Cry Havoc Read online

  Praise for Cry Havoc:

  “Cry Havoc is a coming of age tale in the tradition of Ender’s Game but with boots on the ground. Expansive, sharp, and well-realized, Hanson weaves a tale of futuristic war that will have people scrambling to sign up and join the fight.”

  – Tim Marquitz, author of the Demon Squad series and Clandestine Daze

  “Jack Hanson creates characters with emotion and growth, as deftly as he builds complex military science fiction. Cry Havoc is a steady progression from raw recruit training to an epic battle with the return of super-powered heroes of myth, an unexpected return of insidious enemies, and injuries for all—both physical and emotional. And there’s an armored T-rex with a friggin’ railgun.”

  —Kane Gilmour, international bestselling author of The Crypt of Dracula

  Also From Cohesion Press

  Horror:

  SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Heroes

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Hunters

  – eds Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown

  SNAFU: Future Warfare

  – eds Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown

  SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

  – eds Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown

  Blurring the Line – Marty Young (ed)

  American Nocturne – Hank Schwaeble

  Jade Gods – Patrick Freivald

  The Angel of the Abyss – Hank Schwaeble

  Sci-Fi/Thriller:

  Valkeryn 2 – Greig Beck

  Cry Havoc – Jack Hanson

  Forlorn Hope – Jack Hanson

  Creature Thrillers

  Into the Mist – Lee Murray

  Fathomless – Greig Beck

  Coming Soon

  Primordial – David Wood & Alan Baxter

  Congregation of the Damned – James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge

  A Hell Within – James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge

  Snaked – Duncan McGeary

  The Man with the Iron Heart – Mat Nastos

  Cry Havoc

  Jack Hanson

  Cohesion Press

  Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum,

  Beechworth, Australia

  Cry Havoc

  © Jack Hanson 2014

  Cover Art © Dean Samed/Conzpiracy Digital Art

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. All people, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cohesion Press

  Beechworth, Australia

  This novel is dedicated to the men of the 1/501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, the 4/23rd Infantry Regiment, and to the memories of CPL Alexander Jordan, SRA Carl Ware, SRA Richard Filhse, and SSG Travis Berumen.

  Some did not survive the war, some could not survive the peace.

  Part 1—Falling Down

  Chapter One—Return

  Everything I learned about treachery, covert actions, and the power of indirect influence I learned at the Academy. I also learned how to tell who my friends were, and who was trying to use me. I doubt much has changed since I left those hallowed halls.

  —Fletcher, Arch Strategos of the League of Silence

  The shuttle was full, but not uncomfortably so. Jane had space to herself as she buried her nose in a reader, tilting her head in minute jerks to the left or the right to turn a page. She tried to lose herself in the history of the most recent, and some said final, chapter in the Empire-Federation War. It was hard though, with the noise and laughter that flowed around her from her fellow cadets.

  Everyone was returning from their time home, wherever that may be, and were excited to meet their old friends again for their last year of academy, so there was an excess of chattering and a loosening of the military bearing all cadets were expected to maintain. Of course, most of that was due to the fact that they were trusted enough to take the shuttle from the cruiser Pride of Scylla down to the surface of Ganymede III alone. Generally there was a grizzled non-commissioned officer at one end, somehow managing to stare at everyone while calling attention to individual infractions at the same time.

  Jane was not interested in taking the time to loosen the mandarin collar of her grey service blouse or lean over to the person next to her and ask how her time at Exodus went. Her few acquaintances had gotten on another shuttle, and she had no wish to open up to strangers. Instead the slender girl forced her attention deeper into the reader, absently adjusting the brown bun at the back of her head so it didn’t brush her collar.

  * * *

  At the opposite end of the shuttle, Salem held court. Her utility grays were tailored, which technically wasn’t against regulations, but frowned upon unless you were a member of a ceremonial detail. However, the tightening around the seams of the legs, the reduction of the flaring of the blouse, and the ultrafine cotton on the inside of her collar weren’t enough to draw the notice of anyone unless they were looking for it.

  If she had been a year younger, her hair would have been up in a single bun like Jane’s was. Instead, she had taken advantage of the freedom given to senior cadets and worked her long mane of glossy black hair into twin ox horns for the ride to the Academy. The four male cadets who were tripping over themselves to impress her and her friends seemed to think they complimented her perfect face, or so she hoped. Leaning forward, Salem rested her chin on one manicured hand, judging individual stories with a smile or a roll of her eyes towards Laila or Petra, her best friends.

  Salem admitted to herself a growing knot of apprehension about what lay at the end of this year. It had always been with her since her first year, this self-doubt about her military future when she was so confident in all other aspects of her life. The reports about the colonies going silent at the edge of space, and the realization that the broken Peace Federation wasn’t responsible, made the unknown future even more frightening.

