mission. Soon, his body would be dropped into deep space. Sh
e shoved that thought aside. It had to wait. There was too much going on. She’d taken command once they boarded. The ship, one of the older monolith space carriers, had been in retrofit orbit. A team of Marine engineers were aboard. Not the incredibly useful combat engineers, but actual engineers, technicians, and mechanics. Not one ounce of fighting ability in the entire crew, but they could make the ship fly. That was better than Bayou or any of her team could manage.

  “Packer, take the helm,” she ordered. Captain Packer, the pilot of the TriCraft, reluctantly sat at the helm as one of the technicians went over the control interface…again. Packer was good, but the smaller, stealth dropship he normally piloted was a fraction of the size and complexity of the Stone Mountain.

  The ship was fully stocked but light on armaments. It had been scheduled to fly to moon base Gateway once the new crew came aboard. There, they would have dropped off the engineers and picked up a new quartermaster who oversaw the loading of munitions and armaments.

  She tapped a name on her datapad. Specialist Otero’s face came on the screen. She was pretty and frightened. Bayou had tagged her as the de facto leader of the maintenance crew. “Otero, update on engines.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the woman said. “The maneuvering thrusters will take some time to calibrate, but primary boosters are available now.”

  Bayou had been on other Space Force craft most of her career, so she understood much of what was involved. Still, her place was down there in the fight, not up here above it all. After listening to G-Force’s debrief and viewing his data feed, she had no illusions about the carnage that was being unleashed hundreds of miles below them.

  “Thank you, Otero. Can you orient us for trans-lunar course?”

  “Yes, we can do that with the main gimbals.” She looked offscreen uneasily. “May I ask why the moon?”

  Most of the Marine engineers had been stationed out here on various ships. They previously had their own habitat in high orbit and cycled down to the planet frequently. No one enjoyed the ride out to the moon for a rotation shift. Lunar duty was dull and joyless, and the base commander there had a bit of a reputation.

  “We need ordinance, we need a combat pilot and senior officers. Something I don’t think we will get from Earth anytime soon.”

  Otero looked concerned but kept those thoughts to herself. “Aye, we will have the safeties unlocked within the hour and nav control transferred to the bridge. Ma’am, can I ask? What’s it like down there?”

  Bayou bit the inside of her cheek as she considered the question. “Where are you from?”

  “Phoenix Metroplex, sir… I mean, ma’am.”

  Bayou nodded, glancing at the map on the holodisplay before glancing back to the datapad. “Much of the Southwest is in good shape so far, but don’t get your hopes up. The devastation is widespread, and we still aren’t sure what all we are up against. If you have family there, they’re probably safer than anywhere else right now.”

  Bayou could see the woman’s eyes welling with tears, but she nodded and tapped to close out the video.

  “You heard that right,” Bayou yelled over to her newly minted carrier pilot. “Get us underway to Gateway base, best possible speed. We are sitting ducks up here for whomever is shooting carriers out of orbit.”

  Going to the moon was really just to buy them time. Deborah knew she was no leader, hell, she was barely a lieutenant. Joe had always been the leader, even when he reported to Captain Rollo Hinge. Master Sergeant Kovach had been up and down the rank ladder, sometimes at his own choosing. He was senior to everyone but rejected all signs of authority except when it really mattered. In her mind, there had been no one better at making command decisions. And no one less enthusiastic about doing it.

  She heard excited voices from farther down the main corridor.

  “LT, we have an incoming distress signal.”

  “Shit,” Bayou groaned as she looked over at Halo, who was manning the comms station.

  Carol Reynolds burst through the hatch to the bridge, her face a mask of… something. Fright, joy? Bayou wasn’t quite sure. “Come right away, they need you.”

  Carol was the civilian who had been with the master sergeant on his ill-fated trip into Tennessee. She and her son had been brought aboard. Riggs liked the woman and her boy, Lux. Both had quickly made themselves useful additions to the small crew.

  Bayou put up a finger to silence the woman. “What do you have, Halo?”

  “We have an Alliance Recon Team in trouble on the Texas Gulf Coast.”

  Bayou’s heart sank; she knew before she even asked the next question, “Who is it?”

  “Red-7, ma’am.”

  “Fuck!” Her stoic face masked much of the pain that statement caused.

  She looked at Carol shaking her head. “Sorry, I am not meant for this.”

  “Halo, is Captain Hauk still in command of that unit?” She had a long history with the leader of the famed Red-7 assault force. That had been her original unit; she still treasured the battle patch that now adorned her duty bag.

  “He is, but the naval ship has abandoned them, they have what he deemed a high value asset, taking heavy casualties and requesting an extract.”

  “Enemy combatants?” Bayou asked.

  Halo knew what she meant, human or well… all the other shit. “Non-human, ma’am. Had them live briefly, now they are on time delay as we have moved out of direct comms range.”

  Shit, she kept forgetting about the comms delay. With the repeaters and quantum comms units down, they were basically back to line-of-sight communications. Carol was now frantically pulling on her right arm.

  “You have to come, Deborah.”

  “Packer, get me some mission option on using the dropship to go get that squad. Tell Otero to hold on Luna transition for now.”

  Bayou patted her sidearm and headed for the hatch, then turned to her other Banshee team member.

  “Halo, see if you can get details on Hauk’s mission and who that high-value asset is.” She trusted Red-7 could likely save themselves, and she wasn’t risking her ship or her team for some politico bigwig.

  She followed Carol down the maze of metal corridors ducking through hatches. The woman was talking at a fever pitch, but for a change, didn’t seem frightened by whatever she had found.

  They turned the corner to the medical bay, and Bayou suddenly found her feet refusing to move forward. She didn’t want to go back in there. She couldn’t face seeing her friend, her mentor, lying on that cold table.

  Carol stopped walking, feeling the sudden resistance from Riggs. She smiled and patted her hand. “It’s good, Bayou. Trust me, you will want to see.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  “Goddamn, Cap, the damn things are everywhere.”

  Hauk got a good look at the closest one as it grabbed the side of the overturned launch.

  “Goddamn ugly bastards, ain’t they?”

  “Senior, you ain’t wrong,” Captain Hauk yelled over his shoulder to Senior Chief Grayson.

  “Head back for shore,” Hauk said reluctantly. The water route wasn’t going to work. He had known they could swim but quickly realized they were even more capable, more lethal in the water than on dry land.

  Several of the semi-inflatable launches got the surf line ahead of them, beaching hard on the packed sand. Hauk’s boat along with at least one other had been flipped, and now they were swimming for shore. With all the gear, it was more like creative drowning. The weight would pull them down to the bottom where they would run for several yards before kicking off to the surface top and catch a quick breath before doing it again.

  Then, just as he neared shore, one of the reptilian beasts was in front of him. The damn thing’s proportions were just all wrong. Its arms were too long; its bony fingers looked almost delicate with fine webbing between each. The main appendage, though, was the curved razor-sharp claw. On one hand, the claw met with a smaller version on an opposing digit, allowing it to shear off anything it could grasp. Hauk had already seen the result of that in some of his unit’s casualties.