Armageddon: An Exile War Novel

By Bowen Greenwood

Earth weeps under the cruel tyranny of the Archons. Years of interplanetary war have devastated every colonized world, but a last remnant known as The Free Worlds of Human Space stands ready to fight one final battle. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

Mercy Hail and Dante Matter fly alone through the light years, desperately seeking hope for victory in the war. The last vestige of the old order of genetically engineered telepathic peacekeepers is out there somewhere. Without them, the human race might never again be free.

Raysen Pilak and Hal Sable stand guard over the captured tyrant of the Archon Dominion, ready to put her on trial for crimes against humanity. But holding a mind controlling telepath is harder than anyone expected.

The Exile War has raged between the stars for more than a decade, and both sides are ready to risk everything to win. The Free Worlds and the Archon Dominion are locked on a collision course that can have only one end. The last battle for the freedom of Earth is bearing down like a freight train, and no one will escape unscathed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bowen Greenwood
• Release date: Jun 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224726233

Bowen Greenwood

Bowen Greenwood is an Amazon charts bestselling author of thrillers and science fiction. His experience as a police beat reporter and as a court clerk inform his thrillers. His lifelong love of science fiction and fantasy led to the Exile War series.

Book preview

Chapter 1

There’s not supposed to be a star here. This is not on any chart. There were no hints of it in any research. This system should not exist.

The ship’s artificial intelligence should have been incapable of petulance, but it sure sounded that way as it spoke. For the entire duration of their voyage, it had been arguing that there was nothing to find at the coordinates it had been given.

Now a beautiful green-blue planet hung in the viewport in front of them, an emerald-sapphire gem wreathed in white whisps of cloud.

Mercy Hail stared at it, tucking a strand of brown hair behind her ear. Her reflection in the viewport showed a face of soft lines, bright eyes and a broad smile. And why shouldn’t she smile? She had searched for more than a month. She had flown more than a hundred light years, all in search of the planet before her.

And there it was. Dante had been right.

She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it, pulling him a little closer to her side. Dante Matter’s black shirt fit snugly over a powerful collection of muscles. His dark brown hair and equally dark eyes looked perfectly at home in the blackness of space. He stood beside her, stoic, silent, rugged, and handsome.

Still just as handsome to Mercy, despite the wounds on his face.

Burn scars in the perfect shape of human hands marred Dante’s once smooth cheeks. This war they were fighting asked a brutal price of everyone. It had cost Mercy her adoptive father, and it had cost Dante torture at the hands of the tyrant who ruled Human Space. At the hands of. Literally. His injuries had been caused by the enemy laying her pyrokinetic hands on his head.

Mercy pulled him to her and put an arm around his waist. Dante had gotten those scars by standing up for her. He had switched sides in the war for her. To Mercy, the scars made him even more handsome than when his face had been a jaw of granite and eyes of fire.

She knew Dante’s feelings about it were more complicated, but he wasn’t letting them show. He had acted instead of talked, stealing this enemy ship they were on and bringing Mercy on a hunt—the hunt for victory in the war.

That hunt had led them to a mystery planet orbiting a perfect yellow star. Undiscovered, unexpected, unknown, the world existed in no record. It had no name. None of the old survey ships had found any hint of it.

Only Dante’s gift had led them here. Nothing else could ever have done it.

Dante could find people. Across a room. Across a town. Across a continent. And, apparently, even across light years, Dante could always find people.

His old teacher was down there, the woman he had once considered something of a substitute mother. The last remnant of the old order of telepathic peacekeepers, this woman would be leading a hundred more like herself, the lost children of the Gentle Hand.

On this unknown planet was a force powerful enough to overwhelm the tyrant that had conquered human space and scarred Dante’s face.

Mercy and Dante had come here seeking the key to winning the war. The discovery of a previously undiscovered human-habitable planet certainly made it look like they had succeeded.

Side-hugging Dante, Mercy asked, Shall we go down?

Dante turned to her and offered the best smile that his wounded face would permit.

The end of the war is down there, he said. Let’s go get it.

