Last Life (Lifers Book 1) Read online

  LAST LIFE

  By Michael G. Thomas & Eric Meyer

  Part of the Lifers universe

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2016 Michael G. Thomas & Eric Meyer

  Published by Swordworks Books

  Official fanpages:

  Michael G. Thomas

  Eric Meyer

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  Prologue

  Part One – Earth

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two - Mars

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Three - Titan

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

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  Prologue

  The Third Martian War, Chasma Boreale, Mars

  Lieutenant Cage looked off into the distance as a pair of Ares gunships raced overhead. They had missed his unit, and homed in on one of the distant Lifer units near the frozen spaceport. The gunships were long, sleek, and elegant, in stark contrast to the crude, heavily equipped invaders from Earth. They unleashed fire from their flank-mounted railguns, making each of the Lifers flinch nervously. Explosions marked the impacts along the ridge three kilometers away, and then a missile raced up to chase them. The gunships jinked back and forth and then disappeared behind the ridge, the missile in hot pursuit. Cage turned back and looked to their objective. He lifted his right arm and signaled for the platoon to continue.

  “Keep moving.”

  A cloud of dull red dust partially obscured the platoon of heavily armed Lifers as they moved in from the South, the direction of the lower pumping station. They had penetrated further than any of the other units, and Cage knew time was not on their side. They’d lost everything, but this was their last chance at any kind of victory. They had to break through to the refinery or it was over, and he had every intention of succeeding. Private Harris called out over the closed channel.

  “Lieutenant, 3rd Lifer Platoon has been surrounded. They ran into entrenched RedCorp troopers on the West side. It’s a mess, Sir. They need help.”

  Cage shook his head. He could see on his overlay that they were down to eleven Lifers. By the time he could reach them, they would already be dead.

  “We can’t help them, not now. They are buying us time to do what we have to.”

  He shook his head again.

  “No, we keep on. I’m not letting this count for nothing. This war ends today.”

  He monitored the indicators in the helmet overlay as it fed him tactical data, from the temperature and wind conditions around him, to the distance and specification of every object in range. What interested him now was the attack force fifteen kilometers away that had broken through their lines. They were descending to the Southern ridge behind the never-ending screen of Martian dust. Soon they’d be on the slope, working their way down into the frozen canyon. The tiny colored circles on the overlay resolved into numbers, giving him the speed and heading of the enemy, way too many for a single Lifer platoon to handle.

  He snapped out the order they were waiting for.

  "Get down and move out of sight...now!"

  The squad reacted fast and broke into a shambling run. They scrambled along the disused roadway that led down into the narrow valley. In seconds, they’d swapped the view of the incoming enemy for the steep, crumbling walls of the crevasse, a scar in the rock cutting through the surface of the planet like a saber slash. In theory, they should be safe, for a time. The difficult terrain masked them, but he knew his enemy. Knew they wouldn't stop.

  "Keep your heads down and activate hibernation,” Cage said, "Their thermal trackers can spot us even here."

  He couldn’t see them, but Lieutenant Cage had the imagery recorded to review in the helmet display. He paused the footage twice, stopping to take a second look at the multiple machines. If they got near enough, they were death on wheels.

  How the hell did they find us so fast? Can we hold them?

  The shapes were unmistakable; deadly PDX transports, the commonly used eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicles. Plex Dynamics, a RedCorp subsidiary here, built them on Mars; high-speed ground attack vehicles, with gyrostabilized heavy weapons, and a dozen Martian soldiers on board carrying weaponry generations ahead of anything carried by Earth soldiers. The hulls were low, streamlined, and wide. There were no windows or slits in the seamless armored shell built over a light alloy chassis. But there were more than enough weapons, and they were coming this way. Atop the hull, the automated turret mounted a low-velocity railgun, with an array of passive sensors. Eight wide, fat tires hung at the sides of the hull. Each wheel moved up and down on soft suspension that gave the impression of short spider legs. The multiple hull compartments of each vehicle twisted like a snake as they moved.

  Cage couldn’t help but murmur, “Jesus Christ.”

  The rookie trooper Billy Arnaz moved closer, as if looking for support. Maybe it was Human proximity in the alien environment, faced by the Martian technological wizardry. “What is it, Lt? Is it bad?” his voice a mirror of his fear.

  Cage did a second scan of the helmet playback. It revealed thirteen small support drones in the sky above the PDX AFVs. They ranged ahead of the ground vehicles under their own electric power, gliding over the surface at a height of eighty meters, searching for signs of danger. And targets. From a distance, they looked like small black gargoyles, with their wide membrane wings extending out to the sides. Yet they had little in common with Gothic sculptures. These were the expendable eyes and ears of RedCorp.

  He saw sleek, fast, armored assault vehicles moving into position as they reached the steep sides of the vast canyon. That was where the footage stopped, but Cage knew they were less than a minute away. Sixty seconds before they crested the peak, a short distance to their left flank.

