Epic: Dawn of Destiny Read online

  Dawn of Destiny

  Lee Stephen

  Stone Aside Publishing, L.L.C.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Lee Stephen.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  ISBN 978-0-9788508-0-7

  Editing by Arlene Prunkl

  Cover Illustration by Francois Cannels

  Book Design by Fiona Raven

  First Printing January 2007

  Printed in USA

  v6

  Published by

  Stone Aside Publishing, L.L.C.

  Dedicated to

  GOD

  0

  Tuesday, March 29th, 0011 NE

  2142 hours

  Cleveland, Ohio, USA

  It was a train wreck. A total train wreck. At least, that’s what ran through the mind of Colonel Brent Lilan, commanding officer of Falcon Platoon. His unit was dispatched in Cleveland. It was a familiar scenario. The Bakma had attacked, and the Earth Defense Network—EDEN—had sent Falcon Platoon to defend the city. Only this time, it wasn’t that simple. Buildings lay toppled across the street, shattered cars littered the roads and sidewalks, and fresh craters lined what was once Public Square. Even worse, Intelligence had been wrong about everything—the number of Bakma craft, the number of Bakma on the ground, everything. Even their maps were obsolete. The result was a Falcon Platoon bloodbath.

  Lilan epitomized an EDEN veteran—a crew cut of steel gray hair, a body tattooed with scars, and a penetrating glare that reflected a pessimistic wisdom about the reality of the Alien War. Though unrecognized on the streets of the common man, the command staff at Richmond knew him well. If something needed to be done, Lilan could do it. He could do it better than most of them could.

  Plasma bolts whizzed past Lilan’s head as he retreated around the corner of an alleyway. He flung himself against the brick and muttered a string of obscenities. It was time to pull out. It was time to salvage whatever was left of Falcon Platoon and return to base. The fate of Cleveland would rest in the hands of whoever else Richmond could muster up on a whim.

  Lilan loathed the Bakma. More than any other species. They fought dirty. They fought like cowards. Crimson leather skin, bulging black eyes, and a mouthful of hideous teeth. He loathed the sight of them almost as much as he loathed the stench of them.

  He reloaded his E-35 assault rifle and barked into his helmet comm. “Tacker, check that bank on the corner of Ontario and Rockwell. They’ve got a sniper up there somewhere! Flush him from behind if you can, but don’t force it!”

  Confirmation came, and Lilan regripped his gun. There was no need to check on Tacker again. He’d do the job.

  He rounded the corner and spotted a handful of operatives hunkered down across the street. It took a moment for Lilan to realize they were the only other operatives left. One thought surfaced in his mind—get them out of there. As they took cover behind an overturned van, he addressed his comm once more.

  “Who’s still alive over there?”

  The comm channel crackled. “Me and Henrick, sir!”

  “Who the hell is me?”

  “Yalen, sir, sorry!”

  Yalen and Henrick. It figured. At least Tacker was still alive.

  As if on cue, Tacker’s voice sliced through the comm. “Sniper down!”

  “Excellent,” Lilan answered. “Everyone on headset, listen! Base is going to have to send someone else in to clean up this mess! Fall back to the safe zone!” Yalen and Henrick withdrew from the fight. Lilan looked skyward. “Seven, where are you?”

  “Seven in orbit, colonel.”

  “We’re pulling an evac—grab us at the safe zone!”

  “On my way, sir.”

  The Vulture transport broke its low orbit over the city and pointed its nose toward the north. Lilan’s focus returned to the street. “John, do you have a clear way out?” For the first time that mission, he called Tacker by his first name. An accident.

  Tacker’s voice crackled again. “I don’t know if I have—” and that was it. There was a pop, and silence flooded the line. Tacker’s voice was gone.

  Lilan froze. “Tacker?…Tacker! Seven, what was the—” he stopped as he watched a plasma bolt tear through Yalen’s back. A mist of red erupted from the soldier’s chest; he collapsed to the ground. Lilan continued. “Seven, what was the last known position of Commander Tacker?”

