Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Read online

  KILLSHOT

  EARTH’S LAST GAMBIT

  VOLUME 4

  FELIX R. SAVAGE

  Copyright © 2017 by Felix R. Savage

  The right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by Felix R. Savage. 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 publisher or author.

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  Lifeboat was written with the assistance of science guru Bill Patterson. Subscribe to Bill’s Worlds to find out what he’s working on and when it’s coming out. He won't spam you, send you pictures of cats, or what he's eating. http://SmartURL.it/BillsWorlds

  Additionally, the author warmly acknowledges the contributions of AJM, Dr. Martin “X-Ray Eyes” Miller, Paul Cornucopiist, and the original Nene.

  THE EARTH’S LAST GAMBIT QUARTET

  Freefall

  Lifeboat

  Shiplord

  Killshot

  KILLSHOT

  CHAPTER 1

  Jack Kildare glanced down at the moon. He leaned sideways to steer to the east. “Hold on!” he barked at Skyler Taft, who was behind him, clinging to his waist.

  The two men straddled an algae tank from the wreck of the Spirit of Destiny. They’d ripped nichrome wire out of the old ship’s walls, hooked it up to a battery, heated the water inside the tank to boiling point. Steam gushed out of the pipe in the back.

  Hey presto, a rocket.

  Actually, more like an electric kettle.

  But in the moon’s low gravity, it flew. It had carried them 2000 kilometers due south from the wreck of the SoD.

  Flying in the dark, Jack steered by the stars and the zodiacal light. Hazy, glowing fans spread from the invisible eastern and western horizons: sunlight scattered by space dust. Keep your shoulders square to those glows, and Polaris at your back. Lucky we crashed in April. You can only see the zodiacal light around the spring and autumn equinoxes.

  Jack glanced down again, trying to judge their altitude. A kilometer? His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Below, starlit mountains reared from inky pools of shadow.

  The SoD had clipped a mountain like one of those, but bigger. Broke in half. Crashed in a crater full of dust. By a miracle Jack and Skyler, the only people on board, had survived.

  It had been Jack’s fault. No excuses. He’d taken one risk too many in pursuit of the Lightbringer, the alien planet-killer bearing down on Earth. Then the fucking thing got away, anyhow.

  “We might be the last human beings in the universe,” Skyler said, breaking the silence.

  “Earth’s still there.”

  “I wish I shared your confidence,” Skyler said, hollowly. A moment later: “I wish we could see Earth.”

  “Moon’s in the way.”

  “I know,” Skyler snapped. He had a Ph.D in astrophysics.

  “Then shut up about it.” Jack understood Skyler’s gnawing anxiety. But he couldn’t afford to think about Earth, and the damage the Lightbringer might have wreaked on it. He needed to concentrate on saving their lives. He kept a close eye on the pressure gauge he’d wired up to the tank, whose digital counter was ticking lower and lower.

  “Get ready to bail,” he said abruptly.

  “Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit,” Skyler chanted, as he unfastened the broomstick lashed to the tank. He moved it parallel to the tank and swung his left leg over it. Holding onto the improvised tether he’d attached to the front of the tank, Jack did the same.

  Couldn’t feel the weak lunar gravity at all. They’d topped out and were falling. At least they’d got this far before the rocket literally ran out of steam.

  The pressure gauge reached zero.

  “OK, go!”

  In unison, like they’d practised in the airless hell of the SoD’s wreck, they transferred their weight to the broomstick and kicked the tank away. It tumbled downwards, while Jack twisted the throttle of the broomstick.

  Oxygen spurted from the tank underneath Skyler’s arse. The broomstick was an angle iron with a spare EVA tank attached. Skyler had built it from parts in Europa orbit. They’d found it while they explored the wreckage of the SoD, around the time Jack was coming to terms with the fact that no one knew where they were, and no one was coming to rescue them.

  He leaned back, trying to keep the sorry little craft’s nose up. Skyler gripped his waist. The ribs Jack had fractured in the crash begged for mercy.

