The Star Chronicles: Book 01 - Battle for Earth Read online

  THE STAR CHRONICLES

  BOOK I

  BATTLE FOR EARTH

  ROD PORTER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  Text Copyright © 2012 by Rod Porter

  Cover Art Copyright © 2012 by Rod Porter

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-0-9884034-0-6(trade)

  ISBN 978-0-9884034-1-3 (ebook)

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book is dedicated to my family: my father for his guidance, his encouragement, and his selfless devotion to his son, his daughter, and his wife; to my mother for her support, her wisdom, her love, and for instilling in me a creative wonder that has allowed me to view the world in a way that would otherwise be impossible; to my sister for being my best friend and constant motivator; to Sang for being my guardian angel; to Joanie and Joe for always being there; to Jimmy and Joan for their love and support; to Darren, Becca, and my three amigos; and to Nik and JJ. Without all of you none of this would have been possible.

  Special thanks to Deborah Wise for her influence on me as a writer, for her friendship, and for her invaluable input on the first draft.

  Special thanks to Nathan Owens for his beautiful cover art; to Terrence Judge for his intricate cover illustrations, and Heather McHale for her red pen.

  “Someone may have stolen your dream when it was young and fresh and you were innocent. Anger is natural. Grief is appropriate. Healing is mandatory. Restoration is possible. “ - Jane Rubietta

  Prologue

  Once, the Earth had been beautiful. Grass, trees, healthy soil able of supporting plant life. Beaches, forests, sprawling hills of green. Humanity, it seemed, had been blessed with its very own paradise. But the nature of man proved the undoing of their home world. Slowly but surely, man began to destroy itself and its planet. Pollution, deforestation, war: it was not long before man entered a new chapter in its saga of self-destruction and violence.

  The nuclear war was the breaking point, the final act in mankind’s long history of anarchy. Yet, after the fires of the nuclear war had reduced the Earth to a desolate wasteland, something happened that the human race could not control.

  The aliens descended from the skies two months after humanity had ravaged the planet with nuclear weapons. There were no organized civilizations to stop the invaders, no powerful militaries to fend them off. For the nuclear holocaust had destroyed the powerful armies that humanity once had at its disposal. With no significant resistance, the aliens conquered Earth in two days and launched a campaign to exterminate or enslave every human being on the planet.

  That was thirty years ago…

  INTERROGATION

  “No!”

  Troy jolted awake from a terrible nightmare. Lying back down on the mattress, he rubbed his eyes, cursing. He became aware of a foul smell, filling his nostrils with the scent of what he was not sure, like rotted food, or the decaying carcass of an animal. It was probably a dead rat, though their smell was not usually this strong.

  Then Troy realized that he was not in the underground tent city that had been his home for so long. He could see nothing. The room was pitch dark. The softness of his bed had been replaced by what felt like a cold concrete slab, which explained the ache in his lower back and neck. When he reached his hands upward in front of him, his palms met what felt like more concrete. It felt flat and smooth, almost as if it had been sanded. Troy began to panic as he realized he was encased between layers of concrete so constricting that he could not even turn on his side.

  “Hello?”

  He froze in terror as he realized that the aliens had in fact captured him. Was he in a cell? Was he being preserved? Had they buried him alive?

  Troy wondered if he was on one of the invaders’ spaceships. No one had ever seen one. He wanted to cry out for his long-dead mother, and he desperately wanted his wife. Kara’s face and voice would have been like a refreshing wave, chasing away the stress and fear as she held his head in her arms and he inhaled that intoxicating aroma that her hair always carried. The tears began to form. Desperation grew as he tried to see something—anything—familiar. “Hello? Where am I?” he muttered pitifully. “Is anyone there? Kara? Kara?”

  Troy began to get drowsy. Partially grateful, he drifted off into a deep sleep.

  Troy went through the same experience at least five more times before he lost count. Each repetition magnified his terror and his deteriorating grip on reality. He tried to imagine the things he wanted to see, hear, and smell, but with each turn, it only got more difficult. After what he thought was the sixth time, he began screaming in frustration, partly just to be able to hear something. The pattern of waking and sleeping and waking was beginning to hurt his head, and the sensory deprivation was pushing his psyche in dangerous directions.

  Physically, he was completely numb. His legs had gone cold and his body went through painful spasms and tingles. Eventually Troy grew tired of screaming; he was so exhausted.

  “You have me!” he screamed to his apparent captors. He was spent from yelling and beginning to lose his voice. Now he had been reduced to spells of quiet stammering. “Please, please. Please let me out. Where am I? I don’t know where I am. Someone must know how I get out. Where’s the exit? I don’t…” Finally, he fell asleep again.

  Whatever was pressed against Troy’s head was cold. His mind felt like mush. His senses were so deprived that he was not even sure what position he was in anymore. When his legs twitched, he realized that he could feel them. Not only could he feel his legs, but he felt the rest of his body. Then he thought that he must be mistaken. It had to be his mind playing tricks with him again.

