The Siege of Sirius Read online

  THE SIEGE OF SIRIUS

  A SPLINTERED GALAXY SPACE FANTASY NOVEL

  EDDIE R. HICKS

  The Siege of Sirius

  A Splintered Galaxy Novel

  By Eddie R. Hicks

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  Copyright © 2017 Eddie R. Hicks

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No aliens were harmed in the writing of this novel.

  Cover Art by: Deranged Doctor Designs

  CONTENTS

  Also by Eddie R. Hicks

  Foreword

  Prologue

  1. Foster

  2. EISS agent 19, Codename: Test

  3. Chevallier

  4. Williams

  5. Foster

  6. Foster

  7. Chevallier

  8. Williams

  9. Foster

  10. Foster

  11. Chevallier

  12. Williams

  13. McDowell

  14. Foster

  15. Chevallier

  16. Williams

  17. Williams

  18. Chevallier

  19. Williams

  20. Foster

  21. Nereid

  22. Williams

  23. Chevallier

  24. Williams

  25. Foster

  26. Foster

  27. Rivera

  28. Kostelecky

  29. Bailey

  30. Kostelecky

  31. Chang

  32. Bailey

  33. Rivera

  34. Pierce

  35. Foster

  36. Foster

  37. Eve

  38. Foster

  39. Chevallier

  40. Foster

  41. Chevallier

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Uprising of the Exiled Preview

  ALSO BY EDDIE R. HICKS

  Splintered Galaxy Saga

  Celestial Ascension

  Uprising of the Exiled

  Equilibrium of Terror: Part 1

  Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2

  Splintered Galaxy Standalone Novels

  The Siege of Sirius (Coming December 12)

  Splintered Galaxy Short Stories

  Red Fortitude (Part of the The Officer anthology)

  FOREWORD

  Greetings! If this is your first time dipping into the Splinter Galaxy universe, worry not as this story can be read on its own. However, there will be tiny spoilers from Celestial Ascension. If you do plan on reading that, and want to be surprised at what unfolds, I suggest you check that out before continuing, otherwise enjoy the read!

  PROLOGUE

  Foster residence

  Nashville, Tennessee

  August 2, 2018, 04:53 EST

  A strong storm front pushed onto the east coast of America . . . and the rest of the world.

  Plasma rained from the skies, it didn’t stop. Its thunderous roars leveled entire cities in a matter of minutes. Rebecca’s home was no longer safe.

  Her eyes opened, her head throbbed with pain, her hair a disaster, and her teenage body pinned under a bookshelf. Every window shattered into thousands of fragments. The TV crashed onto the burning floor; seconds earlier it was playing the Emergency Alert System. Her home glowed red and orange as raging fires ripped through it, releasing intense heat and choking smoke in its wake. The ground rumbled, over and over.

  Expensive posh curtains had been reduced to charred material, the staircase leading upstairs had all but collapsed. Her mother frantically yanked Rebecca back up after unburying her from the fallen bookshelf and debris amidst the hellfire inferno. Rebecca staggered slightly upon seeing the state of their once upscale neighborhood. It was as if the apocalypse was upon them.

  Alien space ships appeared before the rising sun, spilling orbs of green plasma down onto the city of Nashville.

  Her mother tugged on her arm trying to drag her out of the burning house and out and into her car. Only it’s not where Rebecca wanted to go, not yet at least. She broke free from her mother’s grip and darted to their backyard patio, past the searing, hot flames and black smoke. She couldn’t leave it behind, not after all the work she had put into earning enough money to buy it for her father. The telescope had to come with them during their escape, alien invaders were not going to take it away.

  Rebecca had fond memories of growing up in this house over the last eighteen years of her life. She ran through its halls and rooms enough times to know how long it would take to run to the patio, then run back into the house and out the front door to freedom. Ignore the fire, heat, and smoke, and you got this, she told herself. Yes, there was no reason why she shouldn’t try to get the telescope before turning tail and fleeing.

  Her mother panicked and pleaded with her to return as Rebecca made her way through the flames; pleading that went unanswered, Rebecca needed to focus on the task at hand. She arrived at the deck, it too was set ablaze. Her bare feet bled; she forgot to take into account the hot shards of glass littering the floor. Rebecca secured the telescope in her hands, refusing to look at and assess the damage done to her body.

  There was one final task left; to escape with the telescope in hand. A task she didn’t plan out very well as she saw the flames that engulfed her home spread quickly. There was no safe route back to the driveway up front. The heat caused her to sweat profusely and the smoke forced her to cough nonstop.

  She heard what sounded like her father calling out to her from inside. She tried to follow the source of his voice, in hopes that he might have found a safe route to travel inside the burning house. Her frantic search for her father’s voice came to an end when she was once again knocked backward in the wake of plasma bombardment from the alien invaders.

