The Ember War (The Ember War Saga Book 1)

by Richard Fox

  “That’s not right,” Torni said. Her boots shifted to pull them the rest of the way in and they shot down like a slug launched from a rifle.

  Torni’s hold on Stacey broke as they slammed into the dome. Stacey spun away, grasping for purchase at the dome’s perfectly smooth surface. Her fingers scratched against the dome as she pin wheeled across it, the precipice of the dome’s edge spinning into her vision, closer with each revolution.

  “Use the mags in your boots!” Torni shouted.

  Stacey knocked her toes against the dome, unable to remember the very brief instructions she’d received when fitted for the suit. Her kicks managed to stop her slide along the dome and sent her floating into space.

  Torni stood on the dome, her feet planted wide apart as she swung a line in her hand like a bolo.

  “A little help!” Stacey’s heart pounded as she looked down and saw the edge of the dome sail beneath her feet. It was a long way down to Ceres.

  Something whacked into her chest and she jerked to a halt. A safety line, anchored to her chest by the electromagnet at the end of the wire, went taunt and Stacey floated back toward Torni, the line tugging at her chest with each of Torni’s heaves.

  “…have to babysit some VIP with the tactical sense of a potato. Not in the recruiting video, I’ll tell you that much,” Torni’s complaining came through the IR as the two women neared.

  “How do I use my boots?” Stacey said, reaching for Torni as her feet skidded across the dome.

  “You don’t.” Torni threw Stacey over her shoulder and ran toward the apex, Torni’s magnetic linings sizzling with tiny auroras as they latched and released from the dome’s surface. Once they’d passed into the perimeter of Marines, Torni took Stacey off her shoulder and sat her on the dome, Torni’s hands pressing firmly against Stacey’s shoulders.

  A pair of combat engineers ran laser torches around a wobbly circle of sliced basalt, the path of the lasers etched in blood-red trails.

  Marines knelt around her, their weapons at the ready for another drone attack.

  The Crucible was a range of perfect spires around her. She caught glimpses of the artificial rings around Ceres through the peaks, flashes of light from the battle raging between the fleet and the orbitals far above her. She felt like a mouse lost in a maze of thorns.

  “We’re almost in,” an engineer said. He cut through the final inch and the manhole-sized breach burned away like a dying drone.

  “Knock knock, assholes,” Standish said. He grabbed the edge of the hole and lowered his legs into the dome. His smooth descent turned into a plunge and he yelped in surprise, vanishing into the hole like something had yanked him down.

  “Standish!” Hale leaned over the hole, his weapon crisscrossing the opening.

  “I’m OK.” Standish’s voice came over the IR. Stacey dared a peek over the lip of the hole. Standish was in a hallway, a diffuse red light around him.

  “There’s gravity,” Standish said. “That’s what pulled me in. About 5 percent over standard, not too bad.” He looked hard at the Ubi on his forearm. “There’s atmo too. Pressure and oxygen are a bit high but it’s almost to Earth standard.”

  “How are you standing in atmosphere with a big hole into vacuum above your head?” Cortaro asked.

  “I don’t know, gunny. Maybe because I’m standing in an alien space station made by an advanced civilization?” Standish replied.

  The cut hull beneath Stacey’s fingers pulsed. She pulled her hands back like she’d touched a snake and watched as the edge contracted inwards ever so slowly.

  “Um, it’s healing itself,” Stacey said.

  Someone, Stacey strongly suspected Torni, grabbed her and shoved her into the hole headfirst. Gravity’s familiar embrace brought her down in a messy fall, where Standish caught her by her shoulders and her legs smacked into the deck.

  The deck wasn’t the same as the hull or the walls around her. An inch of black sand shifted against her legs. A kick moved the shallow mounds around but didn’t knock any grains into the air. She tried grabbing a handful, but the sand evaded her grasp like she was trying to pick up water beneath a plastic sheet.

  A hallway extended away from their breach, branching off into two parallel directions at each end. A red glow illuminated the hallway from the walls, but not from any light source she could see. The roof was a flat arch, almost ten feet high.