  “CELL, this is Jack Kildare, with Skyler Taft, of the Spirit of Destiny,” he said calmly into the radio. “Currently heading your way. Be advised we expect to land near your location. Would appreciate hot tea and sandwiches upon arrival.”

  “Coffee,” Skyler said.

  “Tea and coffee. Oh, and oxygen would also be nice, as we’re nearly out of that. Thanks, CELL. Appreciate your help.”

  The silence returned. Every passing second diminished Jack’s hopes of a response.

  Of course, there was no reason anyone at CELL would expect to hear from two men who should’ve been dead. Camp Eternal Light Limited had been founded by farsighted aerospace entrepreneurs a few years ago, on the rim of Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole. It was the only colony on the moon. It meant survival, if Jack and Skyler could get there.

  But if everyone at CELL was already dead …

  Don’t think about that.

  A glittering haze rimmed the horizon ahead. For a moment Jack thought he’d gotten turned around.

  “That’s the sun,” Skyler said, just before light struck into Jack’s eyes, blinding him.

  He wrenched his gaze away from the bright ball on the horizon.

  The moonscape below was still drenched in darkness, but sunlight silvered the peaks ahead.

  His inner ear told him the broomstick was losing altitude fast. It wasn’t built to be used in gravity, not even 0.16 gees.

  “I’ll try to get us over the top of that mountain,” he said.

  “Hey, hey.” Skyler’s voice rang with fear. “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

  Once again, they’d be going down hard. Except now they weren’t cocooned inside a $300 billion spaceship. They had nothing but the limited impact protection of their five-year-old, much-abused spacesuits.

  Squinting into the sun’s glare, Jack opened the throttle all the way. It didn’t make a lot of difference. Down, down the broomstick glided, wobbling every time Skyler nervously shifted his weight, until Jack yelled at him to sit still, goddammit. The dark ground swept up to a gigantic hump of rock. Jack could have brushed the summit with his boot as they skimmed over. That was the terminator. They’d made it across. The far side of the mountain fell away, bright gray. But another hill loomed ahead. They flew blind into its shadow, still losing altitude. Jack’s nerves screamed in anticipation of an impact he wouldn’t see coming. “Hold onto me!” he cried. “Don’t let go!”

  The broomstick’s nose smashed into rock. Jack threw his weight back so his boots took the brunt. The impact jolted up his legs like an electric shock. He fell backwards with Skyler clinging to him.

  He never saw the rocks they hit, but he felt every last one of them. They rolled over and over down the unseen slope, bouncing, until they rolled out of the shadow and fetched up against a large boulder.

  Dust rose in a glittering cloud towards
the black sky.

  An avalanche of pebbles pattered down around them, falling lazily in the moon’s 0.16 gees.

  “I’m alive,” Jack decided. The telemetry display in his helmet indicated that his suit wasn’t breached. He visually checked the parts of his suit he could see, discovering a couple of new rips in the outer garment, but no damage to the inner pressure garment. Every part of his body throbbed, stung, or ached. His ribs were killing him. No change there, then.

  “I think I’ve got whiplash,” Skyler said, sitting up a few feet away.

  “Sorry, I don’t have broomstick insurance.” However messy it had been, getting down to the ground in one piece was more than Jack had hoped for. It buoyed his spirits. He stood up and looked around.

  A shallow grey valley pocked with old craters. Long polar shadows. A colorless, motionless world.

  Skyler tried a few steps. A prismatic corona outlined his shadow. “Where are we?”

  “Here,” Jack said, spreading his arms: fucked if I know.

  “OK. Where’s Camp Eternal Light?”

  Jack looked up at the ridge they’d crashed into. “This can’t be Shackleton Crater, so I think we’re a bit too far to the north.”

  “Guess we’d better walk south, then,” Skyler said. He stepped into a patch of shadow. He pitched onto his face. He screamed.

