Exo-Hunter

  EXO-HUNTER

  By Jeremy Robinson

  Description:

  THE YEAR IS 1989

  Callsign: Dark Horse and his Marine Rapid Reaction Force team have been sent to recover a strange artifact near Antarctica’s Soviet-controlled Vostok Station. Confronted by a team of Ruskie Spetsnaz, a battle for control of the strange device, frozen in the ice, breaks out. But before anyone can claim victory, or the prize, an explosion of white light knocks the combatants unconscious and whisks them away to…

  2989.

  One thousand years later. Dark Horse, along with his teammate, Chuy, and one of the Soviets, Drago, finds himself in a future that is both impressive and horrifying. Humanity has left Earth behind and is rapidly expanding throughout the galaxy under the banner of The Union, a white supremacist government who racially ‘purified’ the human race hundreds of years in the past.

  Living on the fringe of this twisted Fourth Reich society, Dark Horse—the only black man in the Union—commandeers a vessel and scours the galaxy for his missing teammates under the guise of an Exo-Hunter, seeking out exo-planets to satiate the Union’s need for colonization. His search takes him beyond the edge of the known universe and into an interplanetary war, guided by a vast intelligence that’s been waiting for Dark Horse’s arrival—for a thousand years.

  New York Times and #1 Audible.com bestselling author Jeremy Robinson takes readers on a journey to a dark and twisted future…and makes them laugh. EXO-HUNTER is a light-hearted homage to 1980s science fiction movies that also looks at the dangers of white supremacy and the core values that makes it dangerous, and the butt of the joke. In the audiobook edition, he is joined by #1 Audible bestselling narrator, R.C. Bray, giving readers the most compelling—and most fun—thing to come out of 2020.

  EXO-HUNTER

  Jeremy Robinson

  Older e-reader? Click here.

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  EPILOGUE

  POSTSCRIPT

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO by JEREMY ROBINSON

  For my Friday Game Night peeps. You know who you are.

  Thanks for making the pandemic a little more fun.

  INTRODUCTION

  As many of you know, I listen to music while I write. It inspires me and often takes the story in new directions. Sometimes, songs make it into the story itself. This time I went all out, making the main character a music lover from the 80s. Exo Hunter is full of music references, and it also includes lyrics from the Talking Heads masterpiece, “Once in a Lifetime,” and I, of course, obtained permission to use them. I wanted to make these songs easy for readers to find, so I’ve assembled them in a YouTube playlist that you can find at bewareofmonsters.com/playlist. For the full experience, listen to each song when it comes up in the story, or if you don’t like interruptions, when you finish. Hope you enjoy the tunes as much as I did when writing.

  —J.R.

  PROLOGUE

  1989

  “Keep your eyes frosty.”

  The team collectively slow-turns toward Whip.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Chuy says, adjusting the way her M40A1 sniper rifle hangs from her shoulder.

  Whip’s face is hidden behind a white face mask and gold, light-reflective goggles, but I can somehow still see his perplexed expression. He’s a dangerous operator. A loyal soldier. Always ready for the next mission, no matter what it is. But he’s somewhat of a plank. As in wood.

  He’s not very smart. That’s what I’m trying to say.

  And he carries an actual whip—hence the callsign—like he’s Indiana Jones. He’s good with it, but he’s never needed it on a mission. Pretty sure he thinks it looks cool. Pretty sure he was dropped on his head as a baby, too.

  Chuy on the other hand… She’s here because of her brains. Sure, she also wields a sniper rifle like the damn finger of God, smiting our enemies from a distance, but she can outthink every one of us.

  “You’re mixing metaphors,” she says.

  “Whataphors?” Whip laughs alone.

  “Wasting your time, Chuy.” Brick pushes past her. The M16A2 rifle with attached M203 grenade launcher in his meaty hands looks like a child’s toy. He’s not traditionally an impatient man, but it’s cold, we’re on the ass end of the planet, and I dragged him out of the movie theater for this op just as Arnold Schwarzenegger smeared mud all over his body. Brick slugs Whip’s shoulder as he passes. “That’s for butchering an Aliens quote.”

  Some teams bond over BBQs, strip clubs or, I shit you not, weird hobbies like crocheting. Our team hits the movie theater every chance we get. Sci-fi and action are our top picks, but we take in just about everything.

  “‘Keep your eyes peeled,’” Chuy says. “Or ‘Stay frosty.’”

  “I’m sorry, why are we debating semantics with a Neanderthal while my nuts are crystalizing?” Benny is an Irish naturalized US citizen. Thinks he’s funny. Sometimes is. He’s our tech guy. When he got the call for the op, he was at home, setting up his new NeXT Cube computer. Or so he says. When Brick and I picked him up, en route to base, I spotted Super Contra paused on his screen. He rubs his gloved hands over his white parka, like it’s going to help warm him up.

  Antarctica is cold. The constant wind makes it worse. Standing still…well, Benny is right. I can feel the sting in my balls, and my toes, and my fingers. As a Marine Corps Rapid Reaction Force unit, we’ve been through the shit and back more times than most spec ops boys. Because when something needs getting done fast, we’re the best. Last night, we were all in North Carolina. Now, we’re twenty klicks from Vostok Station, a Soviet controlled ‘research laboratory,’ carrying weapons of war that are strictly forbidden by the Antarctic Treaty.

