Ashes Fall (The Ibarra Crusade Book 1)

by Richard Fox

  Ely squinted up at the second moon in the sky, Ceres. The Xaros had moved the dwarf planet into Earth orbit after they’d wiped out all of humanity, except for the couple of hundred thousand that Marc Ibarra hid away, then built the Crucible gate out of material quarried from Ceres. The Crucible cast a long shadow against the new moon, but he stared hard at a twinkle of starlight around Ceres.

  “Since when did Ceres get a ring? Like Saturn has?” Ely asked.

  “Sharp eyes. You’ve missed quite a bit,” Shannon said. “Did your father ever mention what happened at the very end of the Ember War? With the Toth…”

  Ely did a quick turn on one foot and walked even with Shannon.

  “He hates those aliens. He did tell me about Nibiru and all the sentient species the Toth kept as cattle before they ate their neural energy.” Ely shivered in the dry heat. “Are the Toth still a problem? I don’t remember hearing about them after the war.”

  “There was one overlord, but he was sorted out. Nothing about the Toth homeworld?”

  “No. Wait, did we find where they lived?”

  “Someone did,” Shannon said quietly. “Ely, it’s very important that you tell me the truth. The more I know, the better I can help you. Agreed?”

  “Sure thing, Ms. Martel. You’ve been…the only person I’ve met since I came back. Those two guys outside my room weren’t real talkative.”

  “Your father said that we should ask you more once you’ve been treated. We brought you back from the edge of death, and now we’d like you to tell us what it is that you know. What was your father talking about? Did he tell you some way to find Stacey Ibarra?”

  “Nope. I’ve been thinking about that too. Wait, Stacey Ibarra didn’t get that fragment out of my head?”

  “All us. Ken Hale didn’t tell you anything about how to connect the Crucible gates to Terra Nova? They must have a gate. How else would you be here?”

  “There was talk about building one and coming home…but they couldn’t do that for many years. Building a Crucible isn’t easy. Wait, so we can open another gate to Terra Nova? You can send me home, or my family can come back?”

  “Theoretically. Our best astrophysicists and mathematicians have examined your arrival, and they found that there was a serendipitous window to send a single object with the mass and volume of your life pod back from the dwarf galaxy. There’s another ebb in the gravity tides a few years from now. Maybe a chance to reconnect with Terra Nova.”

  “I can go home?” Ely asked.

  “This is your home now. This is the home of all humanity. But we’ll make that case to Terra Nova when we have the chance,” she said.

  “We gave up on the stars?” Ely looked up and stopped. He pointed to the sky and traced an angular shape. “Shannon, what’s that blocking the stars? There’s something hanging over Phoenix.”

  “We’ll get to that soon. Do you remember Stacey Ibarra?” Shannon swallowed hard, like there was a bad taste in her mouth. “Anything at all?”

  “Armor Square, just like Dad said in his recording. We’d go out there for the memorial ceremonies. He’d tell me stories about Ell-us—son of a bitch, sorry—the Armor I’m named after. The Iron Hearts. He actually knew Saint Kallen before she died on Mars. But Stacey…one year she was there. She was in a coat with a hood. Couldn’t really see her face because she had a scarf on. Wasn’t that cold, but I shook her hand and she was like ice. Felt it through her gloves.”

  “Heresy,” Shannon hissed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Please continue,” she said.

  “That’s it. Dad always got sad whenever he talked about her. I’m not sure why.”

  “And what about Marc Ibarra?”

  “Dad didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about him.” Ely smirked. “Used the word ‘traitor’ a lot.”

  “Well…that’s something he and I can agree on. Just around here…” She led him around a corner and a murmur rose in the distance. Ahead was an open square, poorly lit by hovering drones, but Ely made out a ring of pedestals with large metal feet still affixed. In the center was a tall podium with a silver statue of a man on it.

  A crowd milled around the base, their hands raised in anger, and discordant chants carried toward Ely and Shannon. Bits of food and stones flew up and flashed in the lights at the base of the statue.

  “I know this place,” Ely said. “We’re at Armor Square.”

