Freedom: An Epic Space Opera/Alternate Universe/Alien Invasion Adventure, page 1
FREEDOM
Invasion: Earth Saga Book Seven
Sean Robins
Books by Sean Robins:
(Invasion: Earth Saga)
Book One: Invincible
Book Two: Indomitable
Book Three: Valiant
Book Four: Victorious
Book Five: Valkyrie
Book Six: Dauntless
Book Seven: Freedom
Book Eight: Fortitude
Book Nine: Guardian
Book Ten: Majestic
Book Eleven: Leviathan
(Audiobooks are available on Audible)
Note from the author: This is a dark and gritty reboot of the humorous Crimson Deathbringer series. Please see “Author’s Note I” for more information. If you’ve read and enjoyed the original series, I don’t think you should read this; you’ll probably hate it. On the other hand, if you read The Crimson Deathbringer and liked the story but not the comedy, maybe give this version a chance.
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Copyright (C) 2022 Sean Robins
Edited by Tyler Colins
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. 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, without the author's permission.
Table of Contents
BOOKS BY SEAN ROBINS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREVIOUSLY IN THE INVASION: EARTH SAGA
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 TIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
BOOK EIGHT'S (FORTITUDE) SAMPLE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
BOOK NINE'S (GUARDIAN) SAMPLE
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
FORTITUDE
GUARDIAN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR’S NOTE I
AUTHOR’S NOTE II
BOOK REVIEW REQUEST
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to:
My dear friend Brandon Ellis (author of Project Atlantis) who has played a vital role in the success of this series.
My super-talented narrator, Jade Ferifyre, who has brought these stories to life in such a way that I wouldn’t have thought possible. Even though I know the books by heart (obviously), I must’ve listened to the audiobooks at least five times.
My fantastic editor Tyler Colins. I’m indebted to her for the wonderful job she’s done.
My beta readers, Gwen Collins, Tara Norris, James Harker (author of Rise from the Dark Forest), Jeff Bristow, Jarvis Cherron Kolen, Theresa Kiefer, Marwan Ali, and Nikki Prasertwong, who helped me shape a lot of my ideas.
My dear friends, Koorosh Jalali and Hooman Mardookhi. Koorosh is a writing buddy, an editor, and a creative consultant all rolled into one, and Hooman is an online marketing specialist whose help and advice have been priceless.
PREVIOUSLY IN THE Invasion: Earth Saga
In an alternate universe, the Akakies have used genetic enhancements to turn themselves into killing machines. Led by a warrior woman whom everyone calls Death Angel, they’ve conquered the entire galaxy, founding the White Republic and ruling with an iron fist. Earth is under the Akakies’ occupation, and Jim is killed leading a suicide mission against the enemy fleet during their invasion. Liz, alone and heartbroken, moves to our universe and starts a relationship with the other Jim.
After defeating the evil Akakies’ invasion of our universe, General Maada takes a fleet to the White Republic’s universe, aiming to liberate his planet Tangaar from the insects’ occupation, and hoping to find the love of his life (and the mother of his child), Alitaa, there.
This story happens in the White Republic’s universe.
FREEDOM
Prologue
F lying in her red Viper, Death Angel lit up an enemy space fighter with laser cannons; then she looked at the tactical display to evaluate how the battle between her fleet and the Xortaag forces was going.
Now this is a proper challenge, she thought with savage satisfaction. Just the way I like it.
The space all around her ship was a chaotic cloud of space fighters, with thousands of Vipers and Deathbringers engaged in fierce, close-range dogfights, twisting and turning and hurtling laser bolts at one another, filling the space around them with dazzling explosions and pieces of debris. The White Republic navy’s flagship (Monstrous’s twin sister Demoness) was exchanging laser fire and missiles with two much smaller Xortaag starships, which on paper did not stand a chance against the giant superdreadnought, but somehow, they were holding their own. She could not help admiring the enemy’s skills and resolve, pointless as it was. No one in the galaxy could hope to match her fleet’s massive technological superiority. As if to prove her point, a Deathbringer vanished in a burst of sparks and metal right in front of her Viper.
Under her command, the Super Akakies had defeated several other space-faring species. This, however, was the real test. The Xortaags themselves were a warrior race, and led by the infamous General Maada, they had conquered numerous planets before encountering her forces. This battle here today would determine the balance of power in the galaxy for centuries to come.
Pumped, she scanned the vast space before her, and then she found what she was looking for.
The Crimson Deathbringer had taken on two Vipers. Two more rushed to their friends’ help and joined the battle, lasers blazing away madly.
That was it then. The enemy space fighter was doomed. The Vipers were significantly more advanced than the Deathbringers, and there simply was no way a Xortaag space fighter could survive a battle with four Super Akakies’. She was planning to kill General Maada herself but, apparently, she could not have the pleasure now. Well, she could always claim she had done it. Who would dare to contradict her?
