Stargods by Ian Douglas (best summer books TXT) 📕

Anna White was the White House Director of Communications. “Yes, Mr. President?”

“We need an open global channel, every national leader you can nail down, and we need it now!”

“That will take some time, Mr. President.”

“Trust me, every leader on this planet is watching what’s going on up there. They’ll be expecting this call.”

“Right away, Mr. President.”

Walker continued watching the inflowing flood of information.

Surrender. It was the only option.

Surrender, before it was too late.

Lieutenant Michael Cordell

VFA-427, The Renegades

Mars Orbit

1308 hours, FST

“This is Ren Seven! Ren Seven! It’s got me! I’m breaking u—”

“Watch it, Ren Leader! Don’t get too close!”

“Renegades, CIC! That opening is their weak spot! See if you can mass up and send a few nukes straight down their throat!”

“CIC, Renegade Leader.” Forsley’s voice was tight, grim. “You are aware that that’s the muzzle of a fucking gun?”

Cordell swung his Starblade around until he was pointed directly into the gaping maw of that alien weapon. If the Nungiesdecided to fire the thing now, he wouldn’t even be a stain on the surface of the rock that hit him.

Radar and lidar indicated that the bore of that tunnel was deep, that it very nearly ran through the entire 250-kilometer diameter of the planetoid spaceship. The aliens evidently knewhow to manipulate and project gravitational forces of unimaginable power, enabling them to reach out and crush attacking shipsat a range of several thousand kilometers. The technology also, it would seem, allowed them to take chunks of rock and acceleratethem to relativistic speeds up the bore of that titanic cannon.

They could bombard the Earth until its entire surface was a single glowing, lava ocean.

His sensors could pick up nothing down that hole that he could target. He released a swarm of Krait missiles and hoped forthe best.

Around him, other Starblades of several squadrons maneuvered for position, seeking to drop their own warloads into the depthsof the cavern. Nungiirtok defenses were sporadic; the mass bombardment by Yorktown’s squadrons had eliminated a number of gravitic projectors in the enemy’s defensive weaponry, reducing their volume of fire.

But far too many of the attacking fighters had been slashed out of the sky. And those that were left were fast running lowon the nuclear warheads in their inventories.

Light flared deep within the cave as Cordell yanked his fighter in a long, low trajectory scant meters above the rocky surfaceof the planetoid.

“Renegade Three, Ren Leader.”

“Ren Three. Go ahead.”

“Be advised there’s a Marine landing party close to your position . . . bearing three-five-niner relative. Don’t run them down!”

“Copy that, Renegade Leader. I have them on my screen.”

What the hell did the Marines hope to accomplish down here? The icons on his fighter’s sensor screens showed three Mk. IIRavens settling onto the surface less than fifty kilometers away.

“Ren Three, we’re picking up small craft that might be enemy fighters approaching the Marine beachhead. You’re closest. Popover there and give them some cover.”

“Copy that, Ren Leader.”

He shifted his fighter’s course to comply.

Behind him, space twisted and snapped, as a second hundred-meter rock hurtled from the gravitic cannon, headed for an Earthseven minutes distant.

His nukes had done nothing inside that cave.

In Transit

USNA CVS America

Brig

1444 hours, FST

Two more days to home.

Gray and Dr. George Truitt sat just outside one of America’s holding compartments in the brig, sitting on the other side of the acrylic transparency from one of the hulking warriorsof the Nungiirtok Collective. Was the prisoner sullen? Afraid? Disdainful? There was no way to tell, not from alien body languageor halting speech patterns.

But Gray thought they might be making progress.

He’d learned a lot since his first interview with these beings, the one that had tragically ended with his Marine guards reducingtwo of their prisoners to lifeless cinders. He’d learned that the Nungiirtok referred to themselves as the Collective, the same as the Sh’daar polity to which they belonged. The Sh’daar, it was known, variously called themselves a collective or an associative. The terms were used loosely and were subject to irritating vagaries of translation. Perhaps it was reasonable that the Nungiirtok referred to themselves the same way. They’d been part of the Sh’daar Collective for a very long time.

He’d learned that the Russians had, indeed, offered the twenty-five stranded Nungiirtok on Osiris a deal, a chance to be repatriated.The Nungie leader, an individual called Mavtok Chah, had certainly not trusted the humans, but the offer was simply too goodto ignore. The humans might be deceiving them, probably were deceiving them, but the Nungiirtok party’s first responsibility was to get themselves off of that miserable planet. There’dbeen discussion about taking the ship they were on away from the Russians and flying it home, but that plan had proven unrealistic.There were several thousand humans on board, far too many for twenty-five warriors. Besides, the human controls and navigationalsystems were completely unknown to the Tok.

And so they had waited, watching.

They’d been confused by the American attack. Among the Tok, individuals might fight, often did fight, but nations? The Tok still did not understand that concept, and only distantly grasped the idea that the Americansand the Russians might be enemies, a single species divided by . . . what? Political necessity? War involved attacking other species, species pointed out by the Tok Iad.

Mavtok Chah sat before Gray now, watching him steadily with those almost comically large, stalked eyes. The Tok were far toodangerous to release into the general population of the ship, but Gray wished there were some way of winning the massive being’strust. There was so much more that might be learned.

“Do you understand the concept of ‘alliance’?” Gray asked, his words translated through software shared by the human and theTok.

“I believe so,” Mavtok replied. “Tok and the Tok Iad have what I believe you mean by an alliance.”

“Alliance suggests the two parties are equals. Are you the equals of the Tok Lords?”

The being flinched. Good, Gray thought. Maybe I’m actually getting through that tough hide.

“The Tok are Masters.”

“Indeed. And you do everything they tell you?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t discuss their orders? You simply do what they