  Although he didn’t know it, Troy was sitting in a chair. Refusing to open his eyes, he brought his hands to his face and scratched the unkempt stubble beard that had been itching for the past few days or weeks or however the hell long he had been in this state. Eyes still closed, he began to shake his head and mutter to himself.

  It wasn’t until he smelled food that his head and his hands froze. He opened his eyes to the sweet sight of a plate filled with scrambled eggs. A tall glass of orange juice rested beside the plate, and another glass filled with ice water was beside it. Troy’s heart beat faster when he noticed the two sausage links on top of the eggs. The dim light hurt his eyes, but he had never beheld such a beautiful sight in his life.

  The eggs were a radiant healthy yellow with slivers of white, and the smell of the sausages made his mouth and eyes water. Just as he reached for the plate, a painfully bright light blinded him. He shielded his eyes with his hands. When the light went out and the room was dim once again, he was horrified to see just a lone glass of water. He grabbed the glass with a quickness he did not know he possessed and chugged it as fast as he could, much of it spilling down his beard and neck. Then the light flashed back on and he knew he had dropped the glass because he heard it shatter. The sound of breaking glass was magnified. As though a massive chandelier had fallen, all the crystals chiming their individual harmonic tune. Troy was relieved at the satisfaction he felt from hearing the first real sound he had heard in an eternity.

  “Where do you come from?”

  He could not be sure, but Troy thought the voice came from the other side of the l
ight. The words were English, but it did not sound human. It was digitally altered. The dialect was perfect, the delivery was perfect, but it was much too deep to be produced by natural human vocal chords.

  “Where do you come from?” it repeated.

  The voice was loud and had an unsettling echo. “Hello,” Troy said meekly. “Who are you? Where am I?” Troy managed speech, but it was surprisingly difficult. The mysterious voice was harsh on his ears and the bright light impaired his vision.

  “No – No – No,” came the methodical reply.

  Troy was baffled. “No? No what?”

  There was no change in the delivery as it again asked: “Where do you come from?”

  Troy realized that his waist and ankles were chained to a metal table that was in front of him. He was desperate to make the voice stop. He attempted an answer. “Colony of the Hanged Caverns section four.”

  The light shut off. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Troy saw a rectangular mirror in the wall in front of him. Clearly, whatever was on the opposite side did not want to be seen. Troy broke the uneasy silence. “Why does it matter where I’m from?”

  “No – No – No.”

  “No what? What the hell are you talking about?” Troy sighed in pitiful exhaustion.

  “You have a wife.”

  “What?” Something inside him told him to lie. “No, I don’t.”

  “You do.”

  Troy could not hold it in. “Where is she?” he blurted out, pulling on the chains and starting to sob. Then he gathered himself. “If you did anything to her, you’ll wish you never came to this planet.”

  The room erupted with deep echoing laughter.

  Thoughts of Kara in danger momentarily nullified his fear. “I’m not kidding.”

  There was a sudden explosion of pulsating bright light, accompanied by an earsplitting screeching tone that made Troy cover his ears. Then came the booming voice. It carried an undertone of animosity and disgust. “You will not survive!”

  Troy was acquiring a massive headache. Everything turned black and he passed out.

  The torture and abuse continued for weeks. He woke up in that awful interrogation room most of the time, while the aliens toyed with him from the opposite side of the one-way mirror. The tactic of using food to play mind games continued. They played to all his physical and mental desires: food, drink, sex. They even changed temperatures in the room, forcing him to wear thick wool garments in extreme heat and next to nothing in the bitter cold.

  On certain days they would flood the room with water, as motivation to cooperate, but mostly just to terrify him. They asked him what he knew about the locations of other underground colonies. They asked about his knowledge of all aspects of the human race. The most frequent question, though, was ‘Where do you come from?’, and Troy guessed he must not have answered correctly. The former United States. Earth. But the question still was put forward a few times every session.

  The interrogations always ended with his losing consciousness.

  “Hey. Wake up. Wake up, man.”

  Troy felt something poke him. He heard the voice, but he was afraid to open his eyes. He had spent weeks waking to nothing but misery and despair. But he had never been awakened by an authentic human voice. The poking continued.

  “Wake up,” the voice repeated.

  “Is he dead?” asked a second. It was much higher than the other. “Sometimes they crack, don’t they?”

  “Better off dead, you ask me,” said a third. “His mind’s probably mush anyway. From the looks of it, those cockroaches worked him over somethin’ awful.”

  The original voice returned. “You could be right. I’ve never heard of anyone being out this long.”

  Troy finally sat up. Everything was blurred, but he could make out three human figures.

  Tommy was a cynical guy. Granted, the times were pretty dark, but it was just the way he was, even before the downfall. He had the demeanor of a swashbuckling pirate that one might have read about in stories of old. At six three and two hundred forty pounds, he was a little overweight, but he was very tough. Two thick scars on the left side of his face had been attained in knife fights. “It’s alive,” he said. “Probably shoulda done him a favor and punched his ticket.”

