Cries of the Wolf

  Cries of the Wolf

  Book Two of the Entrent Saga

  C. S. Harte

  Star Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 by C.S. Harte

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, live or dead are purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-947721-05-0

  Version 1.0.0 (11/25/18)

  For my Maria.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Also by C. S. Harte

  About the Author

  Reader Circle

  1

  The howling of the planet-wide blizzard breached Captain Meomi Hana's Tempest exo-combat suit. She stood over the ledge of Centrich Canyon on the frozen world of Nocia and shivered as she read the temperature in the left corner of her heads-up display. 188.7 Kelvins. 115 degrees below the freezing point of water. Her legs fought to steady their hold on the icy cliffside as the winds threatened to push her into the chasm below.

  Lightning bloomed in the distant horizon. The air-splitting roar of thunder followed a few flashes later.

  Trailing behind the 29-year-old Captain Hana was the rest of her squadron; Lieutenant Laurine Remy, Chief Security Officer of the Commonwealth of Man (CMS) Ship Cerberus, Ensign Rayfin Manalo, and three Centurias Mark V combat droids.

  “Captain, we haven’t heard from the Cerberus in over four sol-hours,” Lieutenant Remy said via suit-to-suit comm in her usually thick French accent. “We should consider heading back to the shuttle and waiting until the storm dies down.”

  “He’s down there,” Meomi peered into the darkness of the abyss. “That Fleet traitor. I saw his residual heat signature not long ago.”

  “As much as I hate to agree with the Lieutenant, I think we should head back to the ship.” Rayfin cleared the advancing frost from his helmet visor. “Maybe spend a couple of hours soaking our asses in a hot bath back on the Cerberus, then try again.”

  Meomi glanced at the battery levels of her exo suit, 42%. With the storm blocking all sunlight, the self-recharging photolytic coating of the suit was useless. “We still have over four hours of juice left and a mission to complete,” she said with a stern tone, leaving no room for argument.

  Before becoming a Fleet Captain, Meomi spent her first ten years of service as a space marine in the Commonwealth Infantry, quickly working her way up to Colonel. She served with honor and valor, earning several awards including the Distinguished Medal of Courage — the Commonwealth’s highest military honor — for her heroism during the Battle of Falling Midnight on Gosi Prime, the first human encounter with Mimics.

  Captain Hana scoffed at marines asking to abandon a mission because the temperature or weather wasn’t ideal. It was a running joke among the Commonwealth Infantryman that Fleet sailors were softer than Aranya silk. Her peers in the Marine Corps never thought Meomi would take the Fleet Captain promotion. They didn’t know she requested the transfer. They weren’t there on Gosi Prime. They didn’t witness what she witnessed — the way the Mimics tore into the flesh of the marines in her unit, Tempest suit and all, with their dagger-sharp talons and scorpion-like stingers. They weren’t one of the three survivors.

  Rayfin placed his gloved hand on Meomi. “Are you OK, Captain? Did you hear me?”

  Meomi shook her head inside her helmet. Maybe the cold was getting to her. It wasn’t like her to drift. “My comm must have been on the fritz. Repeat what you said, Ensign.”

  “The Centurias aren’t responding anymore. It looks like their motor relays are frozen solid — like my ex-girlfriend’s heart.” He snorted.

  Captain Hana kept a blank expression on her face.

  "Right, well..." Rayfin coughed and pointed at the three snow-blanketed, humanoid figures behind them. “We’re outside of their operating temperature. If I’m to be honest, Captain… this planet is outside my operating temperature,” he said over the sound of his teeth chattering. “Even my thoughts feel frozen.”

  “Maybe our intel is wrong, Captain,” Laurine added. “Maybe he was here and left. I don’t know how anyone could survive in these conditions for long. Not alone.”

  Meomi switched to infra-red cameras once again. Everything on her visor screen turned shades of blue except one trail of turquoise leading down into the canyon. She squinted and noticed one pixel of orange, enough proof to continue the hunt. “Listen. The man down there is a traitor. He killed hundreds of Fleet sailors. Your brothers and sisters in arms. We’re the only ones that can give justice to them. If this traitor is allowed to survive and escape, then it’ll encourage more traitors within Fleet. We can't have that. Not now.” Meomi scowled. “Not with the Mimics on our doorsteps.”

  Laurine fixed her eyes on Rayfin as if begging him to say something to change the Captain’s mind.

  Rayfin glanced back, opened his mouth for a moment, and shrugged.

  “The way I see it, we’re still alive, and we have a mission to complete.” Captain Hana discharged a plasma burst from her rifle into the blizzard. “Our guns still work. Thank those Commonwealth engineers for ensuring we can always kill something, no matter the environmental conditions."

  “Yes, bless them,” Rayfin grumbled.

