Out of the Black
BY EVAN CURRIE
Odyssey One series
Into the Black
Heart of Matter
Homeworld
Out of the Black
Warrior’s Wings series
On Silver Wings
Valkyrie Rising
Valkyrie Burning
The Valhalla Call
De Opresso Liber (forthcoming)
Other works
SEAL Team 13
Steam Legion
Thermals
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Evan Currie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
eISBN: 9781477867877
ISBN-10: 1477817875
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934825
This, the fourth book in the Odyssey series, is dedicated to the readers who made the continuation of this story possible. Without your enthusiasm and support, this series would never had reached the heights it’s arrived at nor would we clearly only be beginning our climb. Thank you for joining me on this voyage, and I sincerely hope you remain with me as we move further out into the black.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
Manhattan Borough, New York—D-Fall Plus Five Minutes
IT IS TIME.
The voice was a whisper on the wind, lost in the sound of buildings crumbling, dust and dirt falling back to the Earth, and the wailing of people and alarms. The city was a living thing, but it had been wounded deeply and it was bellowing its pain and rage. Within that a whisper had no chance of being heard.
The day had begun largely as a normal day, despite the announcement of a heightened level of military awareness worldwide. The normality had been shattered when thin burning trails had descended from above, tracking across the sky in an eerie silence that caused millions to not even notice until it was far too late. Those that did see often froze, eyes locked on the blazing trails as they pointed and shouted.
One had struck the edge of the city, a building exploding into dust and debris, and another slammed into the tallest skyscraper of the skyline. Everyone heard it when that monument to freedom from terror came raining down on the streets below. Amid the screaming that began then, some were still calm as they watched the skies, and they saw more and more fiery streaks rain down, bursting through the clouds, heading for their city.
Then they saw something else explode out of the clouds, and for many the nature of their world changed in a second.
It was a silhouette recognized across the world, fires blazing from gaping holes in the steel blue hull as the NACS Odyssey somehow leveled out over the Eastern seaboard and opened fire at fifteen thousand feet.
Every shot was like the hammer of the gods across the sky, blowing out the glass in dozens of skyscrapers and smaller buildings as the big ship rumbled past. Each thunderclap of destruction, however, was punctuated by a second explosion in the sky as one of the incoming trails of destructive flame exploded in turn.
The Odyssey had not been built to fly in atmosphere, however, and her enemies had held the high ground. Flaming trails of destruction rained down from above the iconic ship and slammed into her hull, making the flagship of the Confederacy shudder with each blow. The Odyssey listed to port, slowly heeling over, and with another flurry of hits from above, it dipped down and plunged into Long Island Sound.
That had been the beginning.
Strike Fighters filled the skies shortly after, throwing everything they had at the fire from the sky. It was an impressive show, but they were outnumbered and some of the falling objects inevitably struck the ground and delivered hammer blows of destruction to the living city.
For many that was when the nightmare changed from shocking to surreal, because true horrors rose from the craters, and New York became a battleground unlike any ever seen on Earth.
Amid the fighting, as the National Guard rumbled into the city to back up the local police, few noticed that the Odyssey had broken up on impact with the water and was now spread across much of the area. Some pieces had bounced, smashing into the waterfront properties and causing immense destruction themselves, while others had slowed and sunk deep below the surface of the sound.
The two immense drums of the Odyssey’s habitation sections had broken free and skipped along the water as they spun. One went south, crashing through Queens as it skipped off Eastchester Bay, and the other spiraled west. It splashed down just north of Roosevelt Island on its last bounce before it blew through a block of office buildings and came to rest in Central Park itself.
Wake up.
Again the whisper was lost in the midst of the chaos, dust and debris rolling over the city like the wall of a massive desert haboob engulfing everything in its path. The city was reeling from one shock after another, but it was a city that had some experience with emergencies, and it was waking slowly but surely to the events.
On the west side of Central Park, the Odyssey’s forward and command habitat came to rest, rocking gently on an uneven surface of fallen trees and crushed automobiles. The wails of sirens and aftershocks of impacts punctuated the local silence that descended as those who survived witnessing the crash stared in shock at the punctured, scarred, and crushed cylinder that had once controlled the greatest vessel ever built by human hands.
Inside the module, nothing moved.
Now! Wake up, now!
Eric Stanton Weston gasped, sucking in air as he awoke from a nightmare of being trapped in his ship after it had explosively decompressed. He flailed around momentarily, but was unable to move an inch, and he quickly realized why.
He was strapped firmly into the command console, which was now apparently attached to the ceiling. He hung there for a long moment, upside down and deeply confused, as he tried to take in what had happened and what was, in fact, happening.
Where? Eric couldn’t think straight. He felt like he’d just been beaten into the ground by a particularly heavy battle tank, or maybe had just plowed his fighter into some poor bastard’s field.
He blinked, looking around as memories returned to him, and realized just how close that last thought really was.
“Oh my lord, I hurt,” he mumbled, licking his lips and spitting out a piece of his helmet face shield. Shatterproof my ass.
Slowly he reached up and began picking pieces of the glass shield from his face. Then he detached the helmet and let it drop to the ceiling below him.
Realization was sinking in slowly, fractured memories of what led him to his current predicament filtering with agonizing ponderousness. He had a headache that felt like someone was pounding on his skull with a pickax from the inside, and he couldn’t quite manage to blink the blurred vision away.
Eric was no doctor, to say the least, but he knew the signs of a concussion. He likely needed medical help in the worst way, but considering the fact that he hadn’t really expected to wake up at all, he couldn’t say that he was feeling all that bad.