  * * *

  Sand bounced in his seat, feeding off the energy that swirled through the shuttle’s cabin. He’d spent his leave time on Cassiopeia II, split between seeing his family and lazy days on the many beaches there. The months of swimming and riding had done him good, and stretched out his frame by a few inches – he was all of five foot nine now, up three inches from last year.

  Still, it was hard to get a word in edgewise with the guys and girls he’d known from last year. Every time he tried to share a story about what he’d done – swimming with some of the aquatic old bloods who made that world their home, for example – someone would barrel over him with another story of getting drunk with their friends.

  Sand rolled his eyes at the attempts by some of the boys to impress the girls, who were either fawning or bored, depending on their personalities and how they liked to play the courting game. Salem Winchester, for instance, was playing queen bee to the hilt, with Laila and Petra relishing their roles as judge, jury, and executioner to the poor boys who tried to impress them. Petra especially, the half-Terran half-Illurian, an exotic and intimidating shield against the attempts of lesser boys to approach them. She’d cock her head, push back her neural strands, and whisper something to Salem behind one blue-tinted hand. Sand could almost hear the egos deflating from where he sat, watching the goings on with his big green eyes.
r />   * * *

  Paris looked over at Petra as well, and then went back to staring at the bulkhead next to him, thinking that at least he wasn’t the only half-breed on the ship, although technically he wasn’t really a half breed. He was a Rillik, exposed to Khajalian pheromones as a child and throughout adolescence. The massive, humanoid lizards used the pheromones to enslave the females of other races, but in his case it’d had a profoundly different effect.

  He was huge, for one thing. Paris stood over seven feet tall. With broad shoulders, muscled and hairless all over, and patches of luminous green scales along the backs of his arms and his neck, he made an imposing figure. His eyes were slits, with a piercing blue quality to them that made it hard to stare at him. Finally, his teeth were razor sharp, just a little shy of being serrated.

  Still for all his advantages, Paris wanted to be normal. He wasn’t mad at his tutor, Rhulo, for exposing him. The Khajali was just doing what his parents had asked for in hopes of raising a natural soldier, and a Khajalian’s word was his honor. He felt a little embarrassed at how he had been pushing Rhulo away the last year, but his inner conflict refused to let him do anything about it. He just wanted to be a regular janissary, not a scaled, freakish, loner. Anything that reminded him of his Rillik heritage was just too awkward to bear.

  * * *

  The shuttle shuddered as it started to decelerate, coming in low over a blue ocean that turned into a dry desert, and then became ocean again before turning green with vegetation. As they swooped low over Ganymede III, the spires of the nearby city, Alarius, were at eye level with the Velleyon Mountains sitting idyllically behind it. Finally the walls of Ganymede Military Academy were beneath them, and the shuttle dropped, adjusting itself as it settled onto its designated pad. Finally, there was a hiss, and the hatches opened.

  There was no pushing, no rousting to be the first one off. Instead the cadets filed off in an orderly fashion, grabbing their satchels as they left the shuttle. The discipline instilled over the last three years, paying off. Young corporals, actual janissaries who had seen service against pirates and rogue Peace Federation elements, patrolled the strip. They were there to keep discipline among the younger students, and at first might have seemed similar to the senior cadets filing off the shuttle.

  There were differences, though, if one looked more than a second at the superficiality of the uniforms being the same color. The actual janissaries wore the badge of Terra over their hearts, the eagle with crossed swords behind it and a blooming flower below it. They wore rank on their collars, two hash marks with an X beneath them, and their trousers were bloused into their boots. Finally, they carried hickory swagger sticks, used to enforce discipline when words and posture failed. You had to earn a strike from the stick, and one hit was generally enough to correct any serious deficiencies.

  Moreover, there was a presence that went beyond mere appearance of uniform. There was a hardness around the eyes, a way of carriage, moving, and talking that made them seem ages older than the cadets, even though in most cases they didn’t have more than six or seven years on their charges. It wasn’t only their training, top notch, which was responsible for this. They had ‘seen the elephant’, as soldiers had referred to their combat experience for centuries, and it left its mark.

  So the senior cadets marched in impromptu squads and made formations before breaking apart to see where they were assigned. There was a much larger screen that displayed groups of names, and smaller screens where cadets could check their allocation on a more personal level. There was still no pushing and shoving, even though the cadre corporals were dealing with organizing the first and second years into rough squads.

  “Ah, we’re not together in the same team,” said Salem, giving a little huff to Petra and Laila as she turned to them. It was only the three girls now, as their entourage had disbanded when they stepped from the shuttle.

  “Well, at least we’re in Draco Barracks, not far from where you are in Orpheus Barracks,” said Petra. Her Illurian heritage showed in her upturned nose, blue-tinted skin, and the ultra-thin neural strands she had instead of hair. The strands were another sensory organ, and could be as sensitive as the Illurian wished. Right now they were bound up in maiden braids, curling over each shoulder.

