Allied powers, p.1
Allied Powers, page 1
ALLIED POWERS
©2022 RICK PARTLOW
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CONTENTS
Also in Earth at War
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
Also by Rick Partlow
ALSO IN THE SERIES
FROM THE PUBLISHER
About Rick Partlow
ALSO IN EARTH AT WAR
1st TO FIGHT
PRIMARY TARGETS
RETURN FIRE
ENEMIES & ALLIES
ENEMY FORCES
ALLIED POWERS
1
It was strange how much I loved flying first class.
I’d spent the last couple years travelling faster than light on a ship bigger than the largest skyscraper in the world, dropping down to alien planets in a shuttle that could reach hypersonic speeds. Why would the idea of sitting in a faux-leather seat at the front of a petroleum-fueled jet going below the speed of sound, stuck next to some stuffed shirt reading the Wall Street Journal on the complimentary tablet from the seat pocket in front of us be so alluring?
I’d tried to read, but my favorite genre, science fiction, had suddenly become more along the lines of techno-thriller current events and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief anymore…either to read it or to write it. My agent had left about five hundred messages while I’d been out of the system, begging me to write more books, telling me how much money I could make. Like it mattered. Like any of this mattered.
The morning sun shone through the window, achingly beautiful. I’d seen so many alien suns over so many horizons, but this one called to me in a way none of the others did. It seemed to have a sense of permanence for me. Or it used to. After what I’d seen these last few months, nothing had permanence. I’d seen worlds overrun, civilizations destroyed never to rise again. I’d seen hundreds of millions die in defeat, tens of thousands more die in victory, yet the enemy had felt the losses not at all. They kept coming, inhuman, dispassionate.
I shook the thoughts away and pushed my earbud in, turning on the TV in the back of the seat. It was tuned to a news channel, not one of my favorites and I went to change it reflexively, but the images stopped me. They were videos of the Bugs, taken by the onboard cameras from the helmets of our powered armor.
They didn’t call them Bugs, of course. That was our slang term for them, though I couldn’t remember who’d come up with it. It was a natural enough appellation. They weren’t exactly insectoid, not even really arachnoid, the more scientific-sounding term I’d provided for President Crenshaw. They didn’t resemble any Earth life, though the multiple arms and legs made the bug comparison inevitable. There was no intelligence behind those blackened eyes, no sentience, but the energy weapons they carried were evidence of the intelligence that had gone into their creation.
Hackles rose on my neck and trickles of sweat rolled down the small of my back at the memories the video evoked, and I barely registered what the talking head was saying until the view switched to crowds of protestors jamming a Paris street. French wasn’t my first language, or even my second, but I could make out some of the signs.
No American Space War.
No blood for aliens.
The end is coming.
I couldn’t argue with that third one.
“Panic is building across the world after President Crenshaw’s announcement three days ago of the threat from the arachnoids. With the public just beginning to settle back to some sort of normalcy after the end of the Tevynian War, the specter of war again hangs over not just the United States but the entire world. And the destruction of the Chamblisi homeworld only a few weeks ago has shown that this enemy, unlike the Tevynians, isn’t interested in conquest, only in the utter extinction of all sentient life that crosses its path. According to the President, the Arachnoids aren’t completely sentient, but merely biomechanical drones built by an unknown race in the distant past.”
The view switched from the stylishly-dressed woman to Crenshaw. The man looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days, and not even the Helta rejuvenation treatments could conceal the exhaustion.
“These creatures,” he said, his accent more pronounced when he was tired, “may be some sort of doomsday weapon created for a war tens of thousands of years ago. No one knows, not even the Helta. What we suspect is that the Arachnoids are attracted to the use of the hyperdrive.”
“Shouldn’t we immediately cease all interstellar travel?” one of the gathered crowd of reporters shouted, breaking protocol for a press conference. The new press secretary, a tall, blond woman whose name I couldn’t recall, barked a warning at the unruly reporter, but Crenshaw waved it off.
“If we thought it would do any good, I’d have already given the order. Unfortunately, it seems they’ve already traced the use of the faster-than-light drive all the way to Helta Prime, and cosmologically, that’s right next door.”