  We'll be ready for them, just like we always are.

  He reached out to Arnaz and gripped his shoulder. “We can handle them, Trooper. What are you on, your second life? Nothing to worry about, we’re going to hammer these bastards into the dust.”

  He kept the squad moving. Their tough bodies made them faster than any native Martian. A consequence of Mars' weak gravity was to create a society of weak-muscled soldiers compared to the tough, often brutish soldiers from Earth. His heavily equipped soldiers had other advantages over the enemy. Exo-Armor frames and cybernetic limb replacements augmented their battlefield performance.

  Of all the military forces available to Mars Recon II, the Lifers were the fastest and strongest. One platoon of Lifers could match an entire battalion of regulars. Although once out of their dropship, they were vulnerable. Easily outrun, i
f the drones spotted them and called in the PDXs. If they caught them, they’d be dead. Noah Cage wasn't going to let that happen. He wasn’t sure if Arnaz bought it, but the trooper mumbled something and crept after the man in front. No one else spoke. They were waiting.

  He glanced around to check they were clear and raced after his men. The canyon was a grim place. Pitch black in places, and colder than hell itself. To the Lifers from Earth, it resembled the Grand Canyon back home, but colder and lacking any signs of life. He rechecked his HUD. The enemy machines were traveling across the harsh landscape at a speed he envied. Each time they hit a rock or depression, the long-reach suspension adjusted the height of a wheel to maintain their speed and direction. Each vehicle was emblazoned with the logo of RedCorp. The company was the largest and most powerful of the five mega-corporations on Mars, and the most dangerous.

  RedCorp had earned top spot on Mars several generations before, in the water electrolysis business. Bigger corporations took money from Earth investors to explore and build colonies deep inside the infamous Valles Marineris. RedCorp was different. The shrewd directors took a gamble on taking control of water resources in the North. Resource extraction and water electrolysis plants initially cost RedCorp a fortune. It was hard enough to live and work on any part of Mars, but even worse in the frozen wilderness of the Northern Polar region, a terrible place from which to operate. Temperatures frequently dropped to around minus fifty degrees Celsius, a region that swallowed men and machines in its hostile environment.

  After a precarious few decades, the company moved past its competitors, like a thoroughbred racehorse passing a retired hack. The vast facilities that covered the Polar region had almost bankrupted RedCorp, but they persisted, and won. Money poured in from supplying fuel to third generation fusion powerplants. Yet another technology developed and produced on the Red Planet.

  They were now richer than many nations on Earth. Colonists, haulage companies, mining corporations, and heavy industry on Mars needed fuel, oxygen, and plastics. Water electrolysis was an intermediate step in all of these processes. RedCorp delivered and profited handsomely. Their pipelines fed every settlement on Mars, and each liter of the precious water they delivered or processed augmented the corporation's coffers. They made even more profits from deuterium. A humble byproduct of their processing plants; deuterium was the element that boosted them to unheard of commercial success, into the mega-corporation they were today, wielding power over Mars and beyond.

  “Damn, look at those things go.”

  Corporal Glenn Eaker lifted his head a fraction so as to see better. He was one of their vets. On his third life, and he’d seen his share of action. If he ‘died’, he could anticipate a fourth life.

  “Something’s different, Lt. They were never that fast.”

  “Copy that. They’ll die just as fast if we hit them hard enough.”

  He watched the enemy advance. It wouldn’t be long now. It was cold, and he shivered. His sealed combat armor was designed to keep him warm, but the supposed state of the art gear wasn't perfect. It was different for the Martian troops. The RedCorp factories and research laboratories had never experienced shortages of skilled scientists to drive their advanced technology. Unlike Earth, who’d watched their finest minds to travel to Mars. People who chose to partake of the riches splashed around by the wealthy colonists.

  Eaker couldn’t hold his anger in check. “I hear you, Lt, but why can’t they give us kit like the Martians? Bastards have it all, the best of everything. Our people send us into battle with gear they should have scrapped twenty years ago.”

  “Easy, Corporal. We have what we have, so make the best of it.”

  The man had a point. The technological gap continued to widen, leaving Earth’s soldiers to fight with little more than their brute strength. The cybernetic enhancements, limbs, and certain organs gave them a fighting chance against the superior technology, in theory. But the Lifers were few and far between, just a single platoon of them for every battalion of Marines. The reality was RedCorp mercenaries were better armed and better equipped, and both sides knew it; a war of technology against unlimited manpower, raw muscle, and cybernetic enhancements. So far, Martian tech had shown itself to have the edge in almost every engagement.

  Cage assessed they were within minutes of being overwhelmed. The drones were getting nearer. Soon they’d be overhead, and they’d call in the armored fighting vehicles. All hell was about to break loose, and the brutal private contractors who fought for RedCorp would show little mercy. It was time to get out of Dodge. He glanced at his second-in-command and his best friend, Sergeant Rob Romero.

