DOMINATION

Thomas Nelson

Chapter One

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."...