Homeworld Rising, page 1
Homeworld Rising
HOMEWORLD BOOK 4
T E BUTCHER
Copyright © 2022 by Tyler Butcher
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
The Story so Far…
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
Chapter 37
A Word From The Author
Preview of Armored Warrior Panzerter
The Story so Far…
In the year 2025, five generation ships appeared just outside the solar system, headed towards Earth. As they passed Jupiter and their signals began to reach our world, our governments couldn’t hide it. We were not alone.
These strangers, however, turned out to be long-lost cousins. A civilization that had sprung up in the twilight of the dinosaurs and fled the planet had returned. To them, Earth had been a myth, an Eden lost to them as a consequence of their ancestors’ actions. Yet, not all of these M’Nok were eager to share their world with Humanity. A sect of warriors, led by the devious Sqrauw, attempted to use a captured stockpile of nuclear weapons to provoke a war.
However, a team of Green Berets, a few M’Nok warriors, and a plucky radio astronomer managed to thwart the dastardly plot, and slowly the two races began to integrate into their shared home. First Contact had been costly, though. Several nations had been devastated by retaliatory strikes from the M’Nok after their landers had come under attack. Others saw the chaos as an opportunity to seize power for themselves in their own personal fiefdoms.
Thus Midnight November was formed, to help integrate the fighting forces of the two races and to destroy these fiefdoms and warlords. For six months, Midnight November fought those warlords tirelessly as nations and clans of M’Nok began to pick up the pieces from First Contact.
Then a sixth ship showed up. This one bore assault craft, combat robotics, and monsters from nightmares. These infernal new weapons descended on the cities of men and M’Nok alike, destroying industry, infrastructure, and toppling any semblance of the old order.
It took Midnight November storming the fortress base known as Area 51 and recovering advanced weapons of their own—even an old warship known as the Relentless—before they could take the fight to the enemy. All the while, the armies of Earth fought, holding action after holding action, to keep the forces of the Lost Light at bay.
When Midnight finally took to the stars to do battle against the new threat, they discovered that an offshoot of the original M’Nok refugees was behind the invasion, led by none other than the self-styled dictator Greith.
After a difficult battle, Greith was defeated and his hold over the M’Nok who followed him was broken. Once again, the people of Earth—M’Nok and Human alike—began to rebuild and reach for new heights. Which is where we find ourselves now.
Chapter
One
Mayor’s office, Aldrin habitation site, Inside Ladale Crater on the Moon
Nancy Gardner couldn’t contain her smile while she propped her feet up on the console. As far as she was concerned, she was living her childhood dreams. She’d met an extra-terrestrial! Well, kind of, since the M’Nok had originally come from Earth. They’d arrived in spaceships, sure enough, though, and now as she reclined her chair, she made sure she was strapped down.
Ever since she was a little girl, she’d wanted nothing more than to walk on the surface of the moon and meet an alien. Years of studying and relentless training had led to this moment. Varsity swim team, Science Olympiad, an appointment to the Air Force Academy, and five years as a decorated transport pilot had all led to this: mayorship on the United States’ first lunar colony.
On screen, she watched as 3D printers pumped out parts and sections of prefabricated buildings. Lunar regolith, combined with water, was sculpted by the printers into lunacrete. As long as they had water—which, thanks to the M’Nok, they not only received in regular shipments but were also able to sift from the moon’s surface—they could remake the whole surface of the moon into lunacrete.
Seeing the machines go to work never ceased to amaze Nancy. People had said it was pointless or wasteful to focus on space travel for decades before the M’Nok had arrived, silencing their voices at least for a moment.
A flashing icon on a side screen drew her attention. She opened an emergency message from the ESA’s Moon Village and frowned. The colony had lost main power generation and only had enough juice on the capacitors for twelve hours. Furthermore, their own habitats were losing pressure.
“Steve, I need an ER team to head over to Moon Village, time now,” she informed her head of security over her personal radio. “Harvey, I need an engineering team to the solar array.”
“Shouldn’t the Europeans take care of that?” her engineering chief replied.
“They have their hands full,” Nancy said. “Besides, if we were in their shoes, we’d be glad for the help.” On that note, she opened an engineering subpanel and looked over their own power output. Sure enough, they weren’t receiving any power from the solar array near the equator, though they were much farther from it than the European Space Agency’s Moon Village, so leaks or damage from radiation or moondust was more likely. Unlike the Moon Village, though, Armstrong City had a nuclear fission power plant providing main power.