  “The newer barracks. Better than living in those shoddy ones we had to deal with for so long,” said Laila, shaking her deep red hair. She was from Terra itself, and wore that as a badge of pride. Her blue eyes sparkled, and she glanced around at the students, and picked out Jane.

  “Do you think they’ll let her into the barracks?” asked Laila, smirking as she talked out of the side of her mouth. Jane, if she heard, didn’t seem to pay any attention to the three other girls. Her brown hair was dull, in a sloppy bun, and her uniform hung on her so much it was hard to tell what kind of figure she might have. The watched, and smirked, as Jane found her name, room assignment, and then walked off without giving any indication that she had heard the snippy comments.

  “Probably, but does it really matter?” asked Salem rhetorically, rolling her green eyes. “We have to drop off our stuff and get to First Formation here shortly.” The three girls grabbed their duffels and began to hump it towards their quarters, two stout gleaming towers of metal and glass.

  * * *

  Jane ran through a variety of responses she could have given the three catty girls as she made good time towards Orpheus Barracks.

  Who said I wanted to share it with you? or What’s your score on the Tactics Exam?

  Things she knew mattered to her, and to the Academy, but not to three girls who were more worried about staying pretty and trying to ride out their service on some centrally-located planet as aides.

  Jane was the third to make it to the team bay, which was a different layout from last year. For the first time, the team members would have their private bedrooms. There were four, and all of them opened onto a squad common area laid out as a lounge. There was a kitchen against one wall, and a back door opened up onto what she assumed was the latrine.

  A head poked itself out of one bedroom. Its owner possessed a straw-colored mess of hair that seemed to go every which way, and the first friendly set of eyes Jane had seen so far.

  “Hi there!” the young man said.

  As he stepped out, she realized that he was eye level with her, quite short for a male.

  “Hello,” she responded blandly.

  There was a moment of silence that began to stretch into awkwardness before he spoke up again. “So, I see you’re Cadet Harper. I’m Sand. Sand Falconer,” he said by way of introduction, offering his hand. Jane looked at it for a second, and then took it in a weak grip, shook it once, and then let it drop.

  “Jane,” she mumbled while not looking at him.

  “Ah, um, okay, Jane, I’ll just let you pack,” said Sand. Deflated, he went back to his room. There was another room occupied, and she looked in to see a massive figure stowing his kit. He turned without warning, obviously finished. Broadly-muscled, and without any body hair, it was obvious he wasn’t entirely human. Then the slit eyes and scales hit her, and she realized she was looking at a Rillik.

  “Take a picture if you want to stare,” he said gruffly, and grabbed his soft cap before walking out the door, almost bowling over the last member of their team. Jane looked over, curious in spite of herself, and saw Salem walking into the room, trailing her duffels in a small handcart she had procured from somewhere. The two girls locked eyes, and Salem gave a lopsided, friendly smile.

  “I saw you looking for your room. If I had known you were coming here, we could have walked together. I’m Salem Winchester, and you’re… Harper? What’s the J stand for? Janelle? Juliet?” Salem asked, looking at the other girl’s name tape on her uniform.

  Jane looked away, annoyed, the retorts she had practiced on the way over to her barracks dying on her tongue, and she heard herself angrily m
utter. “It’s Jane.”

  “Well, Jane, I hope we become good friends here. It’s up to us girls to keep these two guys straight and not let them leave their underwear all over the place on the weekend,” Salem said conspiratorially.

  Jane stood there for a moment longer, wanting to tell the pretty, put together girl how she had heard what Salem had really thought about her. She only managed a weak nod and went to her room, breathing hard as she shoved her duffels into place. Under her bed would do for now. She felt like she‘d scream if she had to deal with another fake smile from Salem. Grabbing her soft cap, she tucked the brim low so that her eyes couldn’t be seen and left, much like the Rillik had before her.

  * * *

  Salem began to offload her duffel bags, and heard a sharp rap on her wall. Turning, she saw a slight, nervous-looking, male figure at her door.

  “Um, Salem? Cadet Winchester?” asked Sand.

  “Just Salem is fine. And you’re...” she asked politely, canting her head. This made it even harder for Sand to look directly at her.

  “Sand. Sand Falconer. I was just wondering if you needed a hand with anything before I left?” he asked.

  “You know, I don’t have a problem with my bags, but if you wouldn’t mind waiting for me, I’d appreciate it. You’ve heard the old saying, I’m sure. Don’t be last,” she said as she worked her soft cap between her ox horns, and mentally kicked herself. She’d forgotten to take them out, and there wasn’t enough time to fix her hair.

  “Sure,” said Sand, eager to help out. The two departed, and as they stalked down the hall, definitely among the last stragglers, Sand thought to say “So, how was your exodus?”