Devastation Class Read online

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  Devastation Class

  Copyright © 2020 by Glen Zipper and Elaine Mongeon

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Blink, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  Hardcover ISBN 978-0-310-76900-2

  Audio download ISBN 978-0-310-76912-5

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-310-76904-0

  Epub Edition July 2020 9780310769040

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  “Xanadu” by Jeff Lynne. ©1980 EMI Blackwood Music Inc. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Cover design: Michelle Holme

  Cover direction: Cindy Davis

  Interior design: Denise Froehlich

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  20 21 22 23 24 / LSC / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To our fathers and Anthony the dog

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  PROLOGUE

  “IDENTIFY YOURSELF.”

  It felt surreal to be staring at the face of Mathias Strauss on my Holoview. Captain of the UAS Vanguard, he was a legend of the Nine-Year War. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame had been destroying the Kastazi outpost in the Omega Sector, the enemy’s primary source of supplies and reinforcements. Strauss led the attack force that blew it all to hell. No one in the Alliance had batted an eye at the slaughter. There were no Kastazi civilians. Every last one of them was to blame for our suffering. Any action necessary to secure our freedom was justified.

  That hard truth aside, Strauss’s attack on the outpost still had its troubling questions. The Alliance campaign on Titan Moon had already decimated most of what remained of the Kastazi forces, leaving them almost entirely incapable of defending themselves. Strauss carried on anyway. It wasn’t a popular opinion, but my mother had always believed his assault was more about revenge than necessity. As I looked into Strauss’s eyes, it occurred to me she was probably right. Something about him exuded a capacity for ugliness. It helped me see past all the shiny Alliance bars on his chest and accept him for what I knew he had become. A traitor.

  “Identify yourself,” Strauss insisted a second time.

  Sitting in the captain’s chair opposite Strauss felt equally surreal. Somehow fate had landed me in an absurd new reality—one in which I was the captain of the Alliance flagship, with the fate of Earth and the human race resting in my hands. Surreal. There was no other word to describe it.

  “My name is Vivien Nixon. Captain of the UAS California.”

  Strauss took two steps forward, his face filling the Holoview. “No. You are a child playing a dangerous game.”

  “Let’s just get on with it, shall we?” I baited him, staying on plan.

  Strauss angrily punched his fingers against his command module, and a three-dimensional identification photo appeared on the Holoview alongside him. John Douglas Marshall: Age 18. My heart broke all over again as JD’s image rotated on a 360-degree axis.

  “John Marshall—where is he?” he demanded.

  “KIA,” I replied.

  Strauss’s angry expression gave way to something that looked a whole lot more like anxiety, as if JD’s demise had some greater consequence than I could have known. “I am placing you and your crew under arrest as enemy combatants of the Alliance. Lower your grids and prepare to be boarded.”

  Not yet. I had to take it further. Make him believe we were ready to die.

  “I’m afraid you have it backward,” I answered. “We’re all that’s left of the Alliance. You and your crew are treasonous cowards and Kastazi sympathizers. So just in case it isn’t clear . . . no, I will not be lowering my grids.”

  Commander Gentry anxiously glanced over his shoulder at me, concerned I was overplaying things. His serving as my first officer added yet another layer of absurdity. Only fourteen weeks earlier he had been an ensign and my superior.

  Strauss glanced at an officer stationed behind him. The officer nodded, confirming something for his captain.

  “Then you leave me no choice but to destroy you,” Strauss replied, looking suddenly more emboldened.

  “Give us your best shot,” I countered, knowing we had to take a beating in order to draw him in.

  “We will,” Strauss glibly replied as six hulking hostiles materialized from behind stealthing fields, three on either side of the Vanguard. The sight of the ships took my breath away. A peculiar amalgam of both Alliance and Kastazi technology, each was twice the size of the California.

  One ship or seven, it made no difference. We still had to take it all the way to the brink.

  I faced Strauss, narrowed my eyes at him, and issued the command I knew could very well be my last if everything didn’t go according to plan.

  “Fire all weapons!”

  CHAPTER 1

  JD

  MY RED SPORTBIKE BREACHED A THICK WALL of opaque heat radiating off the pavement. To my left, the pristine blue waves of the Pacific Ocean. To my right, towering walls of gray-brown rock and boulder. Behind me, closer than ever before: Vivien Nixon, a yellow projectile hurtling forward at almost impossible velocity.

  We’d raced each other in these canyons hundreds, if not thousands, of times. I had every curve, every line, every crevice memorized—and used them to my advantage. Even the seemingly insignificant angles of shadow and light were weapons at my disposal.

  Our machines equal, only strategy and technique separated us—and perhaps the intangible will to win.