  And for what?

  Only one of us knows, and she’s not talking. But it was urgent enough for Uncle Sam to send us halfway around the world.

  “Bugs, can I get a sitrep?” I say to Dr. Julie Carter. She’s a stranger to me. A very smart, very attractive stranger, who has been a cagey pain in my ass since I met her on the C-130 Hercules that brought us to this frozen wasteland. “Bugs?”

  She’s standing at the mouth of an ice cave, pointing some kind of device into the darkness. Not even Benny knows what it does.

  “She can’t hear you,” Whip says. “She’s lost in her brain.”

  Chuy shakes her head. “Nothing scares you like a woman with a brain, eh, Whip? Let her work.” She looks at me. “Both of you.”

  “Happy to let her work,” I say, “so long as I know my team isn’t going to lose fingers or toes when we thaw out.”

  My job requires that I put these people in danger, but I’m never stupid about it. Ever since learning we’d have
a tag-along civilian, I knew things hadn’t been thought through. This mission is a knee-jerk. Someone, somewhere saw something they wanted, and they sent Carter to snatch and grab it, and they sent us to keep her out of the Commies’ hands.

  Which means it’s valuable.

  And probably dangerous.

  “We’re good to go,” Carter says, stowing the strange device in her backpack. Like the rest of us, she’s dressed in Antarctic camouflage—white snow gear. Unlike the rest of us, she is unarmed, and I have no idea what she’s got hidden in her backpack. “And please stop calling me ‘Bugs.’”

  “No can do,” Whip says. “Mission protocol in potentially hostile territory. No real names. No dog tags. No clues about who we really are.”

  “Not that any of us knows who she is,” Brick chimes in.

  Carter sighs. The rest of us take some pleasure in her frustration. “Okay… Dark Horse…”

  “You don’t like it?” I ask.

  “I think it sounds bad,” Whip says.

  “Good bad, or bad bad?” Benny asks.

  “Michael Jackson bad.” Whip attempts a leg-kick dance move. He looks more like a twitching headless chicken.

  “That could still go either way,” Benny says.

  “Are you assholes taking this seriously or not?” Carter shouts.

  “Lady,” I say, “we don’t know why we’re here, we don’t know who you are, and the more we don’t know, the more dangerous this is for us…and for you. You’ll have to forgive us for blowing off a little steam while we stand here in the cold, watching you wave a magic wand toward a hole in the ground.”

  It’s a little harsh. And a lot unprofessional. I might get a reprimand back at base, but it will be a slap on the wrist. The mission is important, but my people come first. They need to know I’m looking out for them.

  “You want to know what this is all about?” Carter asks, pulling a flashlight from her pack. “Follow me.”

  She heads toward the cave’s mouth. It’s basically a hole in the ice, descending at a thirty-degree angle.

  “You’re taking us into a hole in the ground…”

  “It’s ice,” Carter says. “And it’s not a hole. It’s a ventilation shaft.” She stops just inside and levels her masked gaze at me. “And it wasn’t here two days ago.”

  I toggle my comms, connecting me to the second fireteam making up our squad. As bad as my current job is, theirs is worse: maintaining a perimeter with no hope of finding shelter under the ice. If bad guys show up, it’s their job to stop the hostiles before they reach me. “BigApe, this is Dark Horse, over.”

  “Copy that, Dark Horse. Can we go home yet? Over.”

  “Going to be here a while longer. Bugs is taking us under the ice. Over.”

  “Under the… We don’t get paid enough for this shit. ETA? Over.”

  Carter heads down into her ‘ventilation shaft,’ but Whip cuts her off and takes the lead. Good man. “Situation is fluid. ETA unknown. But if you don’t hear from me in three zero mikes, feel free to come looking. Over.”

  “Thirty minutes on firewatch at the god-damned South Pole… I might not be able to move in thirty minutes! Over.”

  “Do some Kegels to keep warm, princess. Over and out.” I toggle off my mic before BigApe can respond, let myself grin behind my mask, and then follow the others into the ice.

  “Ventilation shaft, my chapped ass,” Chuy says, adopting Whip’s brand of tension relief humor. She shifts her head side to side, her headlamp glinting off the smooth, blue ice all around us. Feels like we’re standing inside a giant sapphire. It’s stunning, but I don’t linger. Distraction gets soldiers killed.

  Whip gently backhands Chuy’s shoulder. “Fifty bucks says we flew all the way down here because a whale farted under the ice and it warmed its way to the surface.”

  “First,” Chuy says. “This ice is over land, not the ocean. Second, fifty says this mission goes full clusterfuck in ten mikes or under.”

  “Stow it,” Brick says. “It’s getting warmer.”

  Chuy and Whip silently shake on the bet.

  Brick is right. About staying quiet, and about the temperature. It might just be the lack of wind under the ice making us feel cozy, but the glossy sheen on the ice walls lends credence to Carter’s theory. Warm air—or water—carved this tunnel. If we didn’t have crampons on our boots, we’d all be sliding on our asses.