  “Last comm was approximately two hundred yards south of your location, sir.”

  “Thank you, Seven,” Lilan said. Too far to foot it. He scanned for an alternative, and he soon found one parked right across the alley. A sedan. Perfect. He slammed the butt of his assault rifle against the driver’s side window, and the glass shattered. It took just as much effort to hotwire it. The engine roared to life, and he floored the accelerator.

  Though an occasional plasma bolt flashed across the hood, Lilan reached Tacker’s position with minimal resistance. As soon as he spotted Tacker, he knew why the signal had been lost. The sniper’s helmet was attached to his belt, charred beyond functionality.

  “What happened?” Lilan asked as Tacker leapt inside.

  Tacker buckled up. “They had two snipers.” He ran a hand through his singed crew cut. “They just weren’t very good.”

  Vulture-7 waited for them on its concrete perch. Only Henrick waited with it, a symbol of the mission’s colossal failure. As Tacker abandoned the car and climbed aboard the blunt-nosed transport, Lilan offered the battle-torn streets of Cleveland one more gaze. A devastated city and a decimated unit—the price of underestimation.

  It all fell on him.

  PART I

  1

  Friday, April 1st, 0011 NE

  2057 hours

  Richmond, Virginia, USA

  The door to Room 419 slid open. Scott Remington stood in the doorway, staring inside. So this was it. This was home. This was where they had decided home was, anyway. His hazel eyes swept the room as he took it in. It was smaller than his room at the Academy. It was more cramped. There were metal bunks pushed up against the right wall. These were smaller, too.

  He sighed and rubbed his hand behind his neck. This was all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be there. They had asked him if he had a geographic preference, and he’d told them. Detroit Station. He had gone to school at Michigan. That’s where she was. That’s where he was supposed to go. When they’d handed him his duty assignment and he saw that it was Richmond, he couldn’t believe it. He scratched his head, fingertips disappearing under his tuft of short brown hair.

  Scott was five feet and eleven inches tall, with a body as toned as one would expect from a soldier fresh out of Philadelphia Academy. He was a handsome young man, or at least she thought so. And her opinion was the only one that mattered.

  He sighed again and took a step inside. It was done. He was officially there.

  He slipped the duffle bag from his shoulder and plopped it on the floor. Turning around, he stepped back to the door and eased it shut with a quiet click. He scrutinized the room again.

  A sink was built into the wall in the far corner, complemented by a small, cracked mirror. Moving to the faucet, he turned the knob and an instant rush of water and steam poured out. He slid his hands beneath the stream and massaged his face, then patted his sleeve against his forehead and eyes and turned the water off.

  Returning to his duffle bag, Scott crouched down and tugged open the metal zipper. Inside was a collection of folded clothes, on top of which sat a black leather-backed Scripture, the name “Scott James Remington” inscribed i
n gold at the bottom right-hand corner. He passed his hand along the book’s glossy surface. God, what am I doing here? He took hold of the book and rose to his feet, placing it atop the nightstand next to the bottom bunk.

  The next item from the bag was a worn-out football, stained with grass and dirt from recent use. He gripped it for a moment before rolling it beneath the bed.

  His gaze returned to the bag, where it lingered for a moment. Her. As much of her as there could be, anyway. It was the picture of a blue-eyed, beautiful brunette. Her smile caused two dimples to appear just beyond her lips, and her snow-white teeth sparkled from within the gold boundaries of the frame. His gaze trailed to the lower right corner, where the words I love you! were scripted in black marker. Beneath it was her name—Nicole. His focus returned to her face, and he breathed in softly. He hated Richmond even more. He rose and set the picture atop his nightstand, her face angled to the bed.

