Warrior: Interface: The Singularity War, #2

By David Hallquist

Falling Back to Earth...

 

Brandt Wills tried to prevent a final cataclysmic war between Terra and Luna. He failed. Now he's falling back to the totalitarian world of his birth, but he's not alone. With advanced cybernetics, the AI computer ghost of Sharron, and a partly-tamed alien symbiont, he might even have a chance. All he has to do is land behind enemy lines, fight his way into the fortress-towers of the State of Terra, and find the location of the hidden laboratories of Singularity before the final war wipes all life from two worlds.

 

Oh, yeah, then he has to break into one of the hidden laboratories to find out what's inside of him and how to get it out. If that's even possible. Not only are the laboratories hidden, though, they are also well defended by troops armed with railguns, plasma weapons, and self-propelled grenades. And those are just the weapons Brandt knows about.

 

And, if all of that weren't difficult enough, he's now on the radar for the other players in the system. Venus would love to control him, and Saturn and Jupiter are moving forces into place to capture him. Will Brandt be able to unlock the mysteries of the alien symbiont in time, or will he become just another science experiment for Singularity or one of the planets?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theogony Books
• Release date: Nov 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781648550355

Book preview

Prologue: Opening Shot

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I’m the opening shot against Terra.

Darkness is all around me once more as I float inside the shell fired at Earth from the largest rail gun in the Solar System. The darkness is familiar. I’ve spent so much of my life in darkness, and now it welcomes me back, soothing me to relax, to sleep, to forget. But I can’t forget the horrors of the past as I’m driven on for one last battle. I’m going home.

Earth was my home, where I was born and abandoned, and where I learned to survive on my own. The State of Terra was my only family—father and brother, friend and foe. They trained me to kill, and I’ve lost track of how many I’ve killed for Terra. Now I’m coming to kill them.

Nothing can wash away all the blood, but I find myself here again, drawn back to violence, drawn back by gravity to Earth once more. Will I ever be free of it? Do I want to be?

The war started on Luna, and that was my fault, too.

The State of Terra implanted the monster, their symbiont, into human lab-rats, including me. If I hadn’t survived and been their success, or if I’d been able to save the others and shut down their nightmare lab, it might have stopped then. The failure, the guilt, burns like acid. I couldn’t save the others, but I did find out that an outfit called Singularity was behind it all. Their goal was simple and ancient; they would be as gods.

To cover it all up, they tried to destroy the hospital where it all went down and then tried to capture me, their only surviving subject. Should I have just given up? I didn’t know they’d start a war just to capture me. Maybe I could have saved the thousands now dead, and the millions or billions yet to come.

It’s too late to stop it now. Terran forces attacked a Lunar hospital, shot down a passenger spacecraft, and nuked a refinery station. It takes a lot to get the Lunars riled, but their blood is up now. The war has already begun...and I’m the opening shot against Terra.

The dead rebuke me across space. You killed us...why didn’t you die instead of us? For some reason, I just can’t seem to die. I survived the underground street life in the Terran cities and ended up as one of the best of Terran Special Security back home. Then came the monster, a bioweapon that rebuilds me and adapts my body to whatever danger I’m facing—and will also take me over and destroy me if I ever relax my control. The Lunar cybernetics that Lunar Intelligence installed for my mission made me a one-man army, and it houses the artificial intelligence Sharron.

The three of us fall toward Earth at over two and a half kilometers a second. I’m in the bullet, a two-meter hollow shell slowly arcing through space. The weapon isn’t the bullet, though, but me—and the monster.

The monster...even now I can feel it waiting to strike, to take me over and remake me into a thing. Its fibers and tendrils run throughout my body; no one can remove them. It makes me stronger, faster, and nearly impossible to kill, but it’s killing me while doing so...and turning me into it. The Lunars didn’t want me and this thing on the Moon, and Terra will never stop until they get it back again. So I’ve got to go back...to Terra.

Sharron helps me keep the monster in check, helps keep me sane. Is she a ghost, a memory, a computer? Maybe all three. She was dangerous when she was alive, running the Lunar underground in Hades, and now, downloaded into a Lunar Intelligence computer core programmed with the latest Lunar warfare systems and integrated into my military-grade cybernetics, she’s beyond deadly. She’s my necessary partner in my mission.

