Snippet #3 from the New Book! Athena Lee Book 9

Enjoy it!


I remember standing in the Martian war room myself as the battle for Mars unfolded above us. I saw with my own eyes as the decimated Earth fleet dove their ships in Kamikaze attacks against our ships. In the end they were blasted from space with no quarter given.

“Primus the Earth fleet is breaking up!”

We turned our heads toward the main monitors just in time to see the large cruisers and support craft separate into three smaller units.

“Captain Bishe tell our ships to attack that fleet!”

“Yes, Primus.”

“Grandmother that third fleet unit, they are trying to break orbit!” I pointed at one of the monitors. All of our attention was on the main battle. The Earth fleet were attacking the reserve ships without any regard for their own safety.

“Alert the defense stations tell them to stop those ships!” It was at that moment that the third group strafed the Space station and drew much of the fire onto themselves as they broke orbit in the opposite direction. In an almost planned maneuver the small fleets went in opposite directions confusing our defense stations. Both managed to break orbit.

“Primus, we are in pursuit of the second group that appear to be headed toward Earth. The third group slipped past the orbitals and have disappeared.”

“Disappeared? How? How can they have just vanished?”

“Our techs can only speculate, but they may have the codes to our IFF system and were able to fool our system into ignoring them.”

“Those keys are one of our state secrets! Damn, it! Find them.” In the end Wilson was needed to dive into the system and track the access codes. Special codes were used by outside forces the spoof the system. They were traced back to a computer tech inside the defense building. He was found dead at his desk surrounded by thirteen credit chips. Someone in the Cabal has a sense of humor.

As I said that was ten days ago. Now we have prisoners who might talk to us. We already know much of their order of battle and what some of the conditions on Old Earth are like. Wilson brought out much from their computers. Direct intelligence is what is really needed. We tried before and failed to talk to them. I was not present, but Dar was when the first prisoners were brought in. Very few occupied survival pods were found from the Colossus.

The three prisoners were all unconscious. Dar and Martian Security forces were watching as local med teams attempted to wake the Earthies up.

Checking the prisoners bonds Corporal Kovac extended her hypo spray and injected the first prisoner in an attempt to wake them up. The Earthie woke up with a jerk and thrust his arms forward breaking the titanium manacles and freeing himself. He jumped off the cot he was on and attacked the med team.

“What in the nine hells?” Corporal Kovac watched in horror as her patient broke free and attacked.

“Xandrie, get down!” Hearing Sergeant Martelle’s voice she hit the deck just as the prisoner was hit from all sides by gunfire.

As she got up she began cursing. “How the hell did he get free? Those are military grade cuffs!” Just to make sure he was dead she stood over the prisoner and bent down to check his pulse. As she touched his neck his eyes opened! He turned his head, saw her surprised face, reached up, grabbed her arm and pulled her down.