  For the next half hour, he removed clothes and unpacked the essentials. There was no hurry in the task, only the lull that came after the bustle of a move. As soon as he had finished, he turned off the lights and dropped down on the bottom bunk, sliding his hands behind his head. For the first time that day, his eyes fell shut. There was nothing more to do. Within minutes, he was asleep.

  The door swung open. A shaft of light cut in from the hallway and Scott’s eyes flickered awake. In the doorway stood the silhouette of a well-built man with a duffle bag similar to Scott’s slung over his shoulder. His shoulders were broad, and though not massive, his stature made his power clear. Before Scott could gather his senses, the light flicked on and the stranger stepped inside. He blinked as he saw Scott in bed. “Sorry about that. Didn’t expect anyone else to be here yet.”

  Scott flinched as the room lit up, and he propped up on his elbows. He mumbled incoherently as the stranger tossed his duffle bag onto the floor and extended a hand. “Hey. David Jurgen.”

  David’s features came into detail as Scott gave the hand an absent shake. Black hair was combed back on his head, and his casual green eyes made direct contact. Faint streaks of gray filtered past his sideburns. He offered Scott a genuine smile. “I’m your roommate. Our convoy just got in from Philadelphia—guess yours must’ve come early. Sorry about waking you up.”

  Squinting at the clock on his nightstand, Scott said, “No, it’s all right…what time is it?”

  “Four past midnight.”

  “Oh wow.”

  David knelt next to his duffle bag and unzipped it. He smiled. “Yeah, the night’s young.” He reached into the bag, where he produced several pictures. He began to set them along the empty shelf space along the wall. “Guessing if you had stuff it’d be out by now. Mind?”

  “No, not at all.” Only one picture of Scott’s mattered, and it was already in place.

  “What was your name again?”

  Scott blinked. “Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry, I’m still a little, you know…”

  “Out of it, yeah. You look it.”

  “Scott Remington.”

  “Scott Remington, huh? Well, good to meet you.”

  Scott nodded as his gaze fell on the pictures. There were several family pictures, but the ones that stood out showed David in full police uniform. Other uniformed men stood around him. “You did police work?”

  “Fourteen years, NYPD.”

  “Oh wow…how…?”

  David continued to set the photos in place. “I’m forty. Joined the department at twenty-four, did it for fourteen, then enrolled in Philadelphia. The math works.”

  Scott lingered on the pictures. “Didn’t see you at the Academy.”

  “Well, it is pretty big…”

  “That’s true.” And it was. In fact, the Academy wasn’t just ‘pretty big.’ It was gargantuan. The only EDEN bases that rivaled it were behemoths like Nagoya, Atlanta, and to an extent Novosibirsk—the three largest facilities on Earth. “We still probably had some of the same instructors though.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. You ever had Captain Williams?”

  Scott broke into a laugh. Captain Harold Williams. The man was a Philadelphia legend. A walking caricature of a drill sergeant. “I think everybody had Captain Williams. You had him for hand-to-hand training, right?”

  “More like cadet beat-down training. You ever win?”

  Scott shook his head. “Killed me. Every time.”

  “Yeah, same here.” David finished with the pictures and knelt beside his duffle bag. “So what about you? Where’d you come from?”

  Scott sat up, leaning against the lower bunk wall. “Lincoln, but I went to school at Michigan. I went to Philadelphia straight from there. Well…I didn’t finish Michigan. Left in my second year.”

  “Lincoln…?”

  “Nebraska.”

  “Why’d you leave school for this?”

  Scott hated that question. The answer always sounded stupid. He hesitated for a moment before responding. “I guess I kind of felt led here. To EDEN, I mean.”

  “What, like a God thing?”

  That was as good as he could have described it. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  David nodded. “Okay. I respect that.” Scott smiled faintly as David said, “I’m gonna take a walk around, learn the layout of the base some. Wanna come?”

  Scott smiled. He was glad the conversation deviated from religion so quickly. It was an awkward topic to begin a partnership with. “It’s past midnight on the first night of the most important career decision of my life. Might as well wander around.”