  “It’s Penance Square now,” Shannon said. “Don’t talk to anyone. They’ll ignore you if you ignore them.”

  “What happened to all the statues of Armor?” Ely stopped. “How’re the Templar and the other Armor supposed to take their vows—”

  Shannon grabbed him by the tunic and shook him with surprising strength. “Gone. All of that is gone, you understand me? Now be on your best behavior. The mob can be a bit unpredictable and you don’t want them to think you’re anything but loyal to the Geist and the Synod.”

  “The who? The what?”

  Shannon let his tunic go and put a cold hand to his cheek. “Let’s just get a little closer, OK?” She took him by the hand and led him forward.

  The crowd screamed obscenities at the statue. Some beat their chest and face so hard that they were bloody, their clothes torn.

  “You killed them all!”

  “The blood of billions!”

  More and more hysterics rose from the crowd as Ely and Shannon got closer to the statue.

  A man grabbed Ely by the shoulders and got in his face. His beard was ratty, his mouth missing teeth, his eyes wide with madness.

  “Did he sacrifice your family too?” the man asked.

  Shannon slapped a palm into the madman’s chest and he went down with an ugly cry as electricity ran through his body.

  “Keep moving.” Shannon dragged Ely forward by the elbow until they were a few yards from the pedestal. The mob pulled back from them as Ely looked up at the silver man on the pedestal. The statue was marred by rotten food and dirt, but the stoic image of an elderly man stared forward.

  “That’s…that’s Marc Ibarra,” Ely said. “Why—ugh—” His torso tightened and the boy gagged on his own tongue. Golden lattices filled his vision, emanating from Marc Ibarra and spreading through the sky in a riot of fractals.

  His knees buckled and Shannon caught him before he could hit the ground. Ely’s eyes rolled back and he began convulsing.

  “Administering 50 ccs of compound twelve.” Shannon plucked an injector from a sleeve and jabbed a needle into the side of Ely’s neck. Ely gave a ragged breath, then began panting. “Did you get the data?”

  “It’s discordant,” Dr. Hal’ten said through her earpiece. “The fragment still embedded might be more corrupted than we initially thought, but this does validate my theory about exposure to an Ambassador frame. I suggest you move him away before there’s more neurological damage. Make my job easier.”

  Shannon snapped her fingers in the air and a pair of guards muscled through the crowd and dragged Ely away. She turned back to the statue and gave Marc Ibarra a cruel smile.

  “I know you’re in there,” she said. “I know you can hear everything we say to you. You can’t stay locked in there forever, Ibarra. We’re going to break you. Terra Nova was supposed to be your little trap door, some way of saving humanity one way or another. But it’ll be ours soon. We’re going to crush your Crusade and bring Terra Nova into the Geist’s dominion. Failure, Ibarra. Your legacy will be nothing but absolute failure. And we’ll make sure you can see it.”

  Chapter 7

  A buzz rose in the back of his mind and grew into a hum that resonated through his teeth and ached in his ears. Ely opened his eyes to a warbled view through a glass canopy. With both hands, he touched the covering that was just a few inches over his face. The cold pinched his skin, and he had to tug his fingers off.

  A worried-looking middle-aged woman with dark hair stepped in front of him. She took a drag on a cigarette, then spoke to someone Ely c
ouldn’t see, her words muted by the glass.

  “Mom? Mom, let me out!” Ely shouted, but Marie Hale didn’t react.

  Ken Hale appeared behind her and touched her shoulder.

  “Maybe she can help him,” Ken said, his voice coming through crystal clear. “Stacey knows the tech better than anyone. And then she can take him to the last place we were together with him.”

  “I’m right here!” Ely slammed a fist against the glass.

  “He knows,” Marie said, her voice now clear and low, but with a darker undertone to her words. “He knows where to find him because you told him. Isn’t that right, my love?”

  Ken froze, like he was a recording on pause.

  “What’s happening? Just let me out, please.” Ely pounded on the glass.

  “Where is he?” Marie leaned forward. Her face passed through the glass as she drew closer and closer to Ely. Her skin went a deep silver and a second pair of red eyes split off onto her temples. Her nose flattened to a pair of slits and a black forked tongue snapped out through a fanged mouth.