My mission is to stop Singularity. Right now, they’re trying to make more like me—monsters. People controlled by symbionts, cybernetics, or neural conditioning to be the perfect soldiers. The rest of the war could go either way, but if Singularity isn’t stopped, they’ll remake the entire Solar System into whatever they want. Whoever wins, it won’t matter if Singularity isn’t stopped.

Sharron appears, seeming to float in the darkness, long black hair drifting loosely, and dark eyes as deep as space. The image is computer-generated and false; the person behind the image was real.

Brandt, she says, we’re about to impact Earth.

* * * * *

Part One: Starfall

Chapter One

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I’m going to hit the Earth fast enough to kill a normal man. I’ve been expecting death at any moment for days now—death from radiation, death from suffocation, death from a micro-meteorite or dust particle, or death from the Terran Defense Network coming to their senses and destroying all cargo capsules launched from Luna.

Why did they let me through? They started this war, and anything could be in these last few capsules launched toward Earth, bombs, bioweapons, or hostile machines. I guess it’s greed. Terra is dependent on Luna for a lot of the high-end stuff, so they figured the risk was worth it.

Cargo is normally covered in impact and thermal foam to survive the landing. No one could be expected to survive this unprotected. So they won’t be expecting me.

The shell begins to shudder slightly as it enters the atmosphere.

Sharron, I think to her, where are we going to hit? I suppose I could say land, but I’m moving at close to meteor speeds here.

The Maxwell Cannon was targeting the South Atlantic, she replies. The capsules use drag to slow down, then recovery ships pick up the capsule from the ocean once they hit.

Right. So I’m gonna have company soon. I brace myself at the forward end. If the landing knocks me out, wake me up before anyone cracks this can open.

The shuddering grows into a strong shaking, and a low rumble vibrates through the shell. It starts to get warm at the front, then the hull becomes hot to the touch.

Suddenly, I’m slammed into the front of the capsule. The rumble has become a deep roar and the entire capsule shakes violently. I’m completely pressed into a ball, unable to move, and I see stars in the darkness as I fight to stay awake and breathe.

Sharron’s saying...something. She overlays an image in my sight, fins spreading out from the cylinder and an umbrella spreading out from the front of the cylinder. The heat shield and drogue systems must have deployed. Not long now.

It gets worse. The roaring thunder drowns out everything, and the shaking feels like it would break my neck if my bones weren’t reinforced. It’s like an oven now; sweat just disappears, and my skin begins to burn. My weight goes up and up. I stop breathing, unable to raise my chest now that a truck is sitting on it. Darkness calls at the edge of consciousness, offering to take me away from the pain and fear. I can’t; I have to stay awake. If I black out, I might never wake up again.

The world flashes white with pain as I’m slammed down again. The roar turns into a high-pitched shriek, jarring through my bones. The drogue chute must have deployed.

Not long now. I just need to stay awake a little longer. Cybernetics keep me alive, keeping my heart going, infusing oxygen into my blood, and keeping my brain awake with drugs and electric impulses. How much of my thinking is me, and how much is the machine in my brain?

My past races by, all the failures, the violence, and the shame. If I die here now, would it be enough? No. I have to live. I have to try to make it right, somehow.

The braking engines fire. All sound is blasted away by an apocalyptic roar, and I’m crushed down even more. My heart stops beating, and my bones try to force themselves out of their sockets. Alarms go off in my head—Sharron’s warning me that I’m exceeding the design specs for my cyberware.

I’m struggling to stay awake, to stay alive, when the capsule hits the ocean, and the deep black of unconsciousness washes over me, pulling me into the depths.

* * * * *

Chapter Two

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Light and blurry motion wake me. No sense of feeling yet; the pain will come later. Sharron’s yelling at me. It must be important, but my brain is still trying to recover.

My vision grows clearer, and I see the open hatch with sunlight streaming in past a man’s head and shoulders. Hands reach down and grab me, hauling me up into the blinding light.

Every sense is trying to scream at me at once—the sounds and scent of the sea, sunlight on my skin, the rolling sense of motion from the waves. All things of Earth now feel alien and strange to me.

Vision clears. Bright golden sunlight streams down from the sky. Instinctively, I worry about radiation, and then remember that the atmosphere protects me. A sky of brilliant deep blue with no stars seems bizarre and unnatural. The capsule rolls in the gray sea, heavy waves pitching it wildly about. Water, so precious on Luna, stretches off endlessly to the horizon in rolling hills of gray. A man in bright orange coveralls is hauling me out of the capsule. Above us, a great gray ship has a crane hanging overhead with a cable leading down to the capsule.