  He rose from his bunk. He wasn’t tired now anyway, and the sooner he could get the base layout down, the better. There were few things more pathetic than the look of a lost rookie. The light to Room 419 flicked off and the two men stepped into the hallway.

  Richmond was the smallest of the major EDEN facilities on Earth. It was the only one classified as a Class-1. There were five classes in all, and each one represented the number of enlisted operatives. Eleven of the facilities were considered major: EDEN Command, Atlanta, Nagoya, Novosibirsk, Philadelphia, Richmond, Berlin, Dublin, London, Leningrad, and Cairo. There were hundreds of smaller EDEN establishments across the planet, but they rated more as corner stations than military compounds. Despite its size, Richmond brandished a reputation for professionalism, and it was held in high regard by its counterparts across the planet.

  As the two men trekked through Richmond‘s corridors, they found sparse activity. There were occasional clusters of operatives in places such as the training center, but for the most part the base felt asleep. With the traditional morning hours of EDEN schedules, this was to be expected. The layout of the base was simple and effective, and within forty-five minutes they managed to venture through almost every allowable area. It was much smaller than Philadelphia Academy.

  Conversation flowed as David unfolded his story to Scott. He was married to his wife of twelve years, Sharon. They had two boys, both in grade school in New York. David’s stint with the NYPD was a proud one, and he left with honorable notice to enroll with EDEN. Sharon and the kids still lived in New York, though they were in the stages of a transplant to the city of Richmond to be closer to him.

  In turn, Scott told him about Nicole.

  The clocks peaked at 0100 when they finally returned to their wing of the living quarters. The hallways were vacant, and a stark silence reverberated from the walls. Because of this tomb-like state they were able to spot, with ease, the faint glow of a light down the hallway. It was the only sign of life they’d come across. As they drew nearer, they realized that it emanated from the room just beside theirs—Room 421. The closer they drew, the more apparent it became that a man stood in the doorway of the room, his shadow silhouetted across the linoleum floor. Once their footsteps were within earshot, the silhouetted man tilted his head in their direction.

  He was slender, though height compensated for a lack of size. His arms were folded across his chest as he leaned against the doorway arch, and his shadowe
d gaze scrutinized them beneath a tuft of dusty brown hair.

  “Who’s that?”

  “No idea.” Scott shook his head.

  “Hey there!”

  Startled, the stranger shifted bodily to face them. Everything about the motion was uncomfortable, and his body language immediately withdrew. His gaze darted down to the floor, and he mumbled a response. “Howdy.”

  He had to be from Texas.

  The insignia on his uniform identified him as an alpha private, and David extended his hand. “David Jurgen. I live next door.”

  Scott offered his hand immediately after. “Scott Remington, good to meet you. We’re in 419.” The stranger shook Scott’s hand tentatively. His discomfort was impossible to ignore.

  “…all right,” the stranger said in a low voice. He looked young, barely in his twenties if at all. Averting his eyes, he again shied toward the doorway. “I’m Jayden. Timmons.”

  “Jayden Timmons?” David asked.

  “Yessir.”

  David smiled warmly. “No…we just got here today, too. Away with the ‘sir.’”

  Jayden’s posture eased at the revelation. “Us too.”

  “Who’s us?” Scott asked.

  A new voice emerged from 421. “Hey! Who’s tha’ yeh blatherin’ with?” Scott and David exchanged a glance and then angled to the door. The accent was the first thing they heard.

  “Our neighbors,” Jayden answered the voice as he stepped to the side. Scott peered into the room.

  At the edge of the lower bunk sat a young man with an impish grin. His viridian gaze surveyed Scott beneath a scattered tangle of brown hair. As he kicked to his feet, one word came to Scott’s mind. Energy.

  “Hi. Scott Remington. I live next door.”

  The newcomer slapped out a handshake. “Howyeh! Becan McCrae, likewise it’s a pleasure! Yeh go by Remmy?”