Dante’s gift for finding people came from a long inheritance of ancestors with the quantum sense.

Centuries ago, genetic engineers had accidentally created a sixth sense. People called it telepathy because that was the word that already existed to describe such things, but the scientific understanding of it went deeper.

What those ancient experiments had unlocked was the ability to perceive and manipulate quantum entanglements.

A concept of physics, quantum entanglement described a phenomenon whereby one subatomic particle could be connected to another, no matter how far apart, in such a way that what happened to one affected the other.

The newly created ability had allowed people to see those entanglements, to touch them, and by doing so, to change the world. A person with the quantum sense could manipulate entangled particles of carbon and oxygen and cause fire. He could find an entanglement that led inside another person’s brain and read that person’s mind.

Some of them could even alter another person’s mind.

Of course, that much power had been abused. Those with the right influence and connections to get the treatment had acquired, with it, the ability to bend other people’s will to their own.

They became, in a word, a master race. The ordinary humans resisted. The resulting conflict almost destroyed humanity, until a different faction of telepaths emerged.

Renouncing the idea of using their gift to rule, the new ones saw service and humility as the only way to end the war. They came to the aid of the ordinary humans and put an end to the conflict.

Those who had used the quantum sense to rule other people had called themselves Archons, from an ancient word that meant rulers.

The new telepaths, the peacemakers, the ones who believed in service and humility, had formed an order called the Gentle Hand.

The Gentle Hand won the war. They exiled the Archons, along with the horrifying hybrid creatures who had been their foot soldiers. Humanity had enjoyed centuries of peace.

Until, when Mercy was about six years old, the Archons came roaring back. They struck like lightning, conquering world after world throughout Human Space.

Finally they conquered Earth itself.

The new war came to be called the Exile War. The Archon telepaths, with an army of cannibalistic hybrid creatures at their back, tore down the old Union of Human Space and replaced it with the Archon Dominion. They forced the few planets that escaped their blitzkrieg into an oppressive, unhappy ceasefire.

Those few planets that existed outside the Dominion’s rule called themselves the Free Worlds of Human Space, and after years of rebuilding, they finally struck back. They rekindled the Exile War, and they started their offensive by freeing Mercy’s home planet.

Now she and Dante carried the hope of the Free Worlds on their shoulders. Both the Archons and the Gentle Hand had paid a terrible price in the first Exile War, but the Gentle Hand had suffered worse. They were all but wiped out, and the Free Worlds had no telepaths at all except for Mercy, Dante, and Mercy’s half-brother.

Unless, of course, the unknown planet before them held more.

Mercy and Dante were here to find the last remnant of the Gentle Hand, the descendants of the heroes who won that ancient war. And to judge by what Dante’s quantum gift was telling him, they might have succeeded.

Together, they rode the space elevator down to the surface, Mercy’s hand warm in Dante’s grip.

Space elevators adorned every planet in Human Space, but usually they were much more elaborate than this one. The standard construction used a captured asteroid as a counterweight and hung a cable of nanotube microfilament down to the planet’s surface, with four elevator cars bustling up and down it.

This one had a crude counterweight that looked like the remnants of a spaceship. The elevator car was more of a platform—barely even airtight.

Mercy and Dante used it to descend gradually through atmosphere and clouds, far slower than space elevators in the civilized world, watching the green of a tropical jungle rise up to meet them. Space elevators had to be built at a planet’s equator to accommodate the physics of hanging a cable from orbit.

When the car finally reached the surface, Mercy opened the hatch. She and Dante stepped out. They had to jump down the last foot or two from the elevator car to the surface of the planet.

What they found was exactly what they’d hoped for: A line of men and women waited for them. Seeing them clad in the high-collared tan uniforms that once spoke of law and order in the Union of Human Space warmed Mercy’s heart. It was real. It was all real. They had found the children of the Gentle Hand.

But they were angry.

Arms folded across their chests, frowns etched into their faces, eyes hard, the people waiting for them at the base of the space elevator looked as unwelcoming as it was possible to look.