  “Prepare to pull back, and we’ll find transport back to the LZ. We can’t hold them, not on our own. How many did we lose in the first attack?”

  The Sergeant's face was hidden from view behind both his thermal head cover and helmet. He wore the same kind of armor as Noah, equally battered and worn, the curse of fighting too many missions against a superior enemy. They were in bad shape, in need of extraction. Desperate for replacements to allow them time to regroup, rebuild, and prepare for the next mission. There were no replacements.

  “How many? Too many, Noah, way too many."

  Romero’s reply was bitter, and with good reason. Command had left them to fend for themselves deep inside the frozen Northern Plain region. Situated inside Mars' bitterly cold North Pole, it was an inhospitable part of an inhospitable planet. Each man was reminded of the external temperatures as they fought two enemies, the Martian mega-corporations, and the hostile planet.

  At least we don’t have a third enemy to fight. People say they won’t come, can’t come. It’s too far away, and they have problems of their own, just fighting to survive on their hellhole of a planet, although if they did come, the Titans would be an enemy to fear more than any other in the Solar System. Possessing tremendous wealth, they have the ability to buy war materiel beyond the wildest dreams of any military commander. Combined with the warrior culture necessary to survive the harshness of their home planet, in orbit around Saturn, they would prove to be unbeatable. Like the barbarian hordes who sacked Rome in the fourth century, yet many hundreds of times more powerful. Thank God they’re too far away to be a threat.

  He tried to ease the tension. “We can hold them, Rob. We always do. The atmospherics are changing. Scan for a comms window while I keep an eye on the enemy.”

  “Copy that. Maybe we’ll find out what happened to the others.”

  It should have been a good plan. A battle-winning strategy, if the planners did their job right. And the quartermasters gave them the tools to do the job. Advance on the Chasma Boreale Refinery complex, deep inside a five-hundred-kilometer long canyon that slashed deep into the frozen wilderness. The refinery extracted, refined, and produced almost all the water used in the colonies, as well as massive quantities of deuterium, vital for the energy-hungry industries of Mars, and planets beyond.

  They’d sent four units to attack the refinery using EMP nano-charges. Once they detonated, the action would descend into an old-fashioned grunt fight. Move in from four directions, overwhelm the place, and lock it down against the inevitable counterattack. Except they'd lost contact with the others before they even got close. Now they faced the brunt of the Martian corporate military. Alone.

  "Comms window is close,” Romero paused to scan his helmet display, “Four minutes."

  Noah grunted an acknowledgement. "Maybe this time they'll answer."

  "Enemy in visual contact!" Martinez yelled. He was on his second life. If the worst happened, he’d live to fight another day, "They're on the ridge; they’ll see us any moment!"

  Noah scanned his passive sensors. "Keep your heads down, and for the love of God, don't move. This mission just went dark. Shut down everything except life support. Let them pass over us."

  A few of the squad swiveled their gaze at him, as if to complain about sitting it out. The enemy was in front, and all they had to do was kill the
m, except the sensors told their own story. The approach of the vast RedCorp ground force was inexorable. Unstoppable. If they tangled with them, they’d lose. And lose badly.

  One of his men grumbled, “Kill a few now. It’ll be less to deal with later.”

  He recognized the voice of Kathy Mason. Another vet, she was still sore about the losses they’d taken earlier, including her best buddy Andy Weatherstone. The rumor was they’d been lovers. No place for relationships in a Lifer unit. The system was good, but it wasn’t perfect. Losses were high in Mars Recon II, very high.

  “If we open fire first, Kathy, they’ll kill us all. Keep your systems at minimum. Keep your weapons on safe, and let them go.”

  Each trooper checked their suit and ducked low inside crevice they'd been following for the last hour. Cage shivered even more as he dropped his life support further. Without the complex equipment fitted to his armor, he’d die in seconds.

  The gear was outdated compared to what the enemy used, but it functioned. Beneath the armor, he wore a standard issue sealed utility spacesuit, identical to the gear worn by civilian surface workers on Mars.

  An external, backpack-mounted microturbine powered the suits. Polymeric nanofiber power packs supplied energy for the limbs, and in an emergency, the primary weapons. Each man also wore the three components that gave the Lifers their tactical edge in battle. First was the headgear, an armored helmet, with layered one hundred and eighty-degree emissive visor. Ballistic protection plates and a wide gorget protected the neck. This advanced unit provided a fully integrated tactical processing system, wireless communication, and a microelectronic and optical combat sensor suite. Further protection came in the form of a layered protective outer layer, together with a secondary survivability layer that could repair breaches, provide additional heat, and adjust internal pressures. This layer also included the critical microclimate cooling system, providing two hundred watts of additional temperature control.