  “Set up a flashers here,” Meomi ordered Laurine. “I’m sure Commander Rhyne will send a shuttle when the snowstorm calms down.”

  Lieutenant Remy removed a homing beacon from her pack when she quickly spun around. “Did you guys hear that?”

  Rayfin turned his head in the same direction as Laurine’s stare. “Are you talking about the roaring winds constantly in my ear or something else?”

  “First time on a sub-zero planet for you guys? The trick is to think of something warm.”

  “I’ve forgotten what warm feels like, Captain.” Rayfin tapped the side of his head. “No, wait… It’s so cold, I think I’m forgetting how memories work…”

  Laurine engaged her strength neuromod. With both hands, she stabbed the beacon into the ice shelf. Her eyebrows raised as the ground trembled softly around her.

  Captain Hana peered over the cliffside again, strategizing a way to the bottom where she suspected the traitor was hiding. According to her on-board suit computer, the estimated depth of the cliff was 7,512 meters, far too high to survive a jump from the top. She couldn’t rely on her suit’s jump thrusters to function correctly in the extreme environment. “Get out your climbing gear. We’re going down the old-fashioned way.” Meomi removed ice screws and rope braided with carbon-nanosteel fiber from her pack.

  “Great,” Rayfin said with a curt laugh. “Exa
ctly what we trained for in the Navy — climbing down frozen cliffs in the middle of the fiercest snowstorm in human history.”

  Laurine’s head swiveled between the beacon in front of her and the gray, foggy horizon to her rear. “Let’s hurry. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to be.”

  “Agreed.” Meomi plunged three automated ice screws into the frozen ledge. After testing their hold, Meomi knotted a carbon-nanosteel rope around the screws and connected it to her suit harness.

  The other two sailors followed their Captain’s lead.

  In the two years since Captain Hana took over the CMS Cerberus and her crew, she had grown to care about them as if they were her family. The relationship started off rocky. Fleet sailors were not accustomed to the stricter, no-nonsense leadership style compared to the Space Marine Corps. They were more inclined to talk back and express their opinions freely, which most of the time, were unnecessary. Meomi despised such behavior.

  But the Cerberus crew grew on her. Captain Hana adapted to and appreciated the resourcefulness, intelligence, and innovative ideas of each crew member. Together, the Cerberus prevented numerous smugglers, rescued countless humans from traffickers, and fought off more pirates than any other Fleet ship patrolling the border systems between the Commonwealth of Man and the Alliance of Faith.

  Whatever objective Captain Hana and her crew were tasked with, they completed. This mission to capture an escaped Fleet traitor was personal to Meomi. The traitor was a former Fleet Captain who sold out his crew and ship to the Alliance, a treacherous act that resulted in the death of every sailor under his command. The only crime worse than a Fleet Captain who betrayed his oath to his government was one that abandoned the lives of his shipmates.

  This was also the last assignment for the Cerberus. All Rio Grande-class ships like the Cerberus were to be decommissioned in the coming weeks with every crew member reassigned to new posts on different vessels. Captain Hana hated the thought of their final mission together to be a failure.

  Despite the perilous, raging blizzard conditions, the three-member team began their descent.

  Laurine stopped after descending ten meters. “Do you feel that?” She rested her hand on the frozen cliffside.

  Rayfin did the same. “I feel it too.” He looked up at his shipmate. “Do you hear the ocean? I swear I can hear a tide coming.”

  The vibrations intensified, causing the team to sway.

  “It’s much louder now.” Laurine looked down at Rayfin.

  “No…” The air in Meomi’s lungs vanished. She felt slack in her line. The ledge began breaking apart. “Disconnect from your harness and drop to the bottom. Use your jump packs to slow your fall.” She delivered each sentence rapidly, but clearly.

  “WHAT?” Rayfin yelled into the suit comm. “That’s crazy, Captain!”

  The vibrations became tremors. The tremors quickly erupted into a full-blown earthquake.

  “AVALANCHE!” Meomi yelled as the chaotic rumblings crashed her into the frozen rock wall. “JUMP!”

  A massive wave of snow, ice, and debris poured into the canyon from above, blocking what little light they had, violently throwing the team into the pitch-black chasm below.

  2

  A tapping sound pulled Meomi from her unconscious state. She forced her eyelids to lift and caught a glimpse of Rayfin hovering above her. His mouth was moving rapidly, but her suit comm didn’t relay the speech. She fought through a wave of pain rolling through her skull trying to regain her senses. Through sheer force of will, Meomi asked, “Are you OK?”

  Rayfin pulled Meomi to a sitting position. His lips still moved frantically with no sound.

  With her eye movements, Meomi navigated through the Tempest menus to restart her suit.

  He pointed at the jagged rock ceiling above them. The combined external lights of their Tempest suits were more than enough to illuminate the enclosed space.