  Hale and the rest of his team dropped down and formed a semicircle around her. She looked up and saw their entrance shrink faster and faster. An engineer watched them through the hole as it shrank from the size of a plate to the circumference of a beer can to nothing in a span of seconds.

  Hale looked up at the ceiling. No trace of the hole remained.

  “Sir?” Cortaro asked. The sound of the team’s breathing mixed with the low hum of the station.

  Hale looked at Stacey. “It took twenty minutes to cut that entrance. We can’t wait for another hole while the Xaros beat the hell out of the fleet. Where do we go?”

  “Put me against the wall,” Ibarra’s tinny voice said over the IR.

  Stacey stood up and took a tentative step toward the wall. The sand beneath her feet deformed against her steps, then tightened around her boots. She put her palm to the bulkhead and warmth like a hot stove top invaded her glove.

  “Ow,” she said.

  A pulse of white light emanated from her hand and raced down the wall. The pulse returned less than a second later.

  “We aren’t that far from the control room but if we want to bring more Marines to this party, we’ll need to access the air locks,” Ibarra said.

  “Are there any Xaros in here?” Hale asked.

  “Not sure, the pulse was a hack. If I poke around too hard, they’ll know I’m here and we’ll have a serious problem on our hands.”

  The hallway shook as a low rumble of thunder rolled through the hallway.

  “We can’t leave them out there. Which way to the air lock?” Hale asked.

  “Behind you, take a left,” Ibarra said.

  “Let’s go.” Hale turned and ran down the hallway.

  Stacey followed with Torni dogging her steps and encouraging her to move faster in uniquely Marine terms.

  How was that a hack? she thought.

  I used your body to do it. I said you were special, think I’d lie?

  Her legs felt like rubber in the heavier gravity and her lungs burned to keep up with Hale. Cardiovascular strength wasn’t a perk her body could use.

  You don’t have much of a reputation for truthfulness. What else can I do?

  Oh Stacey, Ibarra chuckled in her mind. Just you wait.

  ****

  Elias stomped a foot on a stunned drone bouncing along the hull and thrust a spike into it. A ring of disintegration emanated from the entry wound and Elias looked into space for his next target. A frigate burned far above him, explosions rattling the doomed ship as its armament destroyed it from the inside out.

  “Elias. Hangar. Need you,” came a garbled message from Kallen.

  “Hold on.” Elias cut the mag locks on his boots and jumped toward the aft of the ship. The thrusters in his calf housing popped open and blasted him along the hull. He rocketed toward the bridge, all of the crew but the captain ducking into their seats as he buzzed past.

  He cleared the engines’ cowlings and saw a tear in the armor plates meant to protect the hangar. He cut his rockets, twisted round and reengaged his thrusters. The hole in the armor looked just big enough to accommodate him.

  Elias dove toward the Xaros-made entrance and almost made it inside without a hitch. Almost.

  An ankle caught against a jagged edge and turned his smooth flight into an uncontrolled oscillation. Elias smashed into the hangar deck so hard his womb couldn’t compensate and his head—his true head—banged against the armored tank. Stars filled his vision. The dual input from his real eyes and his suit’s sensors threw off his balance and he wobbled to his feet like a drunk.

&
nbsp; Kallen stood over Bodel’s suit, prone against the deck, wrestling with a drone. She had a pair of the drone’s stalks locked in her grip as her other arm jabbed at the drone with her spike.

  Elias killed his suit’s sensor feed and opened his vision slat. He lined up a shot as best he could and fired.

  A round sparked off the drone and shoved the alien machine against Kallen’s chest. They went down in a heap of arms and stalks. The second round missed the drone, ricocheted off the forward armor plates, bounced against the deck back toward Kallen and hit the drone. The drone reared up, exposing its underside, and Kallen drove her spike into it.

  Kallen recovered as the drone disintegrated. Elias brought his sensors back online and raised his gauss cannons to his suit’s head mount as if to blow on the barrels.

  “That was a shit shot and you know it,” Kallen said.