  The very small part of me that’s still a kid at heart wants to give it a try, but I have no idea what’s waiting for us at the bottom. Could be a natural thermal vent. Could be Soviets.

  Speaking of…

  “Brick, Chuy, take the lead with Whip.” As they pass an annoyed Dr. Carter, I put my hand on her arm. “Sorry, Bugs. The people with guns get to go first.”

  I would normally take point myself. I’m the one making decisions for these people; I’ll be the one to face the consequences of a bad call. But I was personally tasked with keeping Carter alive. And that means she—and I—get to be a Marine sandwich until I know we’re not walking into a trap.

  “This is unnecessary,” she says.

  “Would help if you could tell me what we’re doing here.”

  “It’s classified,” she says.

  “We’re about to find out anyway,” Benny says. He’s bringing up the rear, eyes on the tunnel behind us.

  Carter just gives her head a slight shake and carries on. She’s all business. I can’t tell if I like her. From a silverback-gorilla, masculine 80s’-man point-of-view—she’s choice. Cindy Crawford beautiful—brown hair, brown eyes—but without the hair-spray. All business, this one. And she’s smart. Clearly. Which for me is important, if we’re talking romance. But the nuances of whether or not she is a kind and good person are lost behind the thick garb, the facemask, and the goggles. We look more like extras from the Star Wars Hoth battle than Marines.

  Liking her isn’t a prerequisite to keeping her alive, but it helps me feel good about it, especially if my people are risking their lives for her.

  “Leveling out,” Whip says from the front.

  Ahead, the tunnel flattens out and curves to the right.

  We’re a good fifty feet under the ice. Maybe half a klick from where we entered. I can feel the pressure of all that ice building in my ears. If something goes wrong down here…like an explosion, this mission would be beyond FUBAR.

  “Take it slow and easy,” I tell Whip.

  “That is how your mom likes it,” he says. My team is smiling behind their masks. I don’t need to see their faces to know. But no one laughs.

  Whip’s fist comes up as he rounds the bend. His body tenses. When he speaks, there’s no trace of humor anymore. “Tunnel opens up ahead.”

  Chuy stops beside Whip. They’ll face whatever lies ahead together. Brick is close behind, ready to take their place or drag them to safety—should one of them fall. The three of them do a good job of filling the tunnel. I can’t see shit.

  Impatience radiates through Carter’s parka. “I should be up there.”

  “You should be quiet,” Benny says, whispering.

  Carter turns around to glare at him—I’m assuming—but he’s still got his eyes on the tunnel behind us.

  I hold a gloved finger to my facemask, raise my rifle, and step in front of her. The crunch of my boots digging into the ice makes sneaking impossible, but that’s okay for now. Chuy’s body language is tense, but nothing close to ‘Oh, shit’ levels of trouble.

  I round the bend in time to see Whip and Chuy exit the tunnel and part. Brick is silhouetted by blue light. He exits the tunnel and stands to his full 6’7” height. Hadn’t realized he’d been leaning down the whole time. He doesn’t complain or stretch. He just looks up and says, “You’re not gonna believe this…”

  He’s relaxed, so I don’t hold Carter back when she pushes past me. I follow her out of the tunnel, and like the rest of my team, I am awed by the view.

  We stand at the base of what can best be described a
s a bubble in the ice. It’s fifty feet in diameter with a thirty-foot-wide, flat floor. It’s smooth, like the tunnel, and perfectly round, like being inside a glass-ball Christmas ornament. The ceiling of the bubble is just inches below the surface, allowing sunlight to filter through, lighting the chamber. For a moment, I’m lost in astonishment.

  Carter pushes past Brick, scanning the empty space. She peels her mask off, revealing her brown eyes. “Shit.” She looks around again like she might have missed something the first time. “Shit! We’re too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Benny asks, as he enters the bubble and looks up. “Whoooaaa.”

  Carter rounds on me. “We need to get to Vostok. They must have it.”

  I lift my goggles so I can look her in the eyes. “Must. Have. What?”

  She glares, but this is a fight she can’t win with her eyes. I can stare down a charging elephant without flinching.

  “If the Soviets exfil with it—”

  “Uhh,” Whip says. “Excuse me? Dr. Bugs?”

  “What?” Carter snaps.

  “Is that what you’re looking for?” Whip points toward the crystal-clear floor, where something rests just beneath the surface.

  We stand around the submerged object like a winter-garbed cult, heads bowed toward the ice. The encased, miniature obelisk is no bigger than a football. It’s black and covered in what might be writing…or just cracks. Only the first few inches are easy to see. The rest of it is obscured by miniature air bubbles trapped in time.

  “How do we get it out?” Carter asks.

  “We kind of specialize in shooting people,” Brick says. “And blowing stuff up. Sometimes at the same time. Getting ancient artifacts out of the ice—in one piece—is pretty far outside of our wheelhouse.”

  Carter looks to me for an alternative answer.

  “He’s not wrong,” I admit. “But…”

  Static in my ear makes me flinch.

  “—oming! Over.”