  Jack bounded over to him. That patch of shadow had been a micro-crater. Skyler had stepped in it. His left boot wobbled at a terrible angle when Jack lifted his leg up. “You’ve sprained your ankle,” Jack said, thinking it was probably broken.

  “Great,” Skyler rasped. “Survive a spaceship crash, survive a broomstick crash, and bust my ankle going for a walk on the moon. It would be funny if it were happening to somebody else. Well, it doesn’t hurt that much. I bet I can walk on it—”

  “Don’t—”

  Skyler didn’t even manage to stand up before he fell over again. This time, Jack could hear him sobbing with pain, a frighteningly intimate sound. “Leave me here,” he choked.

  “Don’t be stupid.” Jack bent to pick him up in a fireman’s carry.

  “I’ll slow you down—”

  “We got this far together. We’ll make it the rest of the way together, or we won’t.”

  Carrying Skyler, Jack walked—very carefully—a pace or two into the shadow of the ridge. He squatted to rest and wait for his night vision to return. After a few minutes he could see the stars again.

  There.

  The Southern Cross.

  And its two pointer stars.

  Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri.

  Somewhere between them lurked their cool red sister, Proxima Centauri.

  A tidally locked planet orbited Proxima Centauri, and that was where the Lightbringer came from. The rriksti called it Imf.

  They had come to Earth to invade and conquer it, but some of them had changed their minds along the way. And Jack had ended up making friends with them.

  Funny how that worked.

  Were Keelraiser and the others even alive?

  The dead stillness of the moonscape weighed on Jack’s hopes. His focus threatened to crumble.

  Don’t fucking think about it.

  He drew imaginary lines from the Cross and the pointers, and extended another line down to the horizon. “South’s that way.” He sucked a mouthful of water from his suit’s hydration nipple and turned around, offering his back to Skyler. “Hop on.”

  He got Skyler settled on his back, and then he started walking.

  He’d walked on Europa, which had slightly less gravity than the moon. But he’d never walked in micro-gravity while carrying someone piggyback. The problem wasn’t that Skyler weighed a lot. He was a skinny bloke to begin with, and in lunar gravity he weighed less than a toddler. The difficulty, Jack found, was keeping his balance. You tended to overbalance backwards in low gravity anyway, and Skyler’s weight altered Jack’s center of gravity, making it worse. He ended up bent low like a speed skater. Push off, glide through the air, land on the other foot and push off again.

  “Hello CELL,” Skyler said in between gasps of pain. “CELL—ah—do you read me? Come in.”

  The valley ended in a lumpy south-facing skirt of rock. Jack walked along the shore of a lake of shadow. An even higher ridge towered on the far shore, stretching out of sight to the east. That might be the rim of Shackleton Crater. Or it might not.

  “Come in, CELL, come in.”

  It was dangerous to stay too long in the sunlight. The surface temperature of over 100° C would overwhelm their suits’ ability to dump heat. Although it meant heading east instead of south, Jack veered into the shadow. He toggled his headlamp on. Skyler’s headlamp shone over his shoulder, joggling.

  “We could use some help—ah—out here, CELL. Guess you’re too busy polishing your solar panels. Thanks for nothing, you—ah—bastards.”

  The world shrank to the puddle of yellow light ahead of him. Every shadow was a potential ankle-breaker. Jack skated left and right, avoiding them. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back … His mother and father were in Warwickshire. Did Warwickshire even exist anymore? Dust puffed up at every step, obscuring the terrain.

  A shriek tore into his helmet.

  Jack never would have thought he’d be happy to hear a rriksti harmonic.

  The shrill noise dug into his brain like a dentist’s drill, the result of rriksti radio-speech setting up a harmonic with his suit radio. It swiftly resolved into words. “There they are! Jack! Skyler!”

  Jack straightened up, keeping Skyler on his back. Exhaustion fuzzed his vision. A twinned dazzle of headlights ate the darkness.

