Alien War Trilogy 1: Hoplite Read online

  BOOKS BY ISAAC HOOKE

  Military Science Fiction

  Alien War Trilogy

  Hoplite

  Zeus

  Titan

  ATLAS Trilogy (published by 47North)

  ATLAS

  ATLAS 2

  ATLAS 3

  A Captain's Crucible Series

  Flagship

  Test of Mettle

  Cradle of War

  Science Fiction

  The Forever Gate Series

  The Dream

  A Second Chance

  The Mirror Breaks

  They Have Wakened Death

  I Have Seen Forever

  Rebirth

  Walls of Steel

  The Pendulum Swings

  The Last Stand

  Thrillers

  The Ethan Galaal Series

  Clandestine

  A Cold Day In Mosul

  Terminal Phase

  Visit IsaacHooke.com for more information.

  HOPLITE

  ALIEN WAR TRILOGY

  BOOK ONE

  Isaac Hooke

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, organizations, places, events and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © Isaac Hooke 2016

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  www.IsaacHooke.com

  Cover design by Isaac Hooke

  Cover image by Shookooboo

  table of contents

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  postscript

  about the author

  acknowledgments

  one

  The badly damaged ATLAS mech toppled to the sand, the grit-clogged servomotors of the machine no longer able to bear its own weight. The motive elements hummed in complaint for several moments as the unit struggled to stand, but then the machine ceased all movement and simply lay there in a toppled, useless heap. No noise pierced the lonely desert air. No birds. No insects.

  No servomotors.

  And then the cockpit hatch opened a crack, the reverberations echoing loudly along the outer hull. The breach widened. A gloved hand abruptly gripped the rim of the hatch from inside and forced it open entirely.

  A figure emerged into the merciless sun. A soldier whose face and body were wrapped in a military-grade exoskeleton: a strength-enhancing jumpsuit with a dented jetpack.

  The individual took a few hesitant steps before collapsing onto the sand.

  The soldier reached up and removed his helmet, revealing a broad, tanned face. It was all bony angles, a testament to his low body fat percentage. His eyes were weary, yet hard. While he was relatively young, those eyes seemed out of place, belonging to a much older man, or to someone who had witnessed far too much for his age. They also had an oddly glassy quality to them, as was common to those whose eyes had been replaced by the bioprinted varieties.

  The man had a thick beard. So he was not an ordinary soldier, then, but special forces—regular soldiers were required to shave.

  The man hauled himself back to the mech and then sat against it so that he was shaded from the sun.

  He checked the PASS device. His cockpit had been breached during the battle, and the Personal Alert Safety System he wore at his belt had taken a hit. He tried to activate the distress beacon for several moments but the device appeared to be damaged beyond repair.

  He spoke into the empty air. “This is LPO Rade ‘Rage’ Galaal, Alpha Platoon, MOTH Team Seven. I have been cut off from my unit. Repeat, cut off from my unit. Requesting immediate evac.”

  His Implant had the strength to transmit the communication to any nearby repeaters, but the signal wasn’t powerful enough to travel very far on its own. As such, unsurprisingly no answer came.

  “It would appear we’re still out of range, sir,” came a voice from the fallen mech.

  “Don’t call me sir,” Rade said reflexively. “I work for a living.”

  “My apologies,” the mech answered innocently. “I had forgotten.”

  “Really,” Rade said. “A machine. Forgetting.”

  “I took major damage in the attack...” the mech replied.

  Rade frowned. “According to the damage report, your core was fully intact.”

  “All right,” the mech admitted. “You caught me. I was being facinorous.”

  “Facinorous?” Rade shook his head. “Damn AIs with their damn verbal vomit. Is that even a word?”

  “It is,” the mech told him. “It means, ‘extremely wicked.’“

  “Remind me to dial down your sense of humor sometime,” Rade said.

  “Actually, that one came from my sarcasm setting,” the mech replied.

  “Really. Well let’s set that to zero.”

  “As you wish, LPO Galaal,” the mech intoned.

  “And call me by my callsign,” Rade said. “I am a MOTH, you know.”

  “Yes, Rage.”

  MOTH. MObile Tactical Human. An elite force within the navy specializing in direct action missions, mostly guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency. They were trained to operate on land, sea, air and space. Advanced weaponry, jetpacks, mechs—MOTHs were trained to use them all, and often employed multiple advanced technologies during deployments. Rade had a jetpack attached to his exoskeleton at that very moment, for example; it might have actually proven useful if he hadn’t siphoned all the fuel from it into the mech’s jumpjets during the battle.

  Rade crawled away from the mech, moving into the sun.

  “Try to stand again,” he told the machine.

  The ATLAS hummed, and its arms and legs gyrated up and down, but otherwise the mech remained on its side.

  “All right all right, that’s good enough.” Rade returned to the machine again to rest in its shade. “How easy is it going to be to clean the grit from your servomotors?”