  Meomi followed his gaze and shook her head inside her helmet. “What? Where are we? How far down did we fall?” Her suit finished its initialization sequence. She heard Rayfin’s voice again, but distorted and mixed with static. “There’s something wrong with my comm. I’m having trouble hearing you.”

  Rayfin opened his forearm console and typed a message.

  Use external mics.

  The text appeared on her visor’s HUD. She nodded. “OK, done.”

  “I can hear you. Can you hear me?” Rayfin yelled through his helmet.

  “Yes.” But Meomi heard other sounds besides her young officer’s voice. There was a strange and steady humming going along with the flow of running water. She scrunched her face and eyes closed, unsure if the noises were coming from the external mics or from inside her head.

  “I can’t find Laurine.” Rayfin threw up his hands.

  Meomi checked her HUD mini-map. Two blue dots where there should be three. “Her locator must be offline…”

  “We need to find her and quick. What if there’s something wrong with her suit? She can’t survive long without…”

  “I know.” Meomi held up her palm, not wanting to consider the death of her Security Officer.

  Rayfin helped his captain back on her feet. “I already ran a thermal scan. I can’t find her in the sensor radius.”

  Meomi iterated through her suit’s diagnostics. One of her battery packs was damaged. She had less than 90 minutes of power left. The joint locks were engaged. Whatever fall she took was severe enough to break her bones if it wasn’t for the Tempest safety systems. “How much juice do you have left?”

  “Under four hours. You?” He wrinkled his brow.

  “Same.” She lied, thinking it better not to compound his worries. Meomi surveyed her rocky landing spot. The ceiling was perfectly concave, a grainy-textured, bronze dome. She stepped forward, leaving a deep impression in the airy, uncompacted soil. The walls were the color of light sandstone. “Did we fall into a cave? I don’t remember seeing this on the scanners or the survey maps…”

  “Are we dead? I really hope not…” Rayfin gingerly placed his hand on Meomi’s shoulder to check her corporeality.

  Meomi rolled her eyes. He had a bad habit of joking too much, especially in serious situations. “I’m not a ghost. We’re not dead,” she said sternly. But there was a moment of uncertainty. Her eyes glanced at her pulse monitor on her HUD. 99 beats per minute. “Definitely not dead.”

  “How do you know for sure?” He patted his exo suit, testing the cohesiveness of his own form.

  While checking her vitals, Meomi noticed the external temperature updated to 288 Kelvins — the conditions of a warm summer night on Earth. “What does your external reading say?”

  “288 Kelvins. I think my suit is broken.” Rayfin wrinkled his nose. “Either that or we must have fallen really deep into the planet’s crust. This temperature shouldn’t be possible on Nocia.”

  Meomi further explored her surroundings. The humming and water sounds amplified as she followed the cave system. She closed her eyes while walking, letting the soothing noises guide her.

  “What is it?” Rayfin stood next to his captain.

  “Turn on your external mics. What do you hear?”

  He stood quietly for a moment before replying. “Just you…”

  Meomi sighed. “No, listen carefully. There should be no sounds whatsoever. We’re buried underneath several kilometers of ice and rocks. Do you hear a humming, like from electricity or water running?”

  "Sort of... You think there’s something further down this path?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine at this point.” Meomi motioned to keep moving forward.

  “I’m still not convinced we’re not dead…” Rayfin sighed.

  She ignored his babbling. Talking was how he coped with stress. The humming and running noises intensified as they advanced. For nearly an hour they walked in silence, following the melodic sounds, like sailors to a siren’s call. Then they came upon something unexpected, forcing Meomi into an
abrupt halt. “Impossible…”

  “What is?” Rayfin almost ran into his captain. “Is it Laurine?”

  “Look.” She pointed at the thin rays of light knifing through the roof of the cave.

  “Sunlight?” His mouth fell open. “On a frozen, uninhabitable planet? Several thousand meters beneath the surface?”

  Meomi shook her head and shrugged. “Which is why I said impossible…”

  Rayfin held out his gloved hand and allowed the beams to soak into his palm. “Does this mean we’re close to the entrance? Maybe Laurine is outside!” He shifted his weight, ready to run.

  “Wait!” Meomi barred him with her forearm. “We don’t know what’s out there.” She reached over her back for her rifle but found it missing. “Do you have your rifle?”

  “No, Captain. Must have slipped out during the fall.”

  Meomi tilted her head. “Odd.” She ejected her pistol from a thigh compartment and ordered Rayfin to do the same. “Follow me and stick close.”

  “Understood, Captain.” He slimmed his profile and gestured for her to pass.

  More light poked through the porous ceiling as they neared the opening of the cave. Other sounds mixed with the previous concert of electric humming and babbling streams. Bird calls. Insect chirps. Leaves rustling.

  “I can see the exit!” Rayfin dashed to the mouth of the cave. “Wow… Captain! You have to see this!”