Final Assault Read Online Free Page A

Bradshaw, clearly shocked.
    “Amazing, isn’t it?” Cross asked. “It seems they have developed a way to hibernate for all but a year of the two thousand and six years of their planet’s orbit. Then when their planet comes in close to the sun, they revive, harvest supplies from our planet, and go back into cold sleep for another two thousand years.”
    “But six thousand times?” Britt asked. “How is that possible?”
    “We don’t know,” Cross said. “That number matches what Edwin’s archaeological grad student group has come up with in Earth records, and orbital changes caused by the arrival of the tenth planet into the system. We know for certain that the tenth planet came from outside our system, and the aliens have been visiting Earth every two thousand and six years for the last twelve million years.”
    “Twelve million years?” Britt said. “Wow.”
    “We must have been a real surprise to them when they thawed out this time,” Bradshaw said.
    Cross grinned. He hadn’t thought about it that way before. After thousands of years of fairly primitive response, humans had finally come into their own.
    Humans finally had the ability to defend themselves—not just on the ground, but in space.
    “Let’s just hope,” Britt said, “we have enough to surprise them one more time.”
    Cross glanced at her. Her wan features seemed determined.
    “I think we can,” he said, as much to reassure her as himself.

2
    October 12, 2018
14:37 Universal Time
    29 Days Until Second Harvest
    Cicoi, Commander of the South, stood at his command post, his upper tentacles resting on the controls, his lower tentacles wrapped around the command circle, and his eyestalks extended. The warship glided smoothly beneath him, heading toward the third planet.
    The visuals were on, so that the walls seemed to have disappeared. Instead it looked as if he and his staff were floating, unprotected, through the vastness of space.
    Ahead of them was the third planet, its ugly blue-and-white mass looming in his imagination. He wondered what surprises it would bring this time. He knew that it was his job to make certain that the surprises did not hurt Malmur.
    Unlike the last time he took out this warship, this time he was prepared for any contingency. His staff was well trained and used to the unusual configuration. They were scattered throughout the large command center. They stood on circles that extended from the walls according to rank. If he looked down, he could see them, seemingly unsupported, against the darkness of universe.
    Round balls, representing information feeds from the third planet, floated before most of his staff. The energy use still astonished and worried Cicoi. All of it was precious and all of it could be used to survive the next period of darkness. But, he had to remind himself, there might not be another period of darkness if he did not subdue the third planet.
    His mission sounded simple: harvest the third planet with no additional loss of life or ships. But Cicoi, who had tried to destroy most of the weapons the third planet had launched at Malmur, knew that the word “simple” no longer applied to the third planet.
    If the Malmuria had followed tradition, Cicoi would have been recycled after his failure. He had allowed fifteen of the weapons through the defenses. They had exploded on Malmur’s surface, sending odd-shaped clouds into the atmosphere. Strange fires had burned on the ground, and ail Malmuria near the explosions had died.
    Two pods and all their opening nestlings were gone.
    An entire sleeping chamber, filled with thousands of unawakened Malmuria, had been vaporized.
    Eight harvest ships were destroyed. Huge areas of the vast energy collectors that surrounded the planet had been mined.
    And that was only the beginning of the destruction.
    The nestlings in three other pods had wasted away and died of some horrible lingering sickness that the Malmuria had never seen before. Long ago, they had