“A resolution has already passed the UN General Assembly,” the anchor went on over the frozen image of the President, “condemning the United States for involving the world in something this potentially dangerous and calling for all starships to be handed over to UN forces, to be operated by a consensus of the world’s governments. It was vetoed by the US. But President Crenshaw’s woes aren’t merely with the international community.”
Another face, less pleasant. I knew for a fact that Speaker of the House Sonia Harrel had received the rejuvenation treatments, yet it didn’t seem to have done anything to reverse the various plastic surgery procedures she’d undergone in the past. Her face still looked artificial, her smile frozen in place.
“The President has placed not just America but the entire human race in grave danger by his policies of unilateral engagement with the aliens. This is an extreme emergency and it’s not at all clear that the Crenshaw administration is prepared to deal with it. I have spoken with others in my party leadership and we are prepared to introduce articles of impeachment in the House as soon as this week.”
I snorted, unable to contain the sound, earning a glance from the older man sitting next to me. This was becoming an American political tradition, a rite of passage. How many of the last ten presidents had been impeached?
“As of this moment,” the anchor continued, “there is little support in the Senate for an impeachment, but Harrel says she is confident that once the House has sworn testimony as to what she calls the criminal negligence of the Crenshaw administration, that the votes will be there for conviction.”
I sighed and switched channels to a college football game I didn’t particularly care about, but the guy next to me was still staring at the screen. Texas was down two scores to Oklahoma.
“It’s a bad situation,” he murmured, barely audible over the bland voices of the announcers. I shrugged.
“Neither of ‘em has any chance in the SEC this year, anyway,” I pointed out. “But Coach Stevenson might lose his job if he lets the Sooners blow him out.”
The older, businessman-looking dude scowled at me, obviously unamused.
“We should never have gotten involved in all this nonsense. This business of trusting those weird bear aliens and fighting their wars for them.” He shook his head, the loose skin of his jowls flapping back and forth like the ears of an old hound dog. “I’ve never supported getting involved in the affairs of other nations. Didn’t care for all those foreign wars even when I was young…Iraq, Syria, Venezuela. But at least those were here, on our planet. What good has come of all this?”
I should have said nothing. Every fiber of good sense in my body was screaming that the right thing to do was to simply nod and smile and say nothing. But then there was the rest of me, the part that had spent the last two years killing and bleeding and watching good friends die.
“Shit, I don’t know. Unlimited free energy? Cures for most diseases, including cancer? Extended lifespan? Access to nearly unlimited resources from space? A chance to travel to the fucking stars?” I goggled at him. “None of that sounds good to you?” And even the part of me that was embittered and resentful at the entitled son of a bitch was telling me to stop there, but I was beyond listening to good sense. I plucked out my ear buds, stuffing them in my pocket. “And let’s just say we did what you think we should have, just told the Helta no, told them to go pound sand. You are aware that the Russians and Chinese both had spacecraft on the way to meet the Truthseeker in orbit, and they would have been fighting each other to see who could take the deal first.”
I tilted my head to the side questioningly, waving a hand out the open window at the great, wide world.
“What do you think would have happened then? You think the Russians would have handed out the cure for cancer to the whole world free? You think they would have offered to build fusion reactors in America at cost? Or do you think they would have built themselves some orbital weapons platforms and told the US and Europe where to stick it while they rebuilt the old Soviet Union?” The snorted laugh wouldn’t be contained. “Of course, this being the Russians, they would likely have screwed the whole situation up so badly that the Tevynians would wind up taking over the planet.”
The older dude was turning red and I wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment or anger. But I had to give him credit, he kept his cool and didn’t sputter his answer.
“All that sounds wonderful,” he admitted, “but I don’t know what good fusion power or long life or star travel is going to do us if those Bugs overrun the whole planet and kill us all.”
Which was a better argument and one that was much harder to counter. I slumped back in the seat, not looking at him.
“If we hadn’t woken them up, the Helta would have, or the Tevynians. The signal was there and someone was going to investigate it. At least now, we have a chance to fight back.”
He might have been about to reply, but it was just then that the captain came on the loudspeaker and told us to close all tray tables and put our seats in the upright positions as we were about to land in Austin. We both fell silent, as if that was the gavel in a court case, and I was just as happy for it. I’d been gone for months. I had better things to think about.
“Dad!”