  “Bodel? He OK?”

  “His motor unit took a hit. We’ll need to—behind!”

  Elias whirled his torso around on his hip actuators’ servos and impaled a drone leaping at him. He spun around and blasted another drone trying to crawl through the hangar doors. He shot away a stalk that poked into the hole.

  Red blotches grew against the door face as drones burned their way through the reinforced armor.

  Elias, his gauss cannons still trained on the hole, ejected his left arm from the ball socket in his shoulder.

  “Give me Bodel’s arm,” Elias said.

  “You’ll redline,” Kallen said but complied with his order as she disputed it. She twisted Bodel’s right arm to unfasten it then yanked it clean from his suit. She slapped it into Elias’ suit and the new arm whirled in the socket.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Elias used his skull jack to work up a firing solution as the metal of the hangar wall melted away like flowing lava.

  Kallen raised her firing arm, spike at the ready.

  “Gott mit uns,” she said.

  Elias cycled ammo into his twin cannons, “Gott mit uns.”

  Almost two dozen drones broke through the hangar gate. Elias fired his cannons at separate targets, his brain burning as his nervous system screamed for him to lessen the strain. Every shot sent an icy jolt of pain up his true arms in psychosomatic pain. His arms cramped and curled into a sold mass of muscle and agony as his suit took out another pair of drones.

  His right arm ceased firing, the ammo counter blinking empty. His left cannons went dry a second later.

  Elias’ vision swam red. The snap of Kallen’s cannons were distorted and tinny.

  Shut down, a distant part of his mind begged him.

  A yellow beam tore into Kallen. A cry of shock and pain made it through the haze as she went down.

  Elias popped his spikes and charged the four remaining drones.

  He jumped in the air and fired his thrusters. The brief boost gave him enough room to dodge a crimson beam and he came down on a pair of drones, driving a spike into each one. He swung an impaled drone at another drone, its stalk burning red.

  The drone’s beam hit the Xaros skewered on Elias’ spike and dissipated against the dying drone.

  The other drone he’d stabbed burnt away and Elias punched his free spike into the third drone. The tip broke the drone’s shell and it jerked against the spike like a wolf with its paw stuck in a trap.

  Elias ran forward, driving the spike deeper into the drone and bum-rushed the final drone. The last drone’s stalks clattered against Elias’ armor as they slammed into the hangar door, a drone disintegrating between them.

  Elias brought his arms back and thrust them into the final drone, the spikes piercing the drone in an X shape. Elias raised the drone over his head and pulled his arms apart, flinging dismembered pieces of the drone into the hangar.

  Blackness blurred the edges of his vision. He saw Kallen roll onto her side, then the darkness took him.

  ****

  Hale stepped past a corner, his rifle up and ready. A pair of lines ran from the floor to the ceiling in the middle of the wall just beyond the corner, a single baleful red button between the lines at shoulder height.

  “Not ones for warning signs, are they?” Franklin said from behind Hale.

  “Open it,” Hale said to Ibarra.

  Stacey walked up to the air lock and tried to press her hand against the red light but her arm refused to extend fully.

  “If I do this, the Xaros will come running for me,” Ibarra said.

  “Then open all the air locks on every node. Get every Marine inside. Confuse them,” Hale said.

  “Fine, fine, fine,” Ibarra sighed and Stacey regained control of her arm. She touched the button and the air lock didn’t so much as open as it melted apart. The wall split and tiny grains flowed toward the walls like a sandcastle succumbing to the waves.

  The mountain peaks of glittering basalt stood silent in the space beyond the air lock.

  “I’ve sent a message to all the Marines on the surface along with directions to the nearest entrance. We can meet up with our shore party closer to the control room. Shall we?” Ibarra said.

  Stacey’s hand and arm pointed down a corridor of their own volition. She grimaced and pulled her arm back against her body.

  “Stop that!” she hissed.

  Hale gave her a confused look as he ran past.

  The Crucible offered little insight as to the form or function of anything as they ran down the corridors. Stacey caught sight of a few tall arched lines, doors for someone or something much taller than the average human.