Mercy said, Um … hi, and immediately realized that she should have spent at least some of their long flight rehearsing an opening speech.

The answer that came back sounded like it had been rehearsed, like there was nothing Mercy could have said that would have changed it.

A young man near the middle of the line said, Leave. Go home. Langston Wheeler is dead, and Teagan says you’re not wanted here.

Wait, what? Excuse me? Who’s Teagan?

We see your black uniforms. We don’t want your war. We don’t want the politics of Human Space. We won’t come, and we won’t let you stay here. Go home, Archons.

Relieved that it was only a misunderstanding, Mercy rushed out, Oh, no! The uniforms. You don’t understand. We stole an Archon ship; these are just the only clothes we could find on board. We’re Gentle Hands.

Dante shifted beside her at that, and Mercy quickly corrected herself. Well, I am. Then she corrected herself again. Kind of. I mean … I never actually finished studying, but … well, the point is we’re not Archons. These clothes were just all the ship had on board. Truthfully, we’re not Archons.

We don’t care.

Mercy stared at the young man, her head tilted to the side, her eyes narrowed. What?

We don’t care. Call yourself a Gentle Hand. Call yourself an Archon. Whoever you are, we will not go back to war. Teagan says we’re free from all that. Get off our world and take your politics with you.

But … but … Mercy didn’t exactly know how to move the conversation forward from that point. She had never even imagined this possibility. Finally, she just said, But you’re Gentle Hands.

"Teagan says we get to define ourselves. Not Archons. Not Gentle Hands. And not some half-trained whoever wearing an Archon uniform but claiming to be a Gentle Hand. The old ways are gone. Servants’ Yard is gone. Langston Wheeler is gone.

"Now, one more time. Take your politics. Take your war. Leave our world and never come back.

This is your final warning.

Mercy’s eyes widened. Excuse me? Warning?

The line of tan uniformed warriors attacked her.

When the first attacker reached her, Mercy blocked and shuffled back. Dante rushed in at the very first sign of any danger to Mercy, unleashing a fusillade of punches and kicks at their unknown attackers. His first strike knocked one over. He spun and hit a second of them. He ducked an incoming blow, then swept the leg of a third.

For as long as she’d known him, she’d admired his artistry in the martial arts. Dante kicked, wheeled around and kicked another attacker, dodged a different one’s backfist, then kicked again.

Why are you doing this? Mercy shouted, but instead of an answer, they just renewed their attack. Even as Dante tried to hold them off her, the second half of the group poured around him like a flood, boring in.

Mercy cast a wall of air in front of her, and to her shock it barely slowed them down. The attackers picked apart the quantum entanglements holding it together and broke right through it. More came on.

One of them threw a river of fire at Dante.

The molten stream blazed directly at his head, and Dante’s skill at hand-to-hand combat instantly evaporated.

Mercy saw the horror on his face, the fear. His fighting prowess crumbled, and all he could do was cover his face with his arms, turning away. The noise that came out of him was a cross between a whimper and a cry, almost pitiful.

It took her less than a second to get it: Fire. His face. His scars. Seeing how it affected him, she couldn’t let Dante be burned again.

In desperation, Mercy grabbed hold of the quantum entanglements.

The moment she acted, everything froze around her. In the middle of punches and blocks, one man hanging in midair from a flying kick, all of their enemies became like statues. Mercy alone could move.

For years, telepaths had been developing more and more powerful expressions of the quantum sense. Dante’s gift of finding people was one. Mercy’s was that she could manipulate time. Somehow, her gift meant that time flowed differently for her than it did for the world around her. No one had yet been able to explain it to her. Maybe everyone else lived in their normal time and Mercy’s time accelerated. Or maybe it was Mercy’s time that was normal, and it stopped flowing for everyone else.

Whatever the explanation, the net effect was that everyone around her looked frozen.

She stepped around a couple of people who had only recently meant her harm. She grabbed hold of Dante by wrapping her arm around his waist. Slowly, laboriously, she dragged him away from the rude space elevator landing, away from the hostile Gentle Hands. Away from the fire.

