by Richard Fox
“But this is what’s happening.” Shannon turned around and clasped her hands behind her back. “I have some excellent news for you, Marc. For so many years, you’ve been able to retreat into your little…” She reached out and tapped him on the forehead. “And there was nothing the Geist could do about it. Your granddaughter stole the only technology in the galaxy that would let us join you, let us have a more equal conversation. But times chaaaaange…” She gave him a wicked grin.
“No…” Ibarra said.
“Oh, most certainly yes.” Shannon cast her eyes up. “That little piece of the Qa’Resh probe Mr. Hale brought us from Terra Nova is just enough for us to tap in to your matrix. Technology!” She scrunched her nose at him and clicked her tongue.
The Crucible vanished into San Francisco. Xaros drones—large, oblong shapes of dark metal writhing with fractals and long stalks—flew through the skyscrapers, firing red beams that disintegrated the mob of panicking people trying to flee all around them.
Marc cried out in despair. A mother and child were annihilated right in front of him, their ashes staining his silver body.
Shannon snapped her fingers and the world froze.
“Aw-ful.” Shannon brushed ashes off Ibarra’s shoulder. “You left me—the stone-cold original Shannon—to die in Phoenix, yes? Do you think I suffered, or was it quick?”
“Never.” Ibarra shook his head. “I’ve had over a century to come to terms with who I am. What I’ve done. There’s nothing you can do to me. I’ll never tell you where to find Malal. You understand that? Never!”
Shannon tilted her head to one side, then a genuine look of joy spread over her features.
“So we can find Malal. Now that’s something.” She clapped her hands twice and total darkness enveloped them. Then spotlights appeared over them. “Where is he, Ibarra? We will tear your mind apart as many times as it takes, but you will tell us.”
THE END
The Ibarra Crusade continues in Steel Sworn, coming soon!
From the Author
Hello Dear Readers,
The third volume of the total Ember War story is here at last and there’s so much more on the way. I’ll bring you Steel Sworn as soon as I can, because I know you’ve got some questions about what’ll happen next. I can’t wait to introduce you to Ely’s new lance.
Thank you for continuing the journey with me. Please be so kind as to leave a review on Goodreads and wherever you picked up this book. Honest reviews are invaluable to me.
Stay tuned!
--Richard Fox
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Also By Richard Fox:
The Ember War Saga
1. The Ember War
2. The Ruins of Anthalas
3. Blood of Heroes
4. Earth Defiant
5. The Gardens of Nibiru
6. The Battle of the Void
7. The Siege of Earth
8. The Crucible
9. The Xaros Reckoning
The Ember War Saga Volume II: Terran Armor Corps
1. Iron Dragoons
2. The Ibarra Sanction
3. The True Measure
4. A House Divided
5. The Last Aeon
6. Ferrum Corde
Terran Strike Marines
1. The Dotari Salvation
2. Rage of Winter
3. Valdar’s Hammer
4. The Beast of Eridu
5. Gott Mit Uns
The Ibarra Crusade
1. Ashes Fall
2. Steel Sworn (Coming soon!)
Terra Nova Chronicles
1. Terra Nova
2. Bloodlines
3. Wings of Redemption
4. Hale’s War
Ember War: Pathfinders
1. Light the Way
2. Belisarius
The Exiled Fleet Series
1. Albion Lost
2. The Long March
3. Finest Hour
4. Point of Honor
5. The Last Ditch (Coming 2021)
Also By Richard Fox
Til Valhalla
Hell's Horizon
The Queen of Sidonia
The King of Sidonia
Through the Nether (Galaxy’s Edge Order of the Centurion)
Free Ember War Short Stories
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Click HERE (or copy and paste https://BookHip.com/FCAZPA)
VENT RATS
Chief MacDougall hunts a Toth loose aboard the Breitenfeld with the aid of Steuben and Lafayette. Can the Karigole set aside their hatred to catch the infiltrator alive?
IRON HEARTS
Elias, soldier of the Iron Hearts and pilots of a mechanized suit of armor, lies comatose in a hospital. His mind trapped within the prison of his failing body. With no other option but to watch their friend wither away, his fellow Iron Hearts concoct a dangerous plan to save him.
THE IRON WITHIN
On a frozen and war torn world, Pathfinder Birch rescues an Armor soldier trapped in his pod. With the enemy closing in cold leeching their lives away, Birch must find the strength and determination to save them both.
THE ANVIL
Before The Ember War, a young and disabled Kalen petitions to join the Armor Corps. When she's rejected, her iron heart won't let her give up.
SCHISM
When the Terran Union signs a treaty against Marc and Stacey Ibarra's wishes, the two immortals decide to abandon Earth.
GOING DARK
The Nebula Nominated short story of Doughboys: synthetic battle constructs designed decades ago to fight the Ember War. Strong, fearless, and fiercely loyal to their human commanders, in many ways they are the perfect soldiers and have continued to prove themselves on the battlefield long after the war’s end.