  They came to a four-way intersection and stopped.

  “Which way?” Hale asked.

  “This intersection wasn’t here when I scanned this place. How odd,” Ibarra said. “Touch the wall again.”

  Stacey moved toward the wall, Franklin just behind her. She reached out for the wall.

  The instant her hand touched the hot bulkhead, the floor beneath the rest of the team shot up, taking them above and beyond the lip of the ceiling. A blank wall of solid basalt cut them off from the intersection, leaving them at a dead end.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” Franklin said.

  Stacey looked to her palm where Ibarra’s light shimmered through her glove.

  “Unexpected,” Ibarra said.

  A thrum strong enough to set Stacey’s teeth on edge echoed down the hallway.

  “That’s a drone. Come on.” Franklin pulled Stacey along by the hand and ran them back to the pervious intersection.

  “There’s another way to the control room. Take a left,” Ibarra said.

  The thrum grew closer as they ran.

  ****

  “How long until the number two battery is operational?” Valdar asked the petty officer on his holo screen. Sparks poured from severed wires behind the sailor and Valdar could see open vacuum through all the damage.

  “The drone severed the gear housings. The battery is locked in place. Rounds still in the breach,” the sailor said. “It won’t move until we’re back in dry dock. Forward battery is operational. Ventral guns have no power. It’s a real mess on the gun deck, sir.”

  “I need the forward battery operational—otherwise we’re nothing more than a target. Got it?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Captain!” the astrometrics officer yelled. “The last orbital is moving toward Crucible.”

  Speed and heading vectors popped up next to the Crucible on the tactical plot. The orbital would reach the Crucible in less than ten minutes.

  “The boarding teams must have found something,” Valdar said. He hailed Admiral Garrett and the man’s taciturn face came up on his holo.

  “Sir, orbital is—”

  “Yes, I see that. I’m dealing with borders on ten different ships. Make this fast.”

  “We can’t let it reach the Crucible. If it breaks up like Bravo, there’s no way the landing party can fight them off. And the only thing that matters in this whole offensive is what’s on Crucible,” Valdar said. His hands flew around the tac
tical display, adding waypoints and attack vectors for what remained of the fleet.

  “If we get any closer to that orbital, it’ll eat us alive,” Garrett said.

  “I don’t think we have a choice, sir.” Valdar sent the plots to Garrett. The admiral looked over the plan and nodded wearily.

  “All ships,” Garrett said, his feed on the fleet-wide address channel, “all ships full speed to orbital Delta. Hit with everything you’ve got.” Garrett cut out.

  “Conn, lay in an intercept course for the orbital,” Valdar said.

  “Already on it, captain.”

  Valdar focused on the fleet’s position. Fewer than half the navy ships that started the battle remained for this assault.

  He panned over to the Charlemagne’s icon. The carrier hung motionless in space as the rest of the fleet moved toward the orbital. The icon blinked rapidly, then a red “X” covered it.

  “Oh no….” Valdar saw a second sun burst in space where the Charlemagne had been. As the carrier’s death flare faded out, the bridge crew paused for a moment, then returned to their duties.

  “Guns, fire on the orbital as soon as the London and Prague are within range. Give the enemy more targets than they can handle.”

  A painfully slow minute ticked away and the Breitenfeld’s forward battery fired. Rail gun rounds from the surviving cruisers peppered the orbital, each shot knocked away by its point defense lasers.

  A crimson lance fired from the orbital and the London blew apart.

  The fleet closed in on Delta and the America flew into effective range. The carrier’s six rail batteries fired as one, and one rail shot hit the outer edge of the orbital. An ugly hole appeared on the orbital, its edges simmering with fire.

  A tiny red star coalesced in the center of the orbital.

  “Conn, bring us to one-two-eight mark nine-one. Gun deck, fire battery two on my order,” Valdar said.

  “Sir, the guns can’t aim!” the gunnery officer said.

  “I’m aiming the ship for the guns,” Valdar said. “Make ready.”