Earth at War: Books 1-3: A Military Sci-Fi Boxset by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

“I expected it to be more crowded,” Julie said, leaning forward as if she could get a better view out of the cockpit by crowding closer to the canopy.

It was instinctive for her, I knew, wired into her brain from years of flying a Navy fighter. But this was a shuttle, not an F18, and the view out of the “canopy” was a holographic projection onto a blank section of fuselage, just as heavily armored and shielded as any other part of the ship. Julie had argued for a physical window. I’d been there for some of it, for her thunderous back and forth with Daniel Gatlin, insisting there should be a way to dead-stick a landing if all the power went out. I was neither a pilot nor an aerospace engineer, but I’d seen the wisdom in his position that there was no way to use physical controls to fly something as large, heavy and complicated as a shuttle. If the power went out in an atmosphere, the passenger section of the craft could eject and parachute down, and even that had taken hours and days of contentious debate.

But she was right, I’d expected the skies over the Helta capital city to be one of the old science fiction paintings from the 50’s brought to life, the ones that showed a city in the far-flung year 2000 with spaceships coming in from orbit and the skies crowded with futuristic-looking aircraft, hovering around insubstantial, wispy, never-never versions of art-deco cityscapes.

Helta Prime and its eponymous capital city were more reminiscent of a nature park, giant sequoias rising above fern-covered plains, the structures of the city woven around and between, as if the trees were the inhabitants of the world and the Helta were merely tenants begging for space in their nooks and crannies.

“It’s like Greenpeace colonized a planet,” I agreed, leaning against the gunner’s station, unworried about the control yoke on my side because it was locked quite securely. I twisted around to face Joon-Pah, who was seated in the row behind us along with Delia Strawbridge. “How do you fit your whole population in with so little construction on the actual surface? Do you have like, underground cities or something?”

“Not if I understand your meaning correctly,” he told me. “That is, large structures such as storehouses, government buildings and the like are concealed beneath a layer of soil so as not to break up the flow of nature, but no, we do not house our populations deep under the ground.” His gaze turned down and his ears sagged with sadness. “Though we have, as of late, began to dig large shelters in case of attack by the Tevynians.” He shook off the moment of melancholy and met my eyes once again. “Having seen your cities, I understand your confusion. The population of Helta Prime has never risen above two billion individuals.”

I realized my mouth was hanging open and I closed it before something flew in.

“How the hell do you manage

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