Domination (A C.H.A.O.S. Novel) - By Jon Lewis
CHAPTER 1
Colt McAlister sat on the scorched hood of a Volvo station wagon as tendrils of smoke rose from the broken landscape all around him, melding into a gray December sky. Rose Hill, Virginia, was gone. As in wiped off the map. Entire neighborhoods were leveled. Trees were uprooted, cars overturned, lives lost. Thousands of lives lost. There was nothing left unless you counted the portable toilets and food trucks that FEMA brought in for the search teams.
None of it seemed real. Not the body bags stacked up in the streets. Not that Colt had been recruited to fight despite the fact that he was only sixteen. Not that his parents had been murdered or that his best friend’s dad had tried to murder him too. And especially not the warmongering aliens who had declared war on all of mankind.
He closed his eyes for a moment and wondered what it would feel like to get a full night of sleep. Over the last few weeks training sessions started well before dawn and lasted into the evening. The CHAOS Military Academy cadets ran, lifted weights, and sparred. They spent endless hours at the shooting range and ran through scenario after scenario in the hologram rooms where three-dimensional images looked and felt real, allowing them to visit strange worlds without ever leaving campus. He was exhausted. They all were, but the stakes were too high to slow down.
Colt’s stomach churned as he watched men in hard hats pull another body from the rubble. This time it was a girl, not much older than nine or ten. A tall man carried her toward the recovery center where Colt stood guard, and for a moment Colt thought he looked familiar. It was something about the way he moved, or maybe it was his olive skin.
But Colt had seen countless volunteers over the past three days, and they all had the same stunned look—lawyers, professors, accountants, housewives—it didn’t matter. They walked around, eyes glassed over and shoulders slumped. It was as though they were going through the motions, unable to comprehend how something like this could happen.
Less than a month ago, a select group had known that aliens from distant worlds lived among humanity. Now everyone knew, and everyone was terrified. It didn’t matter that most of the aliens were scientists and diplomats—these aliens, the Thule, had come to conquer, and they weren’t going to stop until humanity was eradicated.
Colt’s stomach churned as the man walked closer. The girl in his arms was so young. So frail. Her honey-blond hair fluttered in the wind, and though her neck was bent at an awkward angle, Colt could see her empty eyes staring back at him. Her skin was a ghostly shade of white, and her crimson nightgown pooled like blood around her frail body.
The thin material couldn’t fend off the December chill, but as Colt scanned the area for a blanket he realized that it didn’t matter. All the blankets in the world weren’t going to bring her back.
Communities up and down the Potomac River were in ruins. The death toll in Rose Hill alone was expected to reach two thousand, with five times that many in nearby Alexandria, which was only a few miles away from CHAOS Military Academy. Some estimated as many as twenty thousand were lost, but it was too early to tell.
Colt had overheard one of his instructors mentioning that the academy had escaped damage because the real target was Washington, DC, or more to the point, the president of the United States of America. It made sense. After all, between the faculty and the cadets, there were more than a thousand men and women armed with the most advanced weapons in the history of humanity. The aliens had sent a strike force, not an army, and they couldn’t risk a prolonged fight and still accomplish their primary objective.
The attacks had come in the middle of the night while most of the Eastern Seaboard slumbered. Survivors said there was something that looked like a lightning storm as the portals opened and Thule gunships burst out of the sky. At least a dozen transports delivered Thule infantry to the ground, and though local authorities tried to stop them, the Thule tore across the countryside until soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division engaged them just outside Washington.
Reinforcements arrived from as far away as Fort Bragg and Shaw Air Force Base, and when the battle was over, the president held a press conference on the front steps of the White House, claiming victory. The speech was meant to inspire, but the words were hollow. Everyone knew that the Thule didn’t lose. They simply disappeared back through the portals, and when they returned, humanity would need more than luck to survive. They’d need a miracle.
“There you are.”
Colt turned when he heard Danielle Salazar’s voice through the speakers in his battle helmet. Like the other CHAOS cadets who had been called into service, she wore an exoskeleton called a Whitlock Armor System that made her look like a modern version of a medieval knight.
Each suit cost more than a beach house on Coronado Island, but it was equipped with power cells, processors, and an operating system that enhanced speed and strength by nearly double. The ceramic plates and ballistic mesh were stronger than metal, and the entire system was sealed and temperature-controlled. A breathing apparatus filtered the air, allowing the wearer to enter toxic atmospheres with minimal risk. In a pinch it could be used underwater, but the oxygen supply only lasted ten minutes.