  “Where is Malal!”

  Ely screamed.

  ****

  Shannon and Commissar Nakir knelt before a floating sliver of crystal that shone like a distant star, twinkling against Nakir’s chrome mask.

  A figure stalked the darkness behind the two, the light catching on a metal body with slightly feminine curves.

  “The boy’s told us all he knows, Master,” Shannon said. “If you cannot glean anything further, then there’s nothing there.”

  “Your faith is required and your opinion is useless.” A Geist strode up to the probe fragment and extended a four-fingered hand underneath it. She lifted it up higher and the light pattern changed into a kaleidoscope of color against the thousands of metal strands twisted together to make her body, like she’d been flayed of all her skin but still lived. Her neck was long and slender, her face triangular with two pair of red, glowing eyes. Gossamer strands of hair wavered on an unfelt breeze.

  Nakir’s and Shannon’s breath fogged.

  “We haven’t tried more corporeal methods of interrogation,” Nakir said. “Let me have the boy for a few hours, Exalted Noyan. He’ll break quickly.”

  “And what damage will that cause to the larger artifact still in his head? This fragment was tinkered with for thousands of years. Countless errors inflicted to the source code. I’ve managed to repair what I can. If I attempt to restore any more functionality, the AI within will realize the Qa’Resh are gone and self-annihilate. It may not be enough to break the apostate, but the artifact in the Hale child is nearly pristine. We could accomplish so much with it…”

  The Geist touched a fingertip to the fragment and a ripple of light passed through her body. “So much damage. Sacrilege.” She drew her hand back and gazed upon gleaming fingers.

  “Do others of the Synod know of the fragments?” Shannon asked. “Perhaps the High Lord can repair the device. It would be the key to breaking the apostate’s defenses.”

  Nakir reached for a pistol strapped to his thigh.

  “Now, now…” The Geist turned around and twisted her arm as a spot of light flowed beneath her metal shell to the base of her skull. “She is perfectly loyal. That’s how we made her.”

  “You ordered that none of the other Geist will know of the Hale child’s arrival or your possession of the shards. Just because she’s loyal doesn’t mean she’s free from defect,” Nakir said.

  A faint smile passed over Shannon’s face as she gazed upon Noyan. Her pupils dilated and a line of drool glinted on one side of her mouth.

  “Don’t threaten my toys, Nakir. She works well enough. I need to break the apostate. He knows where Malal is being held. Once we have that…our salvation will be secured. We have waited so many years for his return. This is the final trial. Though…perhaps I can use the fragments to grow more perfect in Malal’s eyes.”

  “Then take the other fragment. The boy’s life is nothing,” Nakir said.

  “What does the Dotari say? I don’t waste my time on biological matters.” The Geist stroked Shannon’s hair, leaving a line of frost down the strands.

  “Dr. Hal’ten cannot do any more without killing the patient. There is another matter. Word of the arrival has spread through Phoenix. That he is the son of Ken Hale has put a fire beneath the resistance network. They’re gaining hope,” Nakir said.

  “Another revolt? I thought you liquidated the ringleaders after the last attack,” Noyan said.

  “The instigators and their families were sacrificed to the fields. Still, hope is like a virus, exalted one. It spreads easily and is difficult to tamp down. I suggest moving the boy to your ship. The rumors will die if he’s never seen again and those that found hope will be less likely to believe the next gold-plated rumor.”

  “If I bring Hale to my ship, the rest of the Synod will know…I wasn’t the one that built the sensors. Exalted Pallax is ever so covetous of his position. But I should have enough time to recover the shard and break the apostate before the rest of the Synod can return from the front lines. This is my prize. Not theirs.”

  “What are your orders?” Nakir asked.

  “Bring Hale to me once he’s stable enough to move. Perhaps I can extract the shard without killing him. Turning the son of a Terran war hero would have quite the effect on the Ibarrans’ morale, don’t you think?” She grasped the floating bit of probe in her fist and an arch grew out of the floor. Hunks of rough obsidian piled on top of themselves as if collapsing in reverse. A dark sheen filled the space.