This is going to suck. Yup, no doubt about it.
He couldn’t stay where he was, that was clear, and he had no idea where he’d managed to land . . . crash . . . so he couldn’t count on help.
Besides, the world likely has enough on its plate just now. I’ll have to take care of myself.
Eric looked up, or down he supposed, and barely could make out the ceiling of the bridge a few feet below his head. Yeah, definitely going to suck.
He took a breath, closed his eyes, and then slapped the quick release on his straps.
Eric fell ten feet, twisting as best he could, and hit the ceiling shoulder first in a clumsy roll that sent a sickening stab of pain through his bones and skull. He skidded to a stop, curled around the extruded housing of the now dead lights, and just lay there until the pain began to subside.
I’ve felt better after being shot, he thought grimly to himself as he actually sobbed quietly, praying for the headache to subside.
Eric didn’t know how long he’d been laying there, but after a time the pain again dropped to manageable levels and he got to his knees and pulled himself over to the door. It was sealed shut, of course, and with no power he had to do things the hard way.
What else is new?
Eric got painfully to his feet, having to reach up to open the panel that was normally only four feet off the ground, and he got hold of the manual level for the door. A hard yank opened it enough for him to wedge his hands in and pry it open, not a lot, but enough to work with. Eric slipped out of the bridge and into the corridor beyond, where he had to pause to get his bearings.
Wait, do I go left or right to get to the closest armory locker?
He blinked, trying to clear the double vision from his eyes while he was wrapping his mind around that. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem: Step out the door, walk right around the curve of the habitat, and he’d get to a security room.
At the moment, however, standing on the ceiling of the corridor with double vision and a splitting headache, Eric couldn’t remember what direction right was without making a signing gesture with his right hand to confirm it.
He finally worked out that he had to go left, and that was when he realized that he had a bigger problem.
Oh shit. The drum isn’t rotating. I’m in Earth gravity and that means this whole damn thing is more of an amusement park ride than habitat section.
He sighed, looking over the situation, and slowly shook his head. This is going to suck.
He got down onto his hands and knees and turned around, slowly lowering himself down the curving corridor until he began to slide. Eric quickly latched on to the frame of a door to stop himself, feet kicking around until he found another purchase, and then he began to ease himself down.
He had made it about a quarter of the way down when he lost his grip, slid off the ledge he was balancing on, and pitched into the black of the unlit corridor, swearing at the top of his lungs the whole way down.
Lyssa Myriano was having the mother of all bad days.
It had started with a fight that led to a breakup with her boyfriend, and now the whole damned solar system had apparently decided it was time to pay a visit to the Big Apple.
Just fucking peachy.
“Get down!” the NYPD patrol officer snarled as a dozen people came screaming in her direction.
They scattered as she pumped the old Remington shotgun she’d pulled from the truck of her cruiser. The twelve-gauge slugs were old school, but they still put down damn near anything short of straight-up MilSpec armor, and so she’d never felt the need to change over to the high-powered stuff.
Now she was regretting that decision.
The shotgun roared six times as she pumped and fired as fast as she could, emptying the weapon into the oncoming horror that the crowds were running from. The creatures looked like something out of a movie, only maybe a little less realistic, lumbering on insect-like bodies that appeared to weigh as much as a large truck.
Or small tank.
Lyssa swore some more as she tossed her twelve-gauge and drew her service pistol. That was a little more high tech, a ten-millimeter armor piercer designed to turn civilian-level body armor to Swiss cheese. She fired as she fell back, really just trying to delay one of the invaders so people could clear the area.
All she was really doing was attracting its attention to her.
Great. Just what I needed to top off my friggin’ day.
She glanced around and changed direction as she started to run, leading the thing into the park and away from the crowds. The ten-millimeter autoloader reloaded easily, her hands moving on muscle memory as she ran for her life. The park was large enough that the things on her tail would have room to move without knocking over buildings or, hopefully, people, but it also meant that she was about to be a nice wide-open target.
That was about the time that a sizzling sound made her throw herself to the left as a beam scorched the grass ahead of her. Lyssa rolled to her feet, stared for a split second, and started running again.
Great! Ray guns too!
She tapped the ear set she was wearing. “Central, this is Kilo One Nine calling in a Code . . . Central, what the fuck is the code for alien invasion anyway?”
NATIONAL GUARD COMMAND POST, INTREPID SEA, AIR, & SPACE MUSEUM
“SIR! WE’VE GOT reports across the entire city, those things are everywhere!”
Brigadier Potts growled. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
The over-excited lieutenant had the decency to look abashed at his outburst, which did unfortunately little for Potts’ mood. He had alien invaders all over the city and the fact that he’d actually had twenty-four hours’ notice pissed him off even more.
They’d had time to set up an emergency command post, using the old Intrepid aircraft carrier that had been parked on the coast of Manhattan Island for over a century. It seemed like a decent enough place to set up, given that they needed a central location that could be defended. It was an old hulk, nearly two centuries old, but it had been kept up and they had room to spare.
As far as military armor went, the Intrepid was an antique, but what an antique.
“Sir!”
“What is it, Sergeant?” Potts glanced to where his Command Master Sergeant had appeared.
“Final reports from spotters, sir.”
“And?”
“One hundred eighty-three targets, in city.”
The general grimaced, but nodded. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
“Yes sir. Sir?”
“What is it?”
“We’ve got field reports from the crash sites splashed by the Odyssey,” Command Master Sergeant Rigand told him. “Looks like they saved us at least a hundred other bogeys before they went down.”