She looked for more messages from the Europeans but found none. While she would have appreciated an update of some kind, she understood if they didn’t have the ability or were just preoccupied. Instead, she got an update from the security chief. A slightly distorted feed from a rover filled her main screen.
“Hey Nancy, you should take a look here,” he said as he panned over the Moon village. Or rather, what was left of it. The domes that made up the village had been cracked open and were exposed to hard vacuum.
Biting her lip, she shook her head.
“We need to find out what happened. What could even have done that?” Cradling her head in her hand, she tapped her chin as she closely examined the footage.
Could it have been an accident? They worked with a lot of hazardous materials—maybe an oxygen fire? She couldn’t see any debris along the outside, even above the village domes. If the domes had been blown open, they’d see debris somewhere above them.
She furrowed her brow. The Kessler array would have picked up the debris on radar and alerted them immediately. On top of that, the ESA hadn’t said anything about an explosion or accident.
Her next thought was meteor storm, but the habitat’s Kessler array should have detected a meteor storm days in advance. It was the entire purpose of the array: to detect space debris and allow them to deploy countermeasures.
The alternative . . . worried her. Weapons were banned from lunar colonies as part of the greater outer space treaty. Granted, none of the original signatories were technically still around, but the treaty was observed and honored by the organizations moving into space.
“Hey Mayor, this is the research division. We’re getting some weird readings from Moon Village,” the chief science officer said. “Radio telescope has radio bursts in regular intervals.”
“Do you have a freq? Or at least a direction?” Nancy asked.
“Well, the initial bursts were just that, but it looks like it’s correcting . . . Its direction is deep space, almost like it’s looking for something.”
Nancy bit her lip nervously.
“I take it not a freq we use?”
“Negative.”
Nancy had flown missions across several continents and into war zones, but an unknown signal emanating from a wrecked hab site was something she wasn’t ready for.
She had just sent an emergency alert to Earth when she began hearing the screams.
“Steve, what’s going on?” she asked.
But the head of security never replied. No, instead, voices drowned each other out as they struggled for bandwidth. Panic, orders, and chaos ensued over the net. As biometrics readings went black one by one, Nancy looked up at the camera feed.
The rover was moving. She thought she caught a glimpse of something against the chalky lunar background and broken village. A silhouette, humanoid, only a glimpse, but Nancy guessed it would have been twelve feet tall. The rover tumbled over, and the feed went dead.
Nancy grabbed her radio.
“Harvey, get your team back here now,” she said. “There’s something out there with you.”
“We heard,” he gasped. His breathing filled the radio as he spoke. “We’re headed back to the rovers as fast as we can.” His breath caught in his throat, and Nancy wished they had helmet cameras. “God in Heaven.”
No screams this time. Instead, the biometrics on their suits winked out.
I have to inform Earth. Slapping a switch to put the station on lockdown, she grabbed the long-range comm.
Chapter
Two
3 June 2026
Baseball Field #3, Inner Sea recreation complex
Henry G. Wells ran his tongue across his upper lip. He looked into the eyes of an apex predator. Millions of years of evolution had fine-tuned the creature before him. Cold, avian eyes stared back at him, watching and observing his every move. Bristly proto-feathers around its face rose in anticipation as its tongue flicked across its teeth. Taloned hands, primed for snatching prey and manipulating tools, curled around an oak bat.
The M’Nok on base swirled his bat eagerly, as if some animal instinct deep inside fed him a hunting response. Like the rest of the security forces baseball team, he wore an orange and teal uniform with a button-up jersey and baseball pants.
Henry held the ball level with his face and smiled. He ran his thumb across the leathery skin and the thick stitching. He’d already been well on his way to sweating through the green, gray, and black ensemble his own team wore, but those were the colors chosen by Midnight November. For their rec baseball team.
His body moved as a unit, each part acting as a lever of some sort. He wound back before stepping forward and tossing a heater over the plate. The M’Nok at bat swung but only found empty air, the ball firmly landing in Carlos’s catcher’s mitt.
“Strike,” an umpire cried.
The medic tossed the ball back to Henry, and he paced the mound as he stretched his arm and reset. The security forces had managed to get a man on second, but otherwise the Midnight November team had managed to keep them from scoring. Krek and Qrora had naturally found themselves positions at 1st and 3rd base respectively, with Rooth at short and Gene on second. The twins took up left and right field, while Qaroww’s agility and strength made him the perfect centerfielder.
Licking the inside of his teeth, Henry locked eyes with the M’Nok collecting himself on home. I can get a little more mustard in the next one. Taking up his pitcher’s stance, he inhaled sharply before whipping a second fastball over the plate. The M’Nok’s swing would have been right on the money. If he’d swung a half second sooner. Instead, the ball smacked into Carlos’s mitt.