  “Shut up, Tommy.” The high-pitched voice belonged to a young boy named Mickey. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, which contributed to his passive nature and naïve outlook. Compassion was not much use to anyone anymore, but that was just how Mickey was wired. His mother had been taken from him when the plague-the aliens-liquidated their neighborhood. His father had been already dead. Mickey had hidden under the bed in a compartment he and his family had constructed underneath the floor. When they came, the aliens had found his mother’s hiding spot behind the closet. He remembered lifting the panel up from under the floor and seeing her body hit the ground in front of him. She looked up at him for what would be the last time. Mickey could never erase the image of his mother when she was dragged away. She had reached out for him as she had been pulled through the bedroom door by her ankles. The look in her bulging dark eyes haunted him always.

  Gradually, Troy’s vision returned. He was still exhausted, and his throat was bone dry. “Water,” he managed to say.

  “Ha ha! Where do you think you are, some fancy hotel? Listen, when you call room service, make sure to order me a bowl of ice cream and a ham sandwich.”

  “You are such an asshole, Tommy,” Mickey said.

  Troy leaned back against the hard stone wall. “Where am I?”

  “Hell.” Jackson hopped off his cot and walked over to Troy. He handed him a small cup of water. “My name is Jackson. Drink this.”

  Tommy jumped down off of his top cot as well. “What are you doing? That’s the last of our stash, Jacks.”

  Jackson fixed Tommy with a sharp look. Troy was surprised at the impact the look had on Tommy. Tommy was not a whiny little schoolyard bully; he was a big guy who didn’t take crap from anyone. Jackson had to be a man of some weight. Either that or one crazy SOB.

  “He’s our cell-mate now. We look after him,” Jackson said. Then he looked at Troy. “That goes both ways. You remember that.”

  With Jackson’s help, Troy gimped across the room to a set of bunk beds. Mickey clearly occupied the bottom bunk. He had crude ripped blankets that served as makeshift curtains he could close to give him privacy in his bottom bunk, but he immediately tore them down to make room for Troy. “Here, you take the bottom.” Mickey excitedly jumped off the bed. “I don’t think you’ll be climbing up and down anything for a bit. Oh, silly me. I’m sure you’d like privacy. I’ll reattach these sheet-curtains. I use them mostly so I don’t have to see Tommy’s ugly face. Being unattractive is mostly why he acts like an idiot. Ow!”

  Tommy had thrown a metal cup at the back of Mickey’s head. “Don’t you ever shut up? I’m gonna suffocate you with your pillow one of these days. I shoulda never saved your ass from the sweethearts in the showers. Be a lot quieter in here.” Tommy was lounging comfortably on his top bunk watching Jackson and Mickey help Troy onto the bottom.

  The feeling of a soft mattress was a joy for Troy. “Thank you.”

  Mickey perked up with the excitement of helping his new friend. Mickey had never really had any friends before he came here. “Oh, don’t worry. You don’t have to thank us. Especially that scarred-up barrel-assed moron over there.” Mickey dodged the second cup Tommy threw at him.

  Jackson seemed genuinely concerned for Troy.

  “Get some rest. We’ll talk later.”

  “No, I haven’t talked with anyone in a while. We can talk now.”

  Jackson was indifferent. “Okay.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Damned if I know, to be honest,” said Jackson. Jackson had a hardness to his personality that made him seem cold. It was obvious that they were in a terrible place, but that did not seem to weigh heavily enough on his mind. He seemed solid as a rock. Nothing c
ould bother him or get under his skin. Troy suspected that people listened to what he had to say. It was hard to tell what he was thinking.

  “About all that’s for sure is we’re in an alien prison camp,” Jackson continued.

  Looking through the bars of their cell, Troy was mortified to see rows and rows and floors upon floors of cell blocks just like theirs. He stood up and walked over to the bars. “My God. There must be hundreds of us in here.”

  Tommy never missed an opportunity to dampen the mood. “Not the best thing to wake up to, is it?”

  “How long have you all been here?”

  “We’re not sure about that either,” said Jackson with a sense of regret that surprised Troy.

  “We’ve been here a long time-uh. Hey, what’s your name? You can call me Mick.”

  “Name’s Troy.”

  Jackson walked over to the cot and sat next to Troy. “Mostly we just rot in here. When we’re not here, they use us for slave labor. We work in their factories helping construct their weapons and machines; sentinels and such. If we’re not working the factories, the aliens use us to help build structures and buildings. In the grand scheme, we have learned a good deal about the aliens from being here.”

  “Have you ever seen one?” asked Troy.

  “No one has,” Mickey chimed in. “I don’t know if I’d want to either. But I’m pretty sneaky being so little. Maybe one day I’ll catch a glimpse.”

  “They’d probably bump you off,” Tommy said. “A guy can dream, can’t he?”

  “Troy, where are you from?” Jackson asked.

  “A colony called Marshdown in what used to be the Hanged Caverns. We were raided. I had a wife. She was pregnant.”

  Jackson understood. “I’ve lost family too.”