Sound roars in. The thunder of the waves, the cries of the circling birds, and the low sighs of the ocean winds all come in. The man holding me is screaming at me and slapping my face, but I can’t put the words together yet.

Then, meaning. Sharron screams, Brandt! I’m bringing your cybernetics back online one system at a time. I’m having to split the systems between repairing your body and keeping the symbiont from rebuilding you into something else. Oh. So that’s why I’m crippled.

Meanwhile, the man screaming at me is demanding to know what I’ve done with the cargo in the pod. Hmmm-nummm-humm, I answer him. He repeats his question. Mhurrrmm-lummm-rhurm, I explain reasonably.

The capsule lurches out of the water, and I manage to grab onto the cable. We rise from the ocean, and the world spins around us as the capsule rotates. The capsule swings about, nearly tossing me into the ocean, but I manage to hang onto the edge of the capsule.

Once we’re over the metal deck of the ship, I fall off the capsule and roll across the deck. I’m shaking as I rise to my knees and convulse with dry heaves.

I’m nearly helpless as Sharron and the monster fight to rebuild me. Good thing I didn’t land near any hostiles.

I look up past the boots surrounding me into a semi-circle of weapon muzzles pointed at me.

* * * * *

Chapter Three

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It takes two men to drag me off. I wish it was because I could fight, but they need to drag me because my legs won’t work.

As they drag me across the deck, I feel like I’ve been transported back in time. This ship looks like some kind of primitive antique—decks of actual steel rather than carbon fiber, little round windows of glass rather than artificial diamond, and the whole thing floats by displacement rather than magnetic repulsion. I feel like the spaceman who has fallen among primitives, but these are my people; this is my home. The shame burns. We Terrans have fallen so far behind. If I hadn’t been to Luna, I’d never know how far.

They throw me into a bare metal room and toss in a bucket. One dim flickering light overhead shows me the room—rust-stained white paint peeling off metal walls, pipes and wires bolted in place, and a few cans of chemicals in a box actually made from dead plant matter of all things.

Git me a sammich, I mumble. I’ve been in that capsule more than two days. They ignore me, and the door groans on rusty hinges as they slam it shut.

As I lay there, I begin the battle for control of my life. The monster has kept me alive during the long trip, helping me conserve energy and repairing my body. Then, it went into a dormant state. Not anymore. Now, all the damage is waking it up; tendrils are growing and moving painfully under my skin, and it’s dissolving parts of my body to change into new, twisted forms. Sharron’s been keeping it partly suppressed with chemicals and nano she released into my system, but too much of that will kill me.

Now, it’s up to me. I take a deep, painful breath, and focus. The pain is everywhere now. Icy pinpricks of agony, spreading tendrils of searing flame, and the bone-deep misery of my body fighting a losing battle against an invader. We lock wills. I can feel the feral hunger of the thing, mindless and savage. It’ll devour the world if it can. I keep focusing on it, mind over body. My mind over its body, making it mine. I control my breathing, my heart rate, my blood pressure. I can control it. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. It’s an animal; I’m a man.

I don’t know how long I lay there wrestling with the monster, soaked in sweat, occasionally wracked with convulsions. When I’m done, I’m panting and sitting up, wiping my brow. I won again, for now.

Sharron, I think at her, how about we get out of here? What’s security like?

Her image appears next to me, beautiful as ever, and now in a space-black Lunar Navy uniform. She makes anything look good. "Brandt, this is the recovery vessel El Dorado—hydrocarbon and electric-powered, if you can believe it. Crew of 8, and almost no automation. It was easy enough to hack into the computers, primitive as they are, but it won’t help much. Almost nothing is controlled by the ship’s computer; almost everything is done by hand. So that hatch over there? Locked by a metal bar lowered over the outside. Nothing I can do. As for guards, the captain has broken out the arms locker with the war on. You have chemical projectile firearms in the hands of men with little training; it’s not much of a threat."

Sharron, I ask as I stand, stretching, what about beyond the ship? Have they contacted their controllers? What’s the status of the war?

Very little information there, Brandt, she replies. All kinds of Lunar countermeasures and jamming going on. No radio is going anywhere. Only direct laser or cable-based communications are getting through, and neither of those apply to this ship. We’re all on our own here.