Doughboy wrangler Sergeant Hoffman learns just how loyal the constructs under his command are, and that a synthetic man knows what it means to be human.
Click HERE (or copy and paste BookHip.com/FCAZPA) to get the exclusive short stories set throughout the Ember War Universe.
Ember War Universe Suggested Reading Order
The Ember War Saga: Volume 1
The Ember War
Iron Hearts-Short Story (BookHip.com/FCAZPA)
The Ruins of Anthalas
Vent Rats-Short Story (BookHip.com/FCAZPA)
Blood of Heroes
Earth Defiant
The Gardens of Nibiru
The Battle of the Void
The Siege of Earth
The Crucible
The Xaros Reckoning*
The Anvil-Short Story (BookHip.com/FCAZPA)
Til Valhalla
The Ember War Saga Volume 2: Terran Armor Corps
Going Dark-Short Story (BookHip.com/FCAZPA)
Schism-Short Story (BookHip.com/FCAZPA)
The Iron Within-Short Story (BookHip.com/FCAZPA)
Iron Dragoons
The Dotari Salvation
The Ibarra Sanction
The True Measure
Rage of Winter
A House Divided
The Last Aeon
Valdar’s Hammer
The Beast of Eridu
Ferrum Corde
Gott Mit Uns
The Ember War Saga Volume 3: The Ibarra Crusade
Ashes Fall
Steel Sworn (Coming soon!)
*Ember War Pathfinders (Read after the Xaros Reckoning)
Light the Way
Belisarius
*The Terra Nova Chronicles (Read after The Xaros Reckoning)
Terra Nova
Bloodlines
Wings of Redemption
Hale’s War
Read THE EMBER WAR for Free
The Earth is doomed. Humanity has a chance. Read where
the saga began!
In the near future, an alien probe arrives on Earth with a pivotal mission—determine if humanity has what it takes to survive the impending invasion by a merciless armada.
The probe discovers Marc Ibarra, a young inventor, who holds the key to a daring gambit that could save a fraction of Earth's population. Humanity's only chance lies with Ibarra's ability to keep a terrible secret and engineer the planet down the narrow path to survival.
Earth will need a fleet. One with a hidden purpose. One strong enough to fight a battle against annihilation.
The Ember War is the first installment in an epic military sci-fi series. If you like A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo and The Last Starship by Vaughn Heppner, then you'll love this explosive adventure with constant thrills and high stakes from cover to cover.
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Learn more about what happened in Terra Nova
*Author’s Note: This series has Ely’s story prior to his arrival back on Geist-occupied Earth.
Terra Nova. The promised world is humanity’s new home, safe from the threats of a dangerous galaxy, where veterans of a long war could live in peace. The promise was a lie.
Chief Katherine “Kit” Carson, of the elite Pathfinder Corps, joins the mission as a last-minute replacement, hoping to put a spotty past behind her and build a new life on a brave new world.
The expedition arrives on Terra Nova, expecting to join the first wave of colonists, instead they find abandoned cities and are soon faced with a new, terrifying enemy humanity has never encountered before.
For the colony to survive, Carson must unravel the mystery of her new home and learn the fate of the first mission to settle the planet…
Read it now for free on Kindle Unlimited!
Or listen on Audible!
Chapter 1
The hardest part was the waiting.
Director Ken Hale stood in front of the captain’s chair on the Enduring Spirit’s bridge, watching as his crew took in last-minute reports from the small colony fleet about to jump with him to Terra Nova, twenty-five thousand light-years away in the Canis Major star cluster beyond the galaxy’s edge.
After years of prep work for the mission, the final countdown before the wormhole jump filled Hale with a sense of foreboding, an oncoming dread worse than what he’d ever felt during years at war.
Earth filled the bottom half of the bridge’s viewport where city lights traced along the Mediterranean Sea. Venice and Athens had been rebuilt in the past decades, but the wide swaths of darkness across Europe reminded him just how far humanity had to go before the damage from the Ember War was repaired.
Along the edge of the view port, enormous basalt-colored spikes poked into view. The Enduring Spirit and the colony fleet sat in the center of the Crucible, a giant gate in the shape of a crown of thorns that would send them all to Terra Nova in the next few minutes.
There would be no return for the Enduring Spirit, her crew, or the rest of their small fleet. They would step beyond the edge of the galaxy and that would be the last any of them ever saw of home.
What lay ahead wasn’t what bothered him; it was what he was forgetting.
Despite years of concerted effort to prepare this colony mission—choosing the crew, overseeing the special construction of the Enduring Spirit, procuring everything the colony would need—and spares—and the endless meetings—he still didn’t feel ready. And he was in charge.
“Sir, good news,” said a crewman named Hue as she spun around in her chair, “the Old Forge found their heavy-metal cargo and the tertiary foundry computer cores.”
Hale breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where were they?” Hale asked.