Danielle’s helmet was equipped with auto-targeting software that linked to both her sniper rifle and her .45-caliber handgun. The technology made it hard to miss, not that she needed the help. In the few weeks that she had been training, Danielle had shown herself to be a natural marksman, rising to the top 10 percent in her class.
Here they were, sophomores in high school, and yet they were already assigned to what the Department of Alien Affairs called an Elite Combat Squad. Each ECS had nine members: a squad leader and eight other cadets who were divided into Alpha and Bravo teams. Alpha teams typically specialized in recon while Bravo teams were the heavy gunners, but cadets trained to be interchangeable.
Their primary directive was to find and eliminate hostile alien life forms, which was why they took to calling themselves “exterminators” whenever their commanding officers weren’t around. With the bulk of the military mobilized, the cadets were all that was left to sweep the evacuation sites that had been decimated in the attacks.
“What happened?” Danielle asked. “You were supposed to meet me at the rendezvous twenty minutes ago. Commander Webb didn’t even know where you were.”
Colt glanced at the heads-up display inside his visor. According to the US Naval Observatory Master Clock, he was only sixteen minutes and thirty-two seconds late, but he got the point. He had been named leader of Phantom Squad, which meant that he was supposed to keep everyone else on task, not the other way around.
“Did you turn off your comlink or are you just ignoring us?” she pressed.
“The signal must be scrambled. All I heard was static.”
“Can you hear me now?”
Colt hated it when she used that condescending tone. “Yeah, but it’s probably because you’re standing next to me.”
Danielle placed her hands on her hips the way his mom used to do when she was upset with him. “Then find a tech and get it fixed, or Commander Webb is going to demote you and put Pierce in charge.”
Though they weren’t related by blood, Danielle was the sister Colt never had and the daughter his mom always wanted after giving birth to eight boys. Growing up, their families spent most vacations and major holidays together, and he was fairly certain there were more pictures of Danielle in his family scrapbooks than there were of him.
“Look, I’m sorry.” His eyes drifted back to the little girl. “It’s just that none of this makes sense. I mean, why the suburbs and not a military base . . . or the White House?”
“It’s not like they didn’t try,” Danielle said. “They knocked the portico off the Lincoln Memorial and then blew the head off the statue.”
“But why not assassinate the real thing?”
“Fear.”
“What?”
“It’s symbolic,” Danielle said. “I mean, yeah, there’s a good chance they could have killed the president, but in some ways this is worse. By destroying a symbol like Lincoln’s statue, they made a statement . . . the same statement they made here and in Alexandria and everywhere else. They want us to know that nobody is safe—they could show up anytime, anywhere, and we can’t stop them.”
Colt felt a sense of hopelessness wash over him as he watched a Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter hover in the distance, its tandem rotors scattering debris. He hadn’t thought of it that way, and as much as he wished it weren’t true, Danielle was probably right. The Thule understood the power of terror, and they had used it to their advantage.
In the last week, people had stopped going to work. There was widespread looting, air traffic had been shut down, and the stock markets were closed. Armed members of the National Guard roamed the streets in riot gear as a show of force. It was meant to instill confidence, but all it did was breed more fear.
“How did everything go over on grid D?” Colt asked, changing the subject. Grid D used to be the neighborhoods surrounding Ridgeview Park. Now it was just a marker on the FEMA map. Police states. Curfews. Swift justice. Freedom was all but gone and so was the confidence that the government could protect its people.
Danielle shook her head. Even with the helmet in place, the gesture was incredibly sad. “No survivors.”
“Any sign of Thule?”
“We’ve been through at least two hundred houses and we haven’t even found a—”
Colt cringed as static blared through his speakers.
“Say again?” Danielle pressed her hand to the side of her helmet. “Where?”
“What happened?” Colt tried to adjust the volume control on the side of his helmet.
“Did anyone go near it?” she asked, then waited for a response. “Good. Tell them not to touch it. Tell them to . . . just get out of there.”
“Touch what?” Colt said over the static.
“We’re leaving now.” Danielle started to walk away, tightening the strap that held her sniper rifle over her shoulder.
“Danielle!”
“Commander Webb said that someone spotted a Class 2 Thule fighter a couple miles from here, and he wants us to investigate.”
“What about the rest of the squad?”
“They’re busy.”