Good. I go through a few practice moves of Method Alpha, the martial art of the Terran Special Security. That’ll make this easier.

I get to the side of the room as footsteps approach. Are they coming to shoot me?

The door slams open, and three objects are thrown into the room. I hit the deck before I realize what they are—a set of orange coveralls, a bottle of water, and a wrapped sandwich. Two minutes. The captain wants to speak with you! he bellows, then slams the door shut again.

I devour the sandwich. The monster and my cybernetics will handle any toxins. I’ve never had a sandwich so good. The meat’s greasy, the bread is stale, and the cheese moldy, but it’s pure heaven. The water goes down in one pull, and then the coveralls go on. Sharron, I think as I button up, any transmitters in the clothes?

Just the usual Citizen Tracker Chip. I’ve already taken it over and can cancel it at any time.

The metal door groans open once more. Come with us, two men command.

* * * * *

Chapter Four

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I’m surrounded by hyper-paranoid men as we walk down the hallway. It’s just like old times. More than the air or the gravity, it’s the ever-present state of fear that tells me I’m home.

They bring me out onto the deck. The afternoon sunlight is muted somewhat by clouds gathering near the horizon. Looks like a storm is coming tonight. The weather satellites are no help, everything’s still being jammed.

The captain is wearing an orange uniform that’s less dirty and greasy, looks like it actually fits him, and has a small cap with an insignia. He’s basically wearing a slightly nicer prison uniform in the vast open-air prison that is the State of Terra. The man himself has let his facial hair grow to protect his face from the brutal ocean weather, but it does nothing to hide the weariness and despair. I can smell the alcohol and other drugs on him easily, though he probably thinks the scented stuff he splashes on hides it.

Captain. I straighten and nod.

You’ve got a lot of questions to answer, he begins, furrowing his brow and sweating in the cold air. He’s worried. The big one is, what happened to the cargo in the capsule? He should be worried. Everyone’s got quotas, and every boss skims part off the top here. If he can’t meet their demands, he might go to the bottom of the ocean some night.

There wasn’t any cargo in the capsule, Captain, I answer bluntly. They’ve stopped loading cargo, and the shipments have come to a stop. It’s the war. There won’t be any more shipments until after all this is done. I see his face collapse. His current job, maybe his future or his life, is gone. Later, he’ll realize the upcoming war means he’s likely dead anyway. I just barely stowed away on the last capsule out of Luna; it’s not a good place to be a Terran these days.

Wait a minute. He pauses, scratching his beard. If you snuck in from Luna...how do I know you’re not a Lunar?

Captain... I sigh. I’m obviously not a Lunar, but he’s dangerously close to the fact that I’m an agent of Lunar Intelligence. Do I look like a Lunar? I ask, slowly spreading my arms. I look like I could tear the nearest man in half. I’m not a seven-foot-tall, skinny, albino bean-pole. Sharron appears, looking outraged. She might have been a criminal in another life, but she loves her home. I’m not getting squashed by normal gravity, with a frail, delicate frame. A sailor begins to smile and grin; propaganda about the weakness of Lunars is everywhere on Terra. Oh, no! The Sun is burning me with radiation! Gasp! Open sky! I’ll suffocate! I cringe and shake in mock terror. The sailors and the captain laugh.

Brandt! Sharron fumes, her image stamping over. What are you doing?

Saving our lives, I think back.

Her image crosses her arms and disappears. Well, that’ll be a fun argument later.

The captain stops laughing. If you stowed away on that capsule, and now you’ve stowed away on my ship...

Sorry, Captain. I’d have died on Luna if I hadn’t left. I’m glad he doesn’t know about the acceleration involved in those capsules, or he’d wonder how come I was alive at all. I’ll work my passage, clean the ship, repairs, painting, anything you need. I’ll do all the worst jobs.

What about when we get back in? the captain asks.

As I thought, they haven’t been able to report what they’ve recovered from the capsules; the Lunar jamming is too good. So Terran Special Security doesn’t know that a capsule with a man landed in the ocean. It’s a lucky break. Look, with the war on, they’ve got all kinds of other problems to worry about. When we get into port, I’ll go over the side, and you don’t need to worry about anything.

Hmmm... The captain rubs his beard, considering. Right now he’s probably trying to figure out how to get that