  A fat-wheeled golf cart pulled up in a cloud of dust. Humanoid figures leapt out. Humanoid, but not human. The rriksti averaged 7 feet fall. Their living manes of bio-antennas added to their height. Skintight EVA suits outlined their spindly-legged, broad-chested physiques. The goggles they wore under their suits made them bug-eyed.

  One of them carried a crossbow.

  The other one had a shotgun.

  Strong seven-fingered hands lifted Skyler off Jack’s back.

  Jack managed to make it to the rover on his own two feet before collapsing.

  “Earth?” he said.

  “There,” said a rriksti, pointing.

  Hiding in the sun’s glare, Earth floated above the horizon, a blue half-sphere.

  Still there.

  Still far away.

  CHAPTER 2

  The rover drove around the sunwards side of Shackleton Crater and veered uphill, heading for the summit. The rriksti talked tensely in their own language, to each other and over the radio. Jack floated in a brain-dead daze of thankfulness until one of them—an electrician named Tiggresit—turned around to talk to him and Skyler.

  “The Lightbringer is on Earth,” Tiggresit said.

  Jack woke up. “Fuck.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hang on a minute. On Earth?” Not all the rriksti spoke English, and not all of those spoke it well. Fair enough—Jack couldn’t speak a word of Rristigul. His lack of competency frustrated him now. “Don’t you mean in orbit around Earth?”

  “No. It is on Earth. It fell out of orbit and crash-landed three days ago in the Congo.”

  This was both the best and the worst news Jack had ever had. He had tried to nuke the Lightbringer before it could reach Earth. He’d failed—the SoD’s last nuclear round had been a dud. Ever since then, he’d been picturing a deadly rain of missiles falling from orbit on Earth. At least that had not happened. On the other hand … “Any survivors?”

  “As far as we can tell, the entire crew of ten thousand survived.”

  “Ten thousand?” Jack had understood that there were only a few dozen Krijistal—rriksti special forces—alive on the Lightbringer.

  “There were sixteen thousand, to begin with. Many of them died in the war on board. There are probably only about ten thousand now.”

  “I see. Only about ten thousand.”
/>
  “Yes.”

  “That’s … not good.”

  “What about Hannah?” Skyler said. Jack clamped a glove on his arm to calm him, but Skyler persisted, agitated, “Did she survive the crash?”

  Hannah Ginsburg had been the SoD’s propulsion technician. Kidnapped by the Lightbringer, she’d become the alien behemoth’s Shiplord. Skyler had always had a thing for her, and refused to stop believing in her, even after Jack, and everyone else, reluctantly decided she was not on their side anymore.

  Tiggresit hesitated, and then said, “Keep this to yourself. We are not supposed to tell anyone. But we think the crash was not an accident. It looks like Hannah seized the controls.”

  Skyler turned his helmet to Jack. “See!” he said. “I told you so! She risked her own life to save Earth, after we failed!”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you,” Jack sighed.

  “Oh, damn. Oh, Hannah. Damn. My fucking foot. Damn, damn …”

  “We are almost there,” the other rriksti interrupted.

  Jack sat forward, keeping Skyler’s ankle cradled on his lap. Ahead, the crater rim looked like a razor-sharp horizon coming closer and closer. But the rim wasn’t razor-sharp at all; it only looked that way against the black sky, with zero atmospheric fuzzing. Like all the rock features on the moon, Shackleton Crater was ancient and heavily weathered. Weathered, on a moon without an atmosphere, let alone a climate? Yep. The solar wind is weather. Those fast-moving particles had spallated the rocks for hundreds of millions of years, while micrometeoroids pounded them. There was no water here to dig seams, cracks, and gullies. But there was plenty of dust, rounding the edges of all the rock features.

  Dust in the craters, dust on the ground, dust on Jack and Skyler’s spacesuits, dust hurled up from the rover’s wheels as it barrelled silently along the inward face of the crater rim. Only the two rriksti were clean. Their colorfully patterned suits repelled the moon dust, leaving them looking as if they came from a different planet. Which, of course, they did.