Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

Lucy added, appearing at Jon and Maya’s side and dropping to one knee. “Let me take a look at you, my lady.”

Jon moved aside and switched his concerned gaze from Maya to the grapefruit-sized portal that remained hovering in the air.

“Makes… sense…” Maya mumbled, her speech still struggling to remain coherent. “The Drop… being… the mother… of all… doors… to this… place.” The effort having exhausted her, the goddess crumpled into the arms of her oldest guardian and whimpered.

“There, there now. I have you,” Lucy soothed, looking up over the petite woman’s head to shoot Jon a look of concern.

“We rest here tonight,” Jon said, a turn of his head pointing out the setting sun. “Tomorrow, we figure out what to do next, and see what might be salvaged from all this.”

Lucy simply nodded in return.

As if having heard Jon’s proclamation, the diminutive portal sizzled and then winked out of existence.

Although the sun was fading away, the desert still glowed with the heat of the day, absorbed by the thermal mass of rock and sand, so Jon knew without a doubt that the shiver he felt run down his spine was one of foreboding only.

4

The light of the cold winter day was diffused into a soft, omnipresent glow by the low-lying fog that blanketed the ground and meandered through the gaps in the trees like so many tributaries of a broken river.

The fog brought an uncanny silence yet seemed to amplify every sound that punctuated the stillness of the forest. The crunching of boots on the frost-bitten dead grass created a drumbeat, accentuated now and again by the morbid crowing of carrion birds desperately searching for their next meal.

As the men progressed deeper into the wood, the soft glow of the sun’s rays, already concealed by the frost in the air, grew dimmer, further obscured by the tangle of leafless branches that thickened above.

“Your man sure picked a pain-in-the-ass place to meet. Any reason we couldn’t have just handled our business in the Shanty?” one of the two men asked the other.

“I would think that would be fairly obvious, Nguyen,” the second man said, his tone sharp with irritation.

Truth be told, Martin shared his companion’s feelings regarding the remoteness of the rendezvous point, but he hated needless grumbling, especially in a trained soldier. It just sounded like whining. One might think it, but one should never speak it aloud.

When Nguyen failed to respond to the sharp quip, Martin took pity on the kid and elaborated.

“The Provocateur said that extreme care must be taken to ensure that our machinations are not discovered. The Shanty has too many eyes and ears now. It’s not like the old days.”

“Well, wouldn’t it have been the same in the old days? I mean, the Resistance seems to have been there all along. They were way more organized than we thought, right? Otherwise, we’d be kicking it in the Zigg right now, instead of tromping through this forest with the ravens and freezing our butts off.”

Martin made a face of disgust, instantly regretting any remorse he’d had for being too hard on the kid.

“Shut up, Nguyen,” he said, more irritated than before. “It should be right up ahead. Stay frosty.”

“Why? You expect trouble? I thought you said we can trust this guy?” The young soldier prattled on, oblivious to his commanding officer’s growing frustration.

“I said shut your cock-holster,” Martin grumbled, then added, “Trust no one.”

Private Nguyen’s nagging questions caused Martin’s own reservations to rise to the light of day, with all the rudeness of a cadaver unearthed by an incautious grave-robber. Try as he might, he couldn’t force himself to focus on guarding against an ambush, his mind instead drifting back to the events that had led him here. But here he was, away from his beloved command post in the Republic Military, in this frigid, half-dead forest, far to the east of Home.

In the chaos that followed the Incident, the whore-queen of the rebellion and her ilk had seized control of the majority of the Zigg’s firepower. The confusion in the ranks of the military’s officers had been substantial. People woke up in strange places, naked, and with no memory of how they came to be there. Lily Sapphire, esoterrorist numero uno, had spun an elaborate fiction about Warbak. She claimed he had been transforming the New Breed into killing machines, robots called Spartans, and that all the last-gen citizens of Home were being captured by alien devices hidden in the great monuments. But Martin knew this was a lie. What he believed had happened instead made a lot more sense, even though its implications unsettled him deeply.

This Lily and her Unpure army of riff-raff had shaped a powerful Strange, essentially crippling the Republic in one fell swoop. Before anyone knew what was going on, Chairman Warbak and Colonel Taylor had both been murdered. Even Matiaba, the Chairman’s most trusted advisor and practical second-in-command of the Republic, had gone missing. Many of the New Breed officers, most notably in the Hopper, Heavy, and Easy-Rider detachments, had also been killed in the coup.

When Martin and the other Old Guard realized this fact, they were sobered in the extreme. If this Lily harlot was powerful enough in Strange not only to cut the heads off of the military beast with ease but also stun and disorient the entire population of the Zigg, then an instant counter-attack would be futile and most certainly spell death for them, and for any hope of survival and dominance the human race had left.

But a counter-attack will happen, Martin thought to himself now as he had then. We bide our time, plan, and take back what is rightfully ours.

In a turn of events that had broken his heart as much as it had surprised him, Martin had watched helplessly as more than half of the surviving officers and enlisted men swore their allegiance to the new regime, having swallowed the ludicrous lie about Warbak and his betrayal. As if he would