The Star Carrier Series Books 1-3: Earth Strike, Centre of Gravity, Singularity

Tens of thousands of individual families had made up the fabric of squattie life and culture within the Manhattan Ruins, but above the family level—individual groups of twenty to fifty people—there’d been hierarchies of tribe and race—divisions along racial lines, for the most part, though there were plenty of tribal groupings based on nations of origin as well. Blacks. Whites. Latinos. Hindi. Paks. Thais. Viets. Chinese. Khmers. Russians. All of these were represented within the Ruins, and many, many more. Though families might raid and forage across most of the Ruins, from the Battery to the Bronx, they did so by trespassing on the turf of other tribes … and that was what made life in the Ruins so dangerous. Chinatown, just to the east of TriBeCa, remained an Asian enclave that stubbornly resisted the influx of other ethnic groups; when he and Angela had lived here, an agreement of sorts had existed between the TriBeCa families and Chinatown, to the effect that each stayed out of the other’s turf, maintaining a wary truce. The islands beyond Broadway Canyon and south of the Canal were deadly to non-ethnic Chinese.

Gray couldn’t decide if the man in front of him was North Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. The language had sounded more like Japanese—explosive and guttural—rather than like the more musical Mandarin or Cantonese. His rags included a fairly new-looking smartsuit jacket, presumably scavenged from the ruins of some clothing store, but the indicator light at the collar wasn’t on, so it wasn’t powered. Most smartsuits could maintain a comfortable temperature, interface with local Net-Clouds in order to pull down weather reports and other data, or serve as communications centers … but some used biofeedback to enhance significantly the wearer’s speed and strength. If Gray had to face someone hand-to-hand, he didn’t want them wearing one of those things.

“Take it easy!” Gray said, motioning with his hand. His mind was racing. If Asians were here in TriBeCa, it could only mean the old families, including Gray’s family, the Eagles, had left, driven out, perhaps, when the truce had failed. “Do you understand me?”

The man barked something again, the words unintelligible, then lunged again with his bent spear. Gray sidestepped the thrust, snapped his broom up and around, knocking the man flat on his back.

Shit. The peaceforcer had said there’d been changes in the Ruins. And something about the inhabitants killing each other even more enthusiastically than usual.

If the truce had failed, if the Chinese had moved in on TriBeCa, there was no telling where the rest of his family was now. Hell, it hadn’t been that long since captured enemies had been skinned and suspended still living from building walls as no-trespass warnings to marauders, and there were still occasional stories, whispered and wildly embellished, of cannibalism and mass murder among the crumbling islands. Life in the Manhattan Ruins had never been easy, but at times it got downright interesting. Hellishly so.

His family might have migrated to another part of the Ruins, moving in with allies, possibly, or taking away some other group’s hab space to replace the hab stolen from them. That was the way of life in the Ruins.

Or the Eagles might all have been butchered. That, too, was life—and death—in the Old City.

It was strange … and a bit unnerving. Just five years ago, Gray had been a squattie, a life he didn’t particularly like, but which he accepted, and which he’d been convinced was better than life under the Authority.

But now …

The man on the floor groaned and stirred. There was no point in interrogating him; Gray doubted that he spoke English. Once the Authority had withdrawn from the Ruins, individual families and tribes had pretty much fallen back on the customs and languages of their individual ethnicities, and English was a second language, if it was even known at all.

He set his broom on the floor, stretched out on the seat and let the safety harness engage, then gave it a boost and rolled for the open window. Cold, wet air engulfed him as he fell … and then he was feeding in power and leveling off, flying toward the south.

He wasn’t at all certain where he was going now.

Admiral Karyn Mendelson’s Quarters

Mars Synchorbit, Sol System

0234 hours, TFT

Alex Koenig and Karyn Mendelson both snapped awake at the same instant, the Priority One alert sounding within both of their minds, yanking them from a deep, sex-induced slumber. They were still entangled with each other, holding each other, staring into each other’s eyes from just a few centimeters apart.

“Lights!” Mendelson called, and the bedroom lights came up. Rolling out of opposite sides of the bed, they began reaching for articles of clothing scattered on the deck a few hours earlier.

“P-A!” Koenig called, summoning his Personal Assistant out of the Net-Cloud as he stepped into his underpants. “What the fuck is going on?”

“A Priority One defense alert has just been issued by the Military Directorate,” his AI replied. “An announcement follows.”

He and Mendelson exchanged glances as they continued getting dressed. She’d evidently gotten the same news from her AI.

“To all military personnel within range of this Net-Cloud. This is Admiral John C. Carruthers of the Confederation Joint Command Staff.” Carruthers was the five-star admiral on the Joint Chiefs, the senior military officer, under the civilian secretary of defense, of the Confederation Navy. “At approximately seventeen hundred forty-five hours Fleet Time yesterday, a large Turusch battle fleet began dropping into normal space, forty-five astronomical units from Sol, roughly on a line between Earth and the constellation Boötis. The photon release of that emergence was detected by our automated systems roughly three hours later, and a warning broadcasted to our listening post on Triton. One hour after that, contact with Triton was lost. We must now assume that Turusch fleet elements have destroyed that base.