Sweating from the effort, grunting, Mercy pulled him behind her. Together, they disappeared into the jungle while their opponents remained frozen in place.

She got them far enough away that they had a decent head start, then released her quantum grip on the flow of time so that Dante could walk by himself. It took a lot of effort to use her gift, and dragging Dante took even more. He outweighed her somewhere close to fifty pounds of pure muscle; Mercy wasn’t built for hauling that kind of a load.

They took a moment to catch their breath, Dante gazing backward at the threat rather than meeting her eyes.

Finally, he said, I’m sorry, Mercy. I’m sorry. I … I saw the fire … and …

Mercy heard what he wasn’t able to say: The fire reminded him of what Char had done to him.

She embraced him. It’s OK, Dante. You did exactly what I needed. You gave me just enough time to use my own gift. I couldn’t have done it without you.

He shook his head. I … I … I still have nightmares about her. About Char. He touched his cheeks with their scars. About these.

She will never hurt you again.

Mercy, you don’t know that. You can’t know that. We’re at war.

She’s been captured. She’s being kept under lock and key, unconscious, unable to use telepathy. She’s going to be tried for war crimes and then executed. You don’t have to be afraid of fire, Dante. Char can never hurt you again.

Chapter 2

Her name was Char. She was the Ruler of Rulers of the Archon Dominion. And she was a prisoner. But she did not intend to be a prisoner forever.

Chained to a bed, jaw locked in a facemask, she had to be fed intravenously. And she couldn’t even think of the indignity of the catheters. Her captors refused to allow her even one single movement of her own.

Smart of them. She would rip them to shreds at the first opportunity. She would melt them. She would dissect their brains and pull out their spines, given the chance. She had spent a month plotting violent revenge in the miniscule fractions of time where she was even allowed to think.

Her cell was tiny. Four walls, a floor, a ceiling barely more than six feet high. Approximately four square feet of free space in which she might have paced, if she were allowed to stand.

The mask that restrained her teeth hid a face of pure burn scars. In a war between pyrokinetic telepaths, fire was often the weapon of choice, and Char’s entire head was a constant reminder of her last battle in the first Exile War. Her hair follicles had never healed. She was a physically fit woman, but war had driven a deep chasm between her and beauty.

Medics came to her cell every six hours to administer another dose of the drug that kept her unconscious. Her captors knew they couldn’t leave her in possession of her faculties. They knew what she would do to them if they let her think for herself. And so they had developed a system to keep her drugged: regular doses of an anesthetic used for major surgery, guaranteed to keep the subject completely unconscious.

All of it had been done on the fly, though. Since her capture during the battle of Summerwell, they had been putting the pieces together one at a time, trying to adapt to having a powerful hostile telepath in their midst.

And as they cobbled together the system bit by ad hoc bit, they had failed to consider one key fact: Human bodies gradually build up resistance to substances to which they are repeatedly and regularly exposed.

Once the anesthetic had kept her sedated for six hours at a stretch.

Now it was closer to five.

And the last time a medic had visited her to give her the dose, she’d been conscious enough for telepathy.

For one who had mastered the ancient Archon art of mind control, that was all she had needed. Char had taken control of the quantum entanglements that led to particles inside the medic’s mind. Even half-drugged, she had played them like a concert pianist.

The medic had suddenly remembered something much more important than jabbing her with the needle—something outside her cell, that had to be done right that minute.

That had been six hours ago. Now, as he returned to give her a new dose he would never get to deliver, Char was completely in control of her own faculties. When the medic walked in, she reached for his entanglements and found again the ones that led to his mind. She again took control, and when he was supposed to be injecting the serum into the IV in her forearm, he simply put the needle behind her arm, where it wouldn’t be visible from the other side of her cell bars, and pushed the injector down. The liquid squirted harmlessly into the air behind her.

His service rendered, the medic left her lying on her bunk, still chained to it.

But for a telepath in full possession of her faculties, chains were less than nothing.

An army