  “Because of the damage, the sand has gotten into all of the actuators,” the mech explained. “You’d have to take them apart and clean each unit individually. Needless to say, it is not something you can do without the necessary tools.”

  “Wonderful,” Rade said. “And what about the power situation?”

  “I have enough deuterium to last for at least one hundred years,” the mech replied. “If I idle my processor, I should be able to extend that to a thousand years, at minimum.”

  “That doesn’t really help me, does it?” Rade said.

  “No, it does not,” the mech replied. “Unless of course, you find some water for me to purify. Or meat to cook.”

  Rade examined the dreary dunes around him. “Don’t think I’ll be getting my hands on either of those any time soon.” He studied the position of the sun in the sky. “How long until nightfall?”

  “Approximately three hours.”

  “Wake me when it’s dark.” Rade shut his eyes and soon fell into an exhausted sleep.

  RADE PROCEEDED
ON foot in the dark. He had chosen to travel by night, because in theory the desert wouldn’t be so hot. But he still sweated immensely, no thanks to the exoskeleton. His liquid-cooling undergarments were soaked, and obviously not functioning very well. He would have abandoned the jumpsuit entirely, but he was so weak from lack of food and water that the strength-enhancing suit was the only thing carrying him forward at the moment. He held his helmet in one arm, the headlamp turned on and pointed forward to light the way. He had tried wearing that helmet earlier, for the theoretical improvement in thermoregulation, but it hadn’t helped.

  He used the compass in his Implant to make his way back toward the general direction of the base. There were no positioning system satellites in orbit above the planet, so he had no actual coordinates to guide him.

  He had broken away from the others to pursue one of the privateers who had tried to escape into the desert. Rade had been ambushed, and in the ensuing combat was driven even farther from his unit. He eventually managed to drive off his attackers, exhausting his jumpjet fuel in the process, but by then the privateer had escaped. Rade’s mech had taken severe damage in the battle, and its comm node was offline. So he had begun the long trek back. It hadn’t been long after that when his mech collapsed.

  He momentarily shut off the helmet lamp and glanced at the night sky. So many stars out there, forming constellations unlike anything he had grown up with. The frigate Granada would be up there, disguised as a Sino-Korean merchant trader, looking for him. There would be a few Raptors, too—high altitude recon drones. And his platoon mates, of course.

  Sometimes he wondered at the wisdom of the career he had chosen. Enlisting in the space navy so that he could leave Earth behind and travel to faraway places. The lure of the navy was the lure of a better life. He was an immigrant recruit, a temporary resident of the United Countries, his full citizenship dependent on the completion of his twelve year service term.

  Well, even if he wasn’t yet a full citizen, he did have a better life, that much was certain. His current circumstances notwithstanding...

  “Rage, are you out there?” a voice came over the comm, courtesy of his Implant.

  “Chief Facehopper?” Rade said.

  “There you are,” Facehopper returned. “I thought we’d lost you.”

  Rade saw the searchlight up ahead, sourced from a fast-moving shuttle, and he nearly wept in relief.

  AFTER THE PREREQUISITE rehydration session with the surgical robots, known as Weavers, Rade had his debriefing in sick bay with Chief Facehopper, who explained that the main high value targets had been terminated.

  “Strike two more Sino-Korean privateers from the kill list,” the blue-eyed, red-faced Brit said. That accent of his, matched to his roguish charm, had often attracted women by the dozen on shore leave. Not that he joined the platoon on such occasions much anymore, not since becoming chief. Still, Facehopper was always willing to lend an ear, or a helping hand, and the men loved him for it.

  “But is it really going to make a difference?” Rade said. “Take down two, four more pop up somewhere else.”

  “True enough,” Facehopper admitted. “On the bright side, we’ll be gainfully employed for years to come, mate.”

  “You’d think after all the help we gave the Sino-Koreans in Tau Ceti, they would at least relax their foreign policy a bit, and cancel their privateer initiative. Stop harrying our commercial ships. As a favor. You know?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s an essential part of their economy by now,” Facehopper said. “Hard for them to stop.”

  Rade sighed. “I suppose so.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone off on your own,” Facehopper said. “Especially now that you’re LPO. You have to lead by example, Mr. Galaal.”

  When the chief called one of his men by surname instead of callsign, Rade knew a chewing out was on the way.

  “You’re right of course, I just—” Rade hesitated. He hated admitting he was wrong. “I don’t have an excuse. It was a lapse in judgement. It won’t happen again.”

  “I certainly hope it does not,” Facehopper replied.

  “I accept full responsibility for what I did. If you have to punish me, then so be it.”

  “You’re going to have to explain what you did back there to the platoon,” Facehopper said. “That’s your punishment right there.”

  Rade nodded wearily. “I suppose so.”