I barely had time to clamber out of the self-driving taxi before Zack slammed into me like a free safety trying to jar the ball loose from a receiver. And damned if he wasn’t the right size for one, too. He was taller than me, now, and he’d put on some muscle since the last time I’d seen him, though his hairstyle and taste in clothes had changed at some point along the way. His hair was still cut short, but now the brown was streaked with blond and his Dallas Cowboys jerseys had given way to the T-shirt from some band I’d never heard of.
“Hey, bud,” I told him, pulling him into a hug with one arm while I slid my bag off the backseat of the car with the other. I spared an elbow to shove the door closed and the old Chevy hummed away before I’d stepped three feet away from the wheels. “Sorry it’s been so long. They kept us all on the ship for a couple days after we arrived, then we had four full days of debriefs.”
I slipped an arm around him and walked back toward the house. It was a nice house. Paul Franklin had done very well for himself in real estate and, as a consequence, owned quite a lot of his own product, including this two-acre estate in suburban Austin and a scenic ranch property in Swan Valley, Idaho. He and Allie looked good together, which took some effort for me to admit, even having remarried…and both looked better than the last time I’d seen them.
“Hey guys,” I said, waving. “Don’t tell me…you two finally did the rejuvenation treatment?”
Paul shrugged, seeming embarrassed about the whole thing, but Allie laughed as she kissed me on the cheek.
“We had you as a Guinea pig,” she told me. “It hasn’t given you ass cancer or made you grow a third eye yet, so we figured we were safe.”
“Mom talked him into it,” Zack confided in me, his sotto voce whisper not quiet enough for Allie to miss it, and she slapped him playfully on the shoulder.
“Tattle-tale.” Allie shrugged, as if internally debating whether or not to tell me. “The honest truth is, I started developing rheumatoid arthritis a couple years ago, and when I heard the Helta shot would cure that…well, I couldn’t say no.”
“And I couldn’t let her wait for me to die of old age,” Paul interjected, kissing his wife on the cheek before offering me a hand, “and then go find some younger model. How’ve you been, Andy?”
His grip was firm and I no longer felt the need to test my strength against his every time we met. Progress.
“I…” I was about to say I was fine, but my assigned military psych counselor had advised me that burying and denying trauma wasn’t a good idea. “I have seen better days,” I admitted. “You’d think traveling halfway across the galaxy and meeting a bunch of strange, alien races would be fun, but this time, not so much.”
“Come on in,” Allie urged. “I’ll grab you a Diet Coke.”
I would have been just as happy staying outside. It was about seventy-five degrees and sunny, a perfect October day, and I’d spent most of the last several months on a starship, but I didn’t want to seem churlish, so I let them drag me in. I didn’t ask Zack any questions about his life because we’d had the opportunity to talk during my enforced quarantine in orbit, even if the conversation had a five-second delay from my end to allow government censors to make sure I didn’t reveal anything they wanted kept secret.
“Was it bad?” Zack asked me as I settled into one of the chairs around the kitchen table. Their kitchen was bigger than the living room of the Vegas house I’d sold after Julie and I had gotten married. “I know you couldn’t say much before…”
“A lot of people died.” I took a twelve-ounce can from Allie and cracked it open. It wasn’t the first soft drink I’d had since returning, but it still tasted like heaven. “Not as many as we lost in the Tevynian War, but a lot more than we expected to.”
“Is…” Paul stopped and tried again, seemingly at a loss for words, which didn’t happen to the man very often. “This situation with the Arachnoids…should we think about taking some time off and heading to Swan Valley?”
They’d done it before, back when the Tevynians hit us and the Russian “mercenaries” had hit our major cities, just pulled up stakes and gone to ground at the ranch. It was a nice setup—I’d been there, since. Had its own well with a windmill pump, solar power, Starlink and an honest-to-God bomb shelter.
I shook my head.
“Too early to think about that. We don’t know when the Bugs will come, or even if. Every time we’ve tried to guess their next move, we’ve been wrong. It could be weeks, months, years. Not worth pulling Zack out of school. But…” I shrugged. “Maybe I’d consider heading there for Thanksgiving.” I waved at the TV, which was, as always in Paul’s house, tuned to one of the news networks, the sound turned down. “Besides, the election’s coming up pretty soon. You’re big into politics, Paul. I wouldn’t think you’d want to miss that.”