  Entering a straightaway, Viv made her move. In my rearview I could see her foot stabbing downward, downshifting into third. The sound of five thousand RPMs rattled inside my helmet as I watched her yell
ow streak blast by me.

  Instinctually, I matched her technique: Downshift. Accelerate. Overtake. She was not going to beat me.

  In an instant, the road narrowed, and we were even. A blur of yellow and red intertwined.

  And then came the curve. Our two bikes, cornering at breakneck speed, inches apart along the cliff’s edge.

  I could’ve eased off. Let Viv have the curve. But that would’ve meant submission and certain defeat. One of us had to lead and the other had to follow. I understood that. I wondered if she did. A phantom taste of bile flooded my mouth. The thought of losing made my stomach turn. No. I would hold my ground. Not give a single inch.

  Ever predictable, Viv held her line, prioritizing technical precision over strategy. Her mistake. My opportunity. I took one short breath and leaned into the curve first, intersecting her path.

  Behind me, I could hear the grotesque impact of Viv’s bike against the guardrail. An intense wave of anger overwhelmed me. How could she let this happen again? After all this time, she should’ve been smarter. Better. Like me.

  I turned my head and watched her bike plummet over the cliff on a meteoric collision course with eternity. And in the span of a moment, my world was gone. Empty. It was like floating underwater in the dark, no noise but the hammering of my heart.

  And then the emptiness was filled with noise—the sound of metal against metal, an alarm and a cycling message broadcast over the PA: This is a drill. All cadets report to the bridge. All students report to your safety positions. This is a drill.

  Next came blinding light as a hatch opened from above and a uniformed arm reached down to me in the darkness. As it pulled me upward, a sixteen-year-old bespectacled face came into focus: Roger Bixby. My roommate and fellow cadet.

  “Come on, man. Snap out of it. Blink Drill,” Bix said, shouting over all the noise. “You’re going to get us written up again.”

  I acknowledged him with a half grin but didn’t try to get out of my pod any faster. Getting written up didn’t really bother me anymore, even though it should’ve.

  I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the Iso-Pod tank as I stepped down to the floor. I may not have been the same physical specimen as my father—everything genetics divinely gifted him, I had to earn the hard way. Exhaustive, if not obsessive exercise. Strict dietary regimens. Constant discipline. But still, for all my limitations I was holding my own. At least physically, anyway.

  The alarm and message continued to cycle: This is a drill. All cadets report to the bridge. All students report to your safety positions. This is a drill.

  I pulled off my red armband and nonchalantly scanned Iso-Rec. The compartment was circular, with a dozen chambers arranged in a half-moon. The walls and floor were uniformly charcoal, the pods oblong and glossy black. You could always count on the Alliance to design everything in different, previously undiscovered shades of boring. A door at the far end exited to Beta Deck’s main passageway.

  Despite the fact Bix was standing right next to a control panel, he looked puzzled by the annoyed look on my face.

  “What?” he asked, adding a flummoxed shrug of his shoulders.

  “The noise, Bix. Kill the noise.”

  “Oh.”

  A quick swipe of his fingers across the panel cut off the Iso-Rec PA.

  By the time my eyes found their way to Viv’s pod, Julian Lorde was already standing beside it. He was tall, strapping, handsome, and smart. Not to mention British. My distaste for the guy aside, I had no trouble understanding why Viv—or any other girl for that matter—would’ve fallen for him.

  He hoisted Viv out of the pod’s inner chamber with effortless grace and gently set her on her feet. She responded by greeting him with a smile and delicately running her fingertips through his sandy-blond hair.

  The softness of Viv’s demeanor evaporated as soon as she turned her attention to me. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help but focus on the sensory fluid clinging to the contours of her body as she stormed my way.

  “What is wrong with you?” she snapped, inches from my face. “If that was a real track, I’d be dead!”

  “But it wasn’t, and you’re not,” I hit back.

  “This is really starting to get old.”

  “What is? Losing?”

  “And here we go again,” she said with a sigh. “Your ‘whatever’s necessary to win’ sermon.”

  “I like to think of it more as a lesson. One you still need to learn.”

  “You know, John,” Lorde piped in, “perhaps if you concentrated more on rules and less on winning, you’d be having more success here.”

  My lips irresistibly curled into a smirk. “That’s interesting, Julian. Perhaps if you concentrated more on winning, you wouldn’t be languishing on the lower decks.”

  I immediately regretted saying it. The fact he hadn’t made the cut with us was a vulnerability he couldn’t escape, and it was beneath me to use it against him.

  “If my father were captain, perhaps things would be different.”