  I-40 westbound

  August 2, 2018, 14:23 CST

  Rebecca’s body pulsated with throbbing pain. She opened her eyes and discovered she was sitting on the front passenger’s side of her mother, Liana’s SUV. She saw a whole lot of nothing that surrounded the empty lane of Interstate 40, as she looked away from the crumpled NASA rejection letter addressed to her father. The state of the highway wasn’t a good sign, neither were the roaring sounds of fighter jets flying high above them followed by the tumbling noise of one, or two military helicopters. The aliens were still a threat.

  Dad, she thought and looked about. Her father ideally should have been in the passengers’ side of the SUV, she should have been in the backseat.

  “Mom!” Rebecca cried out.

  “Not now, hon,” she replied in her southern accent just like hers.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Give me time to focus,” Liana’s eyes stayed forward at the highway that lay ahead. “You know how I am about talkin’ and driving.”

  Rebecca’s hand reached over to activate the radio, in hopes of learning what transpired after she was knocked out during their dramatic escape from Nashville. Static. She switched stations several times, each one transmitted static or an emergency broadcast message asking everyone to take shelter or travel west.

  “Don’t bother, it ain’t workin’,” Liana said.

  Rebecca pulled her cell phone out from the pocket of her blackened blue jeans, decorated with small droplets of blood, her blood. The wallpaper of the phone displayed a selfie of her she took two months earlier during her eighteenth birthday party. She wondered if the happy girl with brown hair and blonde highlights would be able to achieve such a level of happiness again as the human race entered a
new dark era, one they might not recover from.

  Life as she knew it was falling apart.

  2018 marked the year everything changed for the human race in the aftermath of the Hashmedai Empire’s failed invasion. Advanced alien technology found its way into the hands of brilliant human engineers and scientists who quickly learned how to reproduce it and adapt it to human society. In a few short years, the human race united to become a new and dominant superpower capable of interstellar travel and building alliances with alien species throughout the galaxy. A dangerous galaxy at that.

  A Splintered Galaxy.

  1 FOSTER

  Interstellar Expedition Space Agency HQ (IESA)

  Paris, Earth, Sol system

  February 19, 2033, 08:21 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Rebecca Foster strode into IESA HQ, a tall, white, and pristine building in Paris. It was formerly the location of the ESA before it was badly damaged during the Hashmedai invasion of Earth some fifteen years ago. The elevators made a digital dinging noise as they slid open giving her access to the top floor of the facility. Rays of sunlight beamed through the skywalk as she moved away from the elevator and toward the office of director James Barker.

  She took one last glance through the windows and fixed her eyes on the Paris skyline amazed at how fast the human race was able to rebuild this city and many others across the globe. Most people born after the war had no idea of the amount of devastation that transpired during that dark moment when two billion human souls came to a sudden end. Only a history book provided them with that knowledge unless they traveled to the regions of Earth that society hadn’t gotten around to restoring, or the many glass craters that scarred the world in some regions like the east coast of North America.

  She stepped away from the window and the reflection of her short brown hair and dark-blue IESA uniform with the flag of the United States stitched onto the shoulders of it. Many of the personnel she passed in the hallways had a uniform like hers; each had a flag of their birth nation. She entered the director’s office where Barker sat at his desk with his hands folded. The flag of the United Nations of Earth hung on the wall behind him, while two chairs were parked in front of his desk. In one of the chairs a familiar face Foster hadn’t seen in years was seated. A young man with dark skin, short black hair, thin and nicely trimmed beard also wearing an IESA uniform, Dominic Williams.

  “Foster, glad you could make it,” Barker said as she took a seat next to Williams.

  “Dom too?” she gestured to him with a smile. “We in trouble?”

  “Big trouble,” Barker said. “We’re sending the two of you away from Earth. For a long time.”

  Foster looked at the aging director with her eyes wide open. “You’re kidding right?”

  “He’s serious, Foster, they found out.” said Williams. “Found out we’re too damn awesome.”

  Foster and Williams had met in the days following the invasion of Earth, the two stuck together and made sure to share the same interests so they always had an excuse to watch each other’s backs. There were no laws during the first year or so after the main Hashmedai command ship was destroyed after all. Those years of watching each other’s backs lead to the two becoming members of IESA and the shared dream of exploring the great expanse beyond the solar system.

  “Congratulations, Captain Foster,” Barker said to her as he offered her a new rank pin. He then addressed Williams and offered him a new rank pin as well. “And congratulations to you, Commander Williams, your flight to Sirius will happen.”

  “Thank you,” she said while she resisted the urge to jump up and scream with joy. “What made things change? Thought the Carl Sagan was on hold indefinitely?”

  “New President, new rules,” said Barker. “Construction on the Carl Sagan continued and is near completion.”

  “You mean you knew it wasn’t scrapped in favor of new warships?”

  “Had to keep a lid on this, people want more protection for Earth, not science and exploration ships. With that said the Carl Sagan will be the last for a while, the next ship in the pipeline will be a warship.”

