Read Online Rebellion Ebook Full by B. V. Larson - Free Book Online

They weren’t talking about a deal they had with us , they were talking about a deal they had with them . Whoever was in those satellites had negotiated a peace of some kind—a truce. Probably, the Macros had promised not to attack the satellites. Maybe at the point they had agreed, the Macros had been losing, or didn’t have the full power of their fleet here yet to finish the job.
    I looked down at the big screen, which shifted now to give us a visual on each of the planets. The two closest to the star looked desertous, like Mars, but there were still icecaps, feathery clouds and some visible, muddy oceans. The three in the center, including the twin worlds, were verdant and gorgeous. I saw my first blue alien oceans, with thick clouds and green continents.
    The one we were streaking toward was mostly white, being a colder world. I imagined that arctic sheets of ice spanned most of the planet. It was a big world covered with dark, craggy mountains. A dozen narrow seas glinted between the peaks at the center of the world, like a belt of jewels. It appeared habitable, but mostly around the equator.
    The Macros planned to use us to finish off the people who lived here, whoever they were. I could see it all in my mind now. The desperate leaders of these lovely worlds had negotiated at some point in the past. They had made a grim deal with the Macros, just as I had when we faced extinction. They had forged a peace treaty to save their own skins. They’d given up the surface of all six of their worlds, which were now overrun with Macros, and agreed to keep only their satellite habitats. They’d made the deal in good faith, probably years ago.
    And the Macros were going use us to break the peace. We were not Macros, and so we were not included as part of the deal.

-7-

    The assault ships returned from the rescue mission less than an hour before the Macros had indicated we were expected to launch. We quickly loaded each of the ships with a complement of twenty marines. Less than a hundred and fifty men, and everything depended on them. I ordered the rest to follow in their wakes. Two hundred more marines would fly in their tiny capsules behind each of the assault ships.
    Warrant Officer Sloan was among the survivors the ships brought in. I had to smile at that. He had jumped out of his hovertank and survived when it had flipped over right in front of me, back in the Helios campaign. Here, he had survived again, against all odds. He wasn’t even in bad shape, considering he’d spent three days in emergency survival mode, floating in space.
    I met with him as they unloaded the ships. I clasped his right hand in both of mine.
    “Really good to see you, Sloan,” I said, and I meant it.
    “Colonel!” he said, looking tired but joyous at having survived. “Your happiness is nothing compared to mine, let me assure you.”
    I chuckled. “I believe you. Tell me, what happened to the thousand-odd Worms you took into the void with you?”
    His face clouded for a moment. “I almost felt sorry for them. They weren’t wearing vacc-suits—we were. Mostly, we just kept out of their reach until they died. It took a long time for some of them to stop twitching out there.”
    I nodded, visualizing the scene. It was not pretty.
    “We calculated you had enough power to run the rebreathers for a week, but what about heat, water, food?”
    “Mostly, we starved and dehydrated. A few tried to synthesize Worm meat into distilled water. It just ran their suit power down, as the meat was frozen. We waited out there floating in chains, linking our arms together. We never really thought there would be a rescue, but only a few opened their suits and committed suicide. We told stories and watched the ring. When your ships came through, we started taking turns increasing the power on our suit transmissions, taking the chance someone would hear.”
    “If we survive and see Earth again,” I said, “I’m going to see every one of your men get a