  I wanted to get in his face, but resisted the urge. I was accustomed to taking potshots about nepotism, but not from him. To his credit, Lorde had never cried foul about it before. Probably because it would’ve put Viv in his crosshairs too. Her mother was my father’s first officer.

  “Are you really going there, Julian?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, John, but it really begs the question, doesn’t it?”

  “The question of what? My qualifications as a cadet relative to yours?”

  “No. Not your qualifications. Your commitment. If anyone else showed so little respect for their position—”

  “The captain wouldn’t tolerate it? Is that it?”

  “Like I said, John. It begs the question.”

  Thankfully the high-pitched tone of an incoming alert pinged from the com unit embedded in the wall beside me—interrupting us before I could indulge my impulse to belt Lorde in the jaw.

  I steeled myself for what I knew was coming. “Marshall,” I acknowledged into the com.

  “Why aren’t any of you at the Blink Drill?” my father’s angry voice boomed through the speaker.

  I cringed. So much for steeling myself.

  My father had far more important duties to attend to than monitoring my schedule, yet he made a point of riding me anyway. As he always did.

  “Apologies, Captain,” I replied. Calling him Dad was only permissible off duty and in private. “I forgot to set the timers on the Iso-Pods. It’s my fault.”

  “I don’t want to hear excuses. Get to the drill now, cadet.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Bix wiped the sweat from his forehead. “We’re getting written up, aren’t we?”

  “Relax,” I answered. “You know this is about me, not either of you. The only thing you need to be worried about is tonight.”

  I felt Viv’s eyes on me.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “What’s happening tonight?” she asked.

  “A microwave experiment,” I lied.

  “You’re working on a microwave experiment? You? Tonight?”

  “Yes. Me. Tonight,” I answered. “Why? Is there something else I should be doing?”

  “Unquestionably, there is,” she said, trying to suppress a smile. “We’re supposed to be celebrating my birthday, you jerk.”

  I maintained a straight face, but my eyes probably betrayed me. “Are we? Well if I happen to miss the celebration, happy birthday in advance.”

  For a moment we stared at each other in a stalemate—neither of us wanting to break from the ruse. Inevitably, though, we both started laughing, and she gave me a shove.

  “Whatever you’re cooking up, it’d better be good.”

  Of course it would be good. Bix and I had been working on it for three months.

  I looked at Lorde and wondered what he was thinking. If anyone was planning something for Viv’s birthday, it should’ve been him.

  “Guys.” Bix anxiously
stepped between us. He was considerably shorter than Viv and me, and his navy blue cadet uniform made him look something like an overmatched referee. “Guys, seriously, please get dressed. We’re really late!”

  “Punctuality is the thief of time, my friend,” I answered, giving him a brotherly pat on the shoulder.

  “Cute. That yours?” Viv asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s Oscar Wilde,” Lorde snickered.

  “Was it?” I answered, playfully feigning ignorance.

  “Well, John, at least your choice in plagiarism attests to good taste.”

  “Thank you.”

  Viv stifled a laugh, clearly relieved the bickering between Lorde and me had evolved into something less contentious. “You know what? You’re both idiots.”

  CHAPTER 2

  VIV

  JUST STOP, NIXON, I THOUGHT, WATCHING MY hands shake as I laced up my boots in the Iso-Rec locker room.

  My autonomic response to anger was always the same. I hated it. I might as well have had a flashing light on my forehead to let people know when they had gotten under my skin.

  Breathe, Ditto. Just. Breathe.

  That was my mother’s usual refrain anytime she saw rage erupt through my fingers. And the nickname? Her doing, from the time I turned five and declared I wanted to be just like her. She was the only one who was allowed to use it—although JD dropped it on me occasionally, trying to be cute. It wasn’t.

  Hurtling off a cliff sucked, even if it was just an Iso-Rec sim. Every bit of it felt as real as life until just before my body smashed into the rocky gorge below. JD knew better than to do that to me. But then again, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

  I tried to fasten my uniform buttons, but my still-trembling fingers clumsily struggled.

  Really?

  “Okay, I’m breathing,” I relented to my absent mother, taking in a few angry deep breaths.

  Lo and behold, Mom’s advice managed to ebb my rage ever so slightly. At least enough for some small measure of rational thinking to creep back into my skull.

  Sure, JD was acting like an idiot, but it was a symptom of something bigger. It had to be. From the moment we left Earth, he hadn’t been himself. He was falling behind in all of his studies, half-heartedly going through the motions with his training, and most bizarrely, questioning authority at every turn. I never would’ve accused JD of being perfect, but all of the angsty, loose-cannon stuff wasn’t the guy I knew.