  “As you command,” Nakir said.

  Noyan stepped through the arch and she faded away. The stones fell back to the floor and flipped back into their recesses.

  ****

  Grass rustled between his feet. A faint smell of pepper was on the breeze, and Ely breathed deeply. The air was damp with a coming storm. He sat in a field, his arms perched on his knees as thunder rolled in the distance. A tiny six-legged bug jumped onto the back of his hand. He peered at the zebra stripes on its carapace, then flexed his thumb to encourage it to go elsewhere.

  The grasslands outside New Jefferson City felt almost eager for the coming rain. He looked up to deep-purple skies and got to his feet. Unfinished towers in the distance melded into the approaching storm front and a raindrop spattered against his shoulder.

  Terra Nova was still under construction.

  Ely walked to the city, no rush in his steps, even though the storm was upon him.

  “Jerry, catch!”

  Ely spun around just as his brother raced past him. His twin was in Pathfinder shorts and T-shirt, drenched in sweat. Jerry looked over his shoulder, then dove forward. A football arced over Ely. Jerry landed with an oof, then shot his arms up just in time to catch the football before the tip hit the ground.

  Laughter broke out from a group of men and women in the same workout uniform. One, a well-built woman with hair just long enough to retain some femininity, shook her head at Jerry.

  “Chief Carson?” Ely turned back to Jerry, but he’d vanished.

  Where the field ended at a tree line in the distance, a man emerged from the woods, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his light jacket. He walked slowly, but with a military bearing that would never leave his steps.

  “Dad. Dad!” Ely ran toward Ken Hale, but his father didn’t react. Ely flung his arms open for a hug and embraced Ken. Ely smelled the cheap cologne they gave him every Christmas and fought back tears as he clung to him.

  Ken shoved him away. Ely fell back and hit the ground, landing on his side.

  “Dad? What’s wrong? I’m back!”

  Ken Hale kept walking, his eyes on the coming storm.

  “Dad!” Ely scrambled to his feet and caught up to his father. “What’s going on? Where’s Mom? How did I get—”

  Ken shook his head.

  A hard rain broke out over the other side of the clearing. A veritable wall of water crashed down, racing across the fiel
d and engulfing them both with stinging droplets.

  “Dad!”

  Ken disappeared into the storm.

  Lightning struck nearby, a golden bolt that burned an afterimage into Ely’s eyes of a broken lattice. The lattice faded, then pulsed through the rain, branching out with a chaotic reach, closing in on Ely.

  “Help me!” Ely tried to run, but the lattice stabbed through his legs and he went face-first into mud. The lattice snapped out into branches like a long-dead tree, then bent toward him, piercing into his back and the base of his skull.

  Ely screamed, the sound dying away into static.

  Darkness. Cold.

  The Terra Nova field was gone. Ely was on his feet, his body dry, a sting lingering where the lattice had hurt him. A faint shadow cast in front of him.

  He pressed his hands to his temples as a painful buzz rose and fell in his mind.

  “I just want to go home,” he said. “I just want…”

  He turned to the light and caught his breath.

  A woman knelt on a padded bench at an empty altar, her white robe glowing. Her head was bent in prayer, her arms folded across her stomach. There was nothing on the altar. Long red hair was braided over one shoulder, revealing a metal disc at the base of her skull.

  The disc was unmistakable. She was Armor, one of the soldiers augmented to link their minds directly to their battle suits.

  “Hello?” Ely walked slowly toward her.

  She looked back at him. Her face was kind, her pale-blue eyes filled with warmth. She was older than him, but she carried a weariness on her soul.

  “There’s room for you.” She motioned to an empty spot on the kneeling bench beside her.

  “Where am I? What’s happening to me?” Ely’s mouth went dry as he locked his gaze on the pad bathed in the light emanating from the woman.

  “You’re not in a good place, I’m afraid.” She leaned slightly and gave the bench a gentle pat. “But you’re alive. That’s what matters.”

  Ely bent one knee to the pad and felt a gentle warmth flow through him. He knelt fully and put his hands on the old wood of the pew.