“High Guard elements are seeking to close with the intruders in order to gather more intelligence. We do not expect them to materially hamper the enemy’s operations.

“The Senate president and the secretary of defense have authorized me to declare an immediate crimson alert, and to scramble all, repeat all available military and High Guard vessels for the defense of the Inner System. We do not at this time know how much time we have or whether the enemy has launched a high-velocity preemptive strike against Inner System targets. In light of this latter possibility, it is imperative that all ships launch in the shortest possible time.

“Repeating. To all military personnel …”

Having heard and acknowledged the alert, Koenig and Mendelson were able to switch it off. Koenig finished pulling on his uniform jacket as Mendelson shrugged into a military smartsuit. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“My duty station,” she replied. “Phobia’s CIC. I’m on Admiral Henderson’s command staff. You’re headed for the America.” It wasn’t a question.

“If I get there in time.” He gave a wan grin. “Buchanan’s still aboard. He’ll be readying her for boost by now.”

“Good luck, Alex.”

“And you, Karyn. Stay …” He stopped. He’d been about to say “Stay safe,” but that wasn’t an option for naval personnel, who by long tradition went into harm’s way. “Stay out of trouble,” he finished lamely. “I’ll see you when we get back.”

He didn’t add that there was a distinct possibility that the promised meeting would never happen.

Liberty Column

North American Periphery

2134 hours, local time

Trevor Gray sat alone atop the crown of the ancient Statue of Liberty.

Once, Lady Liberty had stood at a much lower elevation, the statue and its pedestal and foundation rising some 93 meters from an irregular, eleven-pointed star-shaped base. In the late twenty-first century, as rising sea levels had repeatedly threatened New York City and promised to completely drown little Liberty Island, the old pedestal had been replaced by a new, taller column. That column now thrust up out of the black waters submerging Liberty Island, supporting the 40-meter copper statue some 120 meters above the new sea level.

Technically, the Statue of Liberty still belonged to the old U.S. government, by way of the National Park Service and under the provisions of the Confederation Charter. She had fallen on hard times lately, however. Low-voltage electrical charges, generated by the interaction of salt water and corroding copper, were slowly loosening the Lady’s rivets. The upper six meters of her arm had broken off and fallen into the sea long ago. Like plans to reclaim Manhattan, the ancient icon of liberty was being forgotten, the statue allowed to collapse into ruin.

You could see her from the southern and western windows of TriBeCa, though, at least when the weather was clear, and she’d always been a powerful and deeply moving symbol for Gray. Life in the Ruins, even when it was brutish and short, was supposed to be about liberty.

He sat on Lady Liberty’s hairline immediately in front of the gaping windows lining the front of her crown, his legs dangling over the side. In the darkness off to his left, to the north, the Ruins loomed across New York Harbor, the hundreds of individual green-cloaked islands merging into shadows upon shadows. The tallest islands were marked by strobing navigational beacons, warning off low-flying aircraft or personal fliers. Beyond, the New City gave off a glow as intense as a false dawn, backlighting the darkened islands.

The rain had ended an hour ago, and the sky was clearing. To the south, out over the ocean, he could see the faint, in-line stars of SupraQuito twinkling some 50 degrees above the horizon.

Gray was feeling torn, torn between past and present, between what he’d been and what he’d become. Given time, he thought he could track down the Eagle family, if there were any left alive. Once daybreak illuminated the Ruins, he could fly in, spot a scavenger or, better, a hunting party, and question them.

Just so long as the Chinese hadn’t taken over the entire mass of islands.

But that was impossible. Unless they’d gotten hold of a cache of military weaponry, they couldn’t possibly take over the entire expanse of Manhattan. They simply didn’t have the numbers.

He was still coming to grips with the fact that the place he’d thought of as home for all these years, including his years in the Navy, was gone. It left him feeling adrift in a way he’d never felt during his five years of military service.

It felt like he no longer had a home to come home to.

Worse, it felt like home was now shipboard. His berth aboard the America. The thought was unsettling, and left him depressed and bitter. What was left for him … going back to the Navy and serving out a twenty-year career? Then what?

He wondered if he dared fly back up to Morningside Heights and see if he could see Angela. She’d seemed pretty definite about not wanting to see him anymore, but she could have changed.

It was possible, at least. …

The shrill bleat of an in-head warning signal so startled him he nearly fell off of his precarious perch. Damn it! How was it possible? There was no Net-Cloud here, the peaceforcer had told him. The signal must be being punched through at extraordinarily high power from synchorbit itself, bypassing the local Net-Cloud nodes and transmitting directly to individual in-head units.

“To all military personnel within range of this Net-Cloud,” a voice announced, sharp in his head. “This is Admiral John C. Carruthers of the Confederation Joint Command Staff. …”