  “We almost lost you,” Facehopper said. “The lieutenant commander was about ready to recall the platoon. Every minute we wasted on the planet looking for you was another minute we risked discovery. And the LC will be first to cite the extra cost per day of keeping the platoon deployed, along with all the support craft and personnel, not to mention the disguised frigate at the ready in orbit. It’s somewhere in the tens of millions. Our commanding officer is going to take some hell for this, I assure you. I would advise you to avoid him for the next little while, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Rade lowered his gaze. “Yes, Chief.”

  “Shit, mate, I’m going to take hell for this. If you weren’t waylaid here in sick bay, I’d probably have you pumping out pushups as we speak. In fact, hell with it. Drop, you bloody bloke.”

  Rade boosted himself over the edge of the bed and dropped to the deck. The IV line trailed from the top of his palm to the drip above him.

  “Give me fifty,” Facehopper said.

  Rade began pumping them out. He worked through a sudden dizziness, and blinked the phosphenes from his vision.

  “You do realize, if we had to leave you behind there would be no coming back,” Facehopper said. “Not ever. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Rade said between reps.

  He heard the sick bay hatch open, and deduced from the way Facehopper had tucked in his heels beside him that Lieutenant Commander Braggs had entered. Rade was careful not to look up from the deck. He knew his chewing out was about to get worse.

  “Is that the son of a bitch?” Braggs said. His voice was stern, cavernous.

  The LC knew exactly what Rade looked like, but apparently that day he had decided to forget.

  “Yes, sir,” Facehopper said. “That is him.”

  Rade continued pumping out the reps, aware of both their eyes upon him. When he finished his fifty, he started to lie down on one side.

  “Another fifty,” Facehopper said.

  Rade was careful not to show any emotion as he assumed the starting position once again. He knew that Facehopper’s punishment would be much more lenient compared to what the LC would mete out. Facehopper likely realized that, too—it was a small mercy on the chief’s part. Rade suspected Facehopper had advance warning that the LC was coming, which was why he made him begin the pushups in the first place.

  Rade pumped out the reps, his arms on fire. His pace was roughly half of what it was for the first fifty.

  “Mr. Galaal,” Lieutenant Commander Braggs said. “I’m disappointed in you.”

  Rade continued his pushups, not daring to glance up.

  “Abandoning your brothers to chase an enemy on your own?” Braggs continued. “A leading petty officer. Abandoning his unit. Tell me again why we promoted you?”

  Abandoning...

  Rade felt a sudden swell of tears but he fought them back.

  “You let your men down,” Braggs said. “Left them without a leader. What would have happened if another attack had come when you were gone? Who would have led them, then?”

  Braggs knew very well that any one of them was capable of taking charge, and would have. But he wanted Rade to feel terrible for what he had done. And rightly so.

  “I need to set something straight, for the record,” Braggs continued. “You think we saved you because you’re our brother? You think we came back for you out of some sense of obligation? Because we were going to shed a tear at your absence? Because we’re friends? No, Mr. Galaal. You see, it was in our best interest not to leave you behind. The navy pours millions of dollar
s into each and every spec-ops soldier. In terms of deployment costs, support costs... training, room, board. Add it all up, and you’re five times more expensive than a mech. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rade said, panting.

  “You’re a leading petty officer,” Braggs said. “Now start acting like one, goddamnit. Before I put someone else in your shoes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rade repeated.

  Unfortunately, Braggs took over his punishment at that point, making Rade complete another five hundred pushups, for a total of six hundred reps. When he was done, the LC simply walked from the compartment. Rade hadn’t looked at him once.

  Rade couldn’t lift himself off the deck by himself so Facehopper had to help him back into the bed. Rade lay there, feeling absolutely winded, just gasping for air. He thought he was going to throw up any second.

  “Check him,” the chief told one of the nearby Weaver units.

  The robot whirred to life. “Extreme glycogen depletion in the muscle cells. Hydration levels below minimum. Initiating electrolyte- and glucose-dense fluid transfer.”

  Rade continued to pant raggedly, his throat completely dry. He tried to swallow, but the act only set off a coughing fit.

  After several moments his breathing began to calm and it felt like he wasn’t about to die anymore. He was still slightly nauseous.

  “His body is returning to homeostasis,” the Weaver said in its masculine voice. “He will recover.”

  “Good,” Facehopper said. “You got yourself a valuable piece of navy property here, machine. Make sure his recovery is swift.”

  “Affirmative,” the Weaver answered.

  Still panting slightly, Rade glanced at Facehopper and said: “Thanks.”

  “For what?” Facehopper said. “I told the LC I would handle your punishment and chewing out. Guess he decided he wanted to get his hands dirty, too. Teach the new LPO his boundaries.”

  “No, I deserved it,” Rade said. “I’m lucky he didn’t give my position to someone else. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.” He forced a weak smile.