She watched in utter astonishment as the enemy fighter showered the four Vipers with rapid bursts of laser fire and hit two, dissolving them in flame. Then Maada fired a few perfectly aimed shots toward his nearest target, hitting it in the wing. The Viper started spinning and went crashing into the fourth one, and an explosion tore both of them apart in a fiery blaze.
Maada’s reputation was well-deserved, it seemed.
I am going to enjoy this.
She opened a channel to the Xortaag space fighter. “General Maada. I guess you know who I am.”
“Yes, I do. You are a dead insect.”
The balls on this guy! Or maybe he does not know who I am, after all.
Death Angel rammed the stick forward and attacked the Deathbringer head-on, laser cannons blazing. A direct approach had to work to her advantage, given her Viper had three cannons to the enemy space fighter’s two. Maada, however, spun his Deathbringer out of the line of fire, made a seemingly impossible turn, and positioned himself on her tail, shooting incessantly. She jinked up, then down, and dodged most of the laser bolts, but a few impacted her fighter, causing some damage.
So much for a direct approach.
She had to admit this was one skilled fighter pilot. It would not help him though, because she had a piece of alien technology in her Viper that nobody else in the galaxy possessed (she could have replicated the tech and installed it on all the Vipers but had decided to keep its existence a secret). That would give her a decisive advantage.
Twenty seconds later, she was on the Deathbringer’s six, raining laser bolts on it. Maada did his best to avoid the fire, but like many before him, he was caught off-guard by the unexpected maneuver. Several laser bolts tore into his Deathbringer. Still, the Xortaag space fighter kept weaving from side to side and avoided most of the incoming fire. Death Angel had to give Maada credit; he sure knew how to fly.
“I give you one chance to surrender,” she said pleasantly.
“Never!” Maada shot back while twisting his Deathbringer violently to avoid the fire from behind. “You think you are the first enemy pilot who got me in their crosshairs?”
She shrugged. “No, but I will be the last.”
She cut the connection. This man was not the surrendering type. Too bad she had to kill him. In another life, they could have been good friends.
Death Angel depressed the trigger on her stick and kept firing on the crazily dodging Deathbringer. Her Viper belched a volley of energy bolts in rapid succession. Maada sent his ship into a steep dive and took evasive actions but, despite all his experience and skills, he could not evade the barrage of laser bolts that rained down on his space fighter. The blood-red Xortaag ship took several hits, each causing a tiny explosion, until it inevitably turned into a small but blindingly bright supernova, vaporizing the legendary Xortaag warrior.
She smirked and puffed out her chest. Another one bites the dust. I wonder how many more I will have to kill before the entire galaxy falls under our control.
Well, the more, the better.
Death Angel scanned the battle. She expected Maada’s death to turn the tide in the Super Akakies’ favor, and she was right. Now that their commander had been killed, several dozen Deathbringers put their noses down and tried to flee.
But her lust for violence had not been quenched yet. Far from it.
“Make sure no one survives,” she ordered her fleet.
One more victory for my people, and now no one in the galaxy can stand in our way.
Chapter One
L ife in a Super-Akakie POW camp is not a picnic.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Well, duh, Sherlock. What did you expect from the ugly motherfrakking monsters who conquered Earth and killed untold millions?”
Well, you’re right, and you’re wrong.
When you hear POW camp, I bet you picture one of those old war movies, where the prisoners just hang out, doing nothing all day. They might be poorly fed, but their biggest problem is boredom while days drag on incessantly and they can do nothing but wait for the war to end.
The evil Akakies’ POW camps couldn’t have been more different. For one thing, we were well-fed and taken care of. Healthcare was top-notch, and the insects even cured us of any pre-existing conditions we might’ve had before coming here. Cancer, AIDS, ulcers... nothing was beyond their apparently supernatural medical technology. They could even regrow a severed limb! For another, we were super busy. We exercised and trained all day, mostly with a variety of cold weapons—swords, daggers, spears, bat'leths, you name it.
Being a fighter pilot, I’d always been in a good shape, but now I was beginning to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, with muscles bulging from everywhere, straining against the fabric of the white jumpsuits the insects had given us, especially at the forearms, biceps, and chest. I was certain the Akakies were feeding us some magical growth hormone or something. Nothing else could explain the layers of muscle that had appeared on my broadened back, or the fact that my neck was thicker than a mammoth’s trunk.
And then once every couple of days, they released us into the jungle that seemed to be covering the entire godforsaken planet we were on (we didn’t even know its name), gave us a head start to run as fast as we could, and then freaking hunted us.
Yeah, they’d turned their POW camp into freaking blood sports, obviously not caring much for the Geneva Conventions.