  “When do we get the keys, and move in?” Williams asked.

  “That’s our next challenge, rather your challenge,” said Barker. “We don’t have a full crew yet.” Barker handed the two of them data crystals. “These are dossiers of people you should consider for the expedition. I’ll leave that in the hands of you two to recruit the best.”

  “Us?” Williams asked.

  “These people will not only be your crew, but your family,” explained Barker.

  “We’ll be a long way from home, Dom,” Foster said to Williams. “Best we put that team together.”

  “That, and I need to contact hundreds of colonists that were rejected due to lack of space, and tell them never mind, we got room still,” said Barker.

  Williams stood up, eager to get started on the new task at hand. “Well then, let’s get to it.”

  The two left the director’s office and made a brief detour sitting down in the cafeteria on the lower floor. They viewed the contents of the data crystals on their handheld data pads and began the tedious task of skimming through its contents while indulging in small lunch and coffee breaks.

  There was a respectable list of names that appeared on their screens. Each name had biographies, psychological reports, education, and work history background details attached. Foster winced and sighed, she underestimated the amount of work recruiting a team for interstellar exploration was going to entail.

  “That’s quite a list,” Williams said as he put his data pad down.

  “Um, yeah. Tell you what, I’ll look into recruiting senior officers,” she suggested as she will be Captain and therefore the one dealing with senior officers the most.

  “Fair enough, I’ll select well-rounded people for the rest of the crew.”

  She tossed her pad onto the table they sat at and addressed the next problem before her. Her roast beef sandwich was getting cold. “Where will you start?” she asked after finishing three bites of it.

  “I’ll look into securing our psionic first,” Williams said. “That, and it will give me an excuse to visit the Radiance embassy.”

  Foster smiled and somewhat regretted not taking on that task herself. “You just want a free trip to Jamaica.”

  “You know me too well!” Williams said with laughter. “Jealous?”

  “Maybe.”

  The galaxy outside of Earth was controlled by two factions. The Hashmedai Empire; the invaders of Earth, and the Radiance Union; a five-species collective who came to assist the human race defeat the Hashmedai Empire. In the aftermath of the invasion many of the governments around Earth crumbled. From the ashes rose a new global government, the UNE one that was aided by the Radiance Union as they shared their technology and knowledge of the galaxy with the human race.

  Part of the reason why the human race recovered quickly after the devastating war was largely due to a fleet of Radiance ships that arrived at Earth from Alpha Centauri, the nearest Radiance controlled system. They uplifted humanity, helped rebuild cities, and guided the human race in constructing ships capable of interstellar travel. Like the UNE, which was formed by marrying all world governments together, IESA was formed as the ESA merged with NASA, CSA, Chinese, and Russian space programs, to name a few. According to Radiance, Earth existed in a region of the galaxy that was largely unknown to the union and the empire. IESA’s goal was to advance into that region of space before either of the two galaxy nations did, to explore, chart and colonize it, further cementing the UNE as a third galaxy superpower in their corner of the galaxy.

  The ESRS Nikola Tesla, ESRS Stephen Hawking, ESRS Freeman Dyson were the first three IESA ships built and were planned to be launched at the same time from Earth to explore the unknown and establish humanity’s first extrasolar colonies without the watchful eye of Radiance. And now the ESRS Carl Sagan will be joining that fleet, taking explorers and colonists to the sta
rs.

  UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

  Vancouver, Earth, Sol system

  February 21, 2033, 18:55 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The voice of a well-spoken man echoed throughout a crowded lecture hall within the confines of UBC. Foster entered the hall and kept her footsteps silent and her appearance low-key, no need to draw attention away from the eager students as she wore her IESA casual uniform. The young generation of students looked at the man who stood front and center before a series of holographic pictures depicting star clusters and planetary objects. Her father would have been proud to see how far humanity had come when it came to astrophysics.

  Gone were the days were students learned about science based on scientific knowledge discovered by humans. Now students studied knowledge that was given to the human race by the Radiance Union, such as the information that was being disclosed in the lecture by acclaimed astrophysicist Doctor Travis Pierce. All of the breathtaking stills from the holographic presentation were planets and star systems discovered and explored by the Radiance Union.

  Travis Pierce was a tall man with light brown hair slowly turning grey. He dressed in a professional manner as he waved his hand about to interact with the holograms around him. He spoke about the hundreds of Earthlike planets in the galaxy and how the evolution of life there differed slightly between each world. Students tapped the touch screens of their data pads as they took notes and saved its contents onto data crystals for future study.

  “And that concludes all binary systems that we know of with life carrying planets around them,” Pierce said as he waved his hand in a circular motion, the holograms around him faded away.

  A student placed their hand up to ask a question, Pierce nodded to them. “Don’t you mean what Radiance knows?”

  “True, most of what I presented today is all based on knowledge Radiance has shared with us.” Pierce said. “Human exploration beyond Sol is limited to Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri.”