“Right where they’re supposed to be.” Marie Hale walked down the ramp behind the command deck and handed a data slate to her husband. “Deep in the bays underneath fifteen other containers that were a pain to move. Someone screwed up the last manual count and the Old Forge’s entire crew were jumping through their ass to make sure we weren’t leaving Earth with a foundry that couldn’t produce anything once we got to Terra Nova.”
“Every time the fleet does a manual count, we get screw-ups like this.” Hale swiped a fingertip over the slate, noting all the green status indicators.
“And every time we do a manual, we find something the computers missed,” Marie said.
“Which is why I’m so glad you insisted we do them.” Hale looked up at the viewport, where the great basalt spikes of the Crucible shifted against each other.
“I cancelled the emergency resupply,” Marie said. “Not that Ceres station could have gotten it to us in time anyway.”
“The boys all right?” Hale asked quietly.
“Jerry and Elias are in our quarters. It’s not like a Crucible jump is anything special for them,” she said. “They’re more excited about this than you are.”
“They’re teenagers; they have no responsibilities.” Hale felt the screen on his forearm buzz with an incoming call. “It’s Keeper. We must be getting close. Start the final checks for me?”
“You have to say something to the fleet. You’re the director,” Marie said. “You think I listened to you rehearse for hours and now you’re going to pawn off—”
“I’ve got my speech ready, Marie. Let me check with Keeper and make sure something hasn’t gone horribly wrong before I give a speech about our grand adventure and then have to announce a delay minutes later. I never liked the Marines’ ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality. I’m not going to be the leader that tells everyone to hurry up and wait even more.”
She gave his arm a squeeze and walked toward the workstations.
“Crew, report final checks from all stations,” she said, using the commanding tone of one who’d led void fighters into battle. The sailors responded in a well-practiced sequence, and Hale felt a bit of confidence return.
Hale tapped the incoming call icon on his forearm screen and lifted a holo projection off his arm.
The head and shoulders of a woman with a fit body but elderly face appeared.
“Keeper, you’ve good news?” Hale asked.
“Do you want a long answer with quantum-state algorithms and wormhole loci or the crib notes?” the woman asked.
“Pretend I’m still the dumb Marine you used to know,” Hale said.
“The Crucible’s working overtime to form the wormhole. This is the second time we’ve ever sent a fleet so far with a single jump, but the gravity tides are just as the Qa’Resh promised. Sending you through with zero velocity isn’t optimal, but it’s the only way the math works,” she said.
“My ships are glorified lumps in space,” Hale said. “We have enough engines to get us into Terra Nova orbit and then to shuttle everything down in pieces. Just get us there, Keeper.”
“Say hello to your brother Jared for me,” Keeper said. “I met him a few times.” She touched her face and fractals spread out across her cheek. “I’m not sure how he’d react to me now.”
“Lots of news to pass on.” Hale looked over at his wife and thought of their boys, one of whom they’d named after his brother. “That we survived the war with the Xaros will be the headline.”
“We won that war and now we’ve got to win the peace that comes after,” Keeper said. “No matter what happens back here, I’m glad that humanity’s got an ace in the hole with Terra Nova. A colony in uninhabited space, far beyond the reach of any enemy here. Good luck and fair winds, Hale. I hope our math with the Crucible is correct and that I might get to say hello to your descendants someday.”
“Thank you, Keeper.”
“You’ve got eight minutes.” She cocked her head to one side. “Not sure if your personnel transfer will make it. Excuse me. I have to concentrate for this last part.” The hologram clicked off.
“Personnel transfer?” Hale looked over at Marie.
His wife held up th
e data slate and pointed to a blinking yellow box.
“Your spiel,” Marie said. “I’ll handle this last emergency.”
Hale’s jaw clenched, but he decided to let her deal with the issue. Choosing Marie as his executive officer had been the easiest—and best—decision he’d made since he’d asked her to marry him. He motioned to the ensign at the communications station and straightened out the utility uniform he wore over the thin void suit beneath. It never felt right being on a void ship and not in his Strike Marine armor, but here he was.
A whistle blew the notes for “general call” through the speakers. A lens lit up on the ceiling and Hale cleared his throat. His image went to every screen in the fleet.
“Terra Nova expedition, this is Director Hale. In a few minutes, we will embark on our mission beyond the galaxy’s edge, to a brave new world that will be our new home. All of you aboard the Enduring Spirit, Old Forge, New Phoenix, Acme, Vesuvius, and the Standish,” he remembered not to grumble the last ship’s name, “volunteered for this chance, and you are amongst the best humanity can send to sow our future far beyond the Milky Way.
“We leave Earth behind forever, but the embers of what survived the war with the Xaros remain. We carry the torch to Terra Nova, where we will join those who went before us and build our new home.”
Marie leaned over a workstation, speaking low and forcefully to someone on the other end of a transmission. He recalled the rest of the speech, then decided it could be left to a footnote in history.
“All ships, secure for transit. Hale out.” He stepped away from the camera and ignored the applause from the bridge crew as he hurried toward Marie.