You thought being in a POW camp was bad? Imagine running through a thick tropical forest, so thick that it was always dark, filled with creatures that could eat you alive, being followed by a nine-foot nightmarish monster with rows upon rows of needle-sharp fangs that was running on four legs faster than a racehorse, whirling a huge two-handed axe that must have weighed a ton, and shouting (in fluent English!), “I am going to take you apart limb by limb with my teeth, human!”
Which was exactly the situation I found myself in, and not for the first time.
“Prepare to meet your maker!” screamed the monster.
These guys couldn’t be more cliché if they tried.
I jumped over a thorny bush, entered a small open patch of ground, blinked a few times under the merciless high-noon suns (two of them, I know, weird), and found myself on a sheer cliff overlooking a deep canyon. The cliff dropped off so steeply I couldn’t even see the bottom.
With nowhere to go, I turned to face my pursuer.
The giant Super Akakie cleared the jungle, held his axe over his head, and flashed a wide, toothy grin at me. “End of the road, human.”
As much as I hated to admit it, it looked like he was right. A tremor of fear slithered down my spine as all the muscles in my body tightened. There was no way I could take on this creature, armed to the teeth and armored, with the pitiful dagger I was carrying.
How in the wide blue frak did I end up in this Charlie Foxtrot, you ask?
Well, that is an interesting story.
My name is Major Jim Harrison, by the way. Ace fighter pilot, war hero, former best-selling author, and currently prisoner 2234-X398 in a Super-Akakie POW camp. You’ve read this far, so I figured you should know who I am. And, oh yeah, I’m the hero of this crazy tale.
******
“Command, please repeat that last message,” I yelled into my mike, wondering why my voice wasn’t shaking. “Did you say a starship is bombarding New York?”
That statement would’ve been weird any other day. Unbelievable even. But not today.
April 13th, 2080. A date that would live in infamy. The day that a frakking alien fleet appeared in Earth’s orbit. Then a huge bug that called itself Admiral Altisnal (AKA Death Angel, we found out later) contacted us and, speaking fluent German, asked us to join their so-called White Republic—or else.
Yep. You heard that right. The insect was speaking perfect German. All he needed was to say Sieg Heil, and he would’ve sounded exactly like Adolf Hitler, minus the mustache. Later, we realized the Akakies had a strange sense of humor. One of them had probably researched our history and decided it’d be hilarious to demand our surrender in German.
Well, we are humans, and we don’t react well to “or else”. Which was why a few minutes later all the Air Force fighter jets that could fly were rushing to meet this unexpected threat.
In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the wisest strategic decision in military history.
Thousands upon thousands of enemy space fighters shooting laser bolts filled our skies and, all of a sudden, it was Independence Day. Those damned things were so much faster and more maneuverable than our fighter jets that I felt my very modern, very high-tech, very stealthy, sensor-filled, computerized, futuristic F-44 was nothing but a World War I DH-4 Liberty. The clear blue sky around me erupted in a storm of furious laser fire, and several dozen fighter jets were vaporized before their luckless pilots realized what hit them.
And I still managed to shoot down not one but two of those fancy space fighters (which, fortunately for us, didn’t have shields), one with a close-range air-to-air missile, and one with my bird’s cannons.
You see, I was the best fighter pilot who had ever walked this planet—or flown the skies, in this case. I was like Manfred von Richthofen, Iron Eagle, Maverick, and Han Solo all rolled into one. Best of the best, that was me. You think I’m cocky and full of myself? Well, too bad. You’ll be hearing this a lot, so you’d better get used to it.
Still, this was hopeless. With the sheer number of enemy space fighters around us, there was no way for us to win even if we’d had the same level of technology. This could very well be the end of humanity, I thought, but we won’t go down without a good fight.
I lowered my bird’s nose, firewalled her, and made a beeline for the coordinates Command had sent out. And sure as hell, there it was: an oval, golden starship, bigger than an aircraft carrier, hanging leisurely in the air on my four o’clock low, and raining missiles and energy beams on defenseless civilians living in New York. Its crew didn’t even bother to pretend they were trying to hit military targets. The city underneath was on fire. I could clearly see several skyscrapers in flame, sending huge towers of black smoke into the sky, and more buildings were hit while I was flying toward the enemy starship.
Oh no, you don’t!
My blood boiled, my muscles tightened, and I began to sweat. My breath came out rough and ragged as blinding rage tried to take over. Having our asses kicked by the enemy fleet was one thing, but witnessing the senseless slaughter of the civilians (people of my city, no less) was an entirely different matter. I could imagine the chaos in the streets below, burning cars, bodies scorched crisp, and screaming crowds (including women and children) running for their lives, many not making it to a shelter to be safe from the enemy’s merciless bombardment.