Once again, Carlos tossed Henry the ball, and he glanced at the scoreboard. 4-0 Midnight. No balls, two strikes, and one out. The security forces were hoping against hope that they could tie up the game and force extra innings. Maybe even pull off a win.
Resuming his stance, Henry gripped the ball with his knuckles in an odd but familiar grip. His arm lashed out as he hurled a final pitch at the M’Nok. The batter swung. Two seconds later, the ball crossed the plate into Carlos’s glove. Strike three, and game.
Henry groaned and stretched as the rest of his team headed towards the mound and the security forces ambled over to congratulate them.
“How did you do that?” asked the M’Nok batter—Henry thought his name was Ruw. “I could have sworn that was another fastball.”
Henry grinned and pointed to his mitt.
“It’s called a change-up,” he said. “You let me get in your head, so instead of another fastball, I threw that goofy slow thing.”
Ruw hissed in appreciation and dipped his head.
“Such an elegant sport. Thank you kindly.” The M’Nok scurried away to rejoin his team, and the Midnight group walked back over to their dugout.
Bort, the towering Cyclops robot, met them with a clipboard, a MN baseball hat and jersey comically stretched over his hulking frame.
“Twin Osebet, young Qarrow, if your communication skill improved ten percent, that last runner would never have made it to second,” he boomed as they collected their things.
“I thought Q2 had it!” Ozzi squawked.
“It was in your zone,” Qarrow retorted as he tossed his mitt into the batbag he shared with Qrora. “I have centerfield, not the entire outfield.”
“It looked like it was going to you.”
“It came down five feet from you.”
“Guys,” Henry interrupted. “We won, alright? Let’s just kick back and enjoy the W for now. Lord knows when we’ll get called up again.”
As they filed out of the dugout, their fans—Mr. Lewis, Gene’s wife Grace, Chloe Matsura, Warrant Officer Astreia, the gray alien Five, and Qrora’s mother—greeted them at the bleachers.
“Your Gramma couldn’t make it out?” Henry asked Qrora as they approached the group at the bleachers.
The M’Nok shook his head.
“She’s been busy with the new government, this Commonwealth or whatever,” he said. “Assuming we don’t get called up somewhere, she’ll be able to make it next week when we play the ranchers’ team.”
“Bold assumption,” Henry replied. “By the way, our team has a range day tomorrow, but the Abyss team has the zero-G trainer.”
Qrora hissed and nodded.
“We’ll need to make time to observe, then,” he replied. “I’m honestly confused by their struggles. They’ve all been in zero-G before.”
“Yeah, they have,” Henry replied. “For about twenty minutes—hardly enough to qualify them for an extended mission in zero- or low-G.” Looking up, he saw Issac trudging through the gate with a large cooler between his arms. “Well, let’s save the work talk for the morning. For now, let’s enjoy some cold bears and tease the Abyss team about their hydrophobia.”
Chapter
Three
4 June 2026
Low-G training pool, Midnight November compound, Inner Sea
Henry held the door as Qrora stepped into the facility.
“So, what’s their hold up, Junior? Give us the lowdown,” Henry asked the AI, who could talk to him thanks to a Bluetooth earpiece.
“Well, to be fair, the Abyss team doesn’t have a telepath like Five,” said the AI with the voice of a Brooklyn yard worker.
“To be fair, we found out Five couldn’t beam his thoughts through water coherently. He needed physical contact to speak clearly,” Qrora replied. “Even with that, swimming over to talk to him took up precious time.”
The Low-G trainer itself was an Olympic-sized swimming pool that could be reconfigured for various exercises. The one the Abyss team struggled with was an exercise in communication and team building. Multiple irregular pieces lay scattered on the bottom of the pool. The team’s goal was, in their swimwear, they had to assemble the pieces into a cube.
“The Abyss team definitely has more M’Nok that needed to learn how to swim,” Qrora replied. “Though, that shouldn’t have been an issue, and Qaroww can give himself gills for the duration of the trainer.”
“I think it’s strategy,” Gway chimed in, her bubbly voice filling both of their ear pieces. “Yeah, Five and Qaroww are both technically the strong guy on their teams, but Five’s abilities need more creativity to apply, whereas Q2 can just make himself fit a situation and stronger. I think the Abyss team is trying to brute-force it where the problem needs a more strategic approach.”
Henry shrugged as he and Qrora approached the inner door to the pool. “When you have a hammer . . .” He opened the door, and Issac met them both with an energy drink in each hand.
