The Xaros Reckoning (The Ember War Saga Book 9)

by Richard Fox

  She fell a few dozen yards behind the man with the case. He made a few attempts to spot anyone following, as well as halfhearted attempts to check his Ubi while scanning around. Shannon maneuvered behind pedestrians and joined food lines every time the bagman stopped.

  Amateur, she thought.

  The man stopped at a locker and very gently placed the case inside.

  Something heavy…but delicate? Shannon watched him retrace his steps to the place he made his original dead-drop mark. His hand swiped at the garbage can and left a right-angle line beneath the first. Drop in place.

  Shannon looked at the departure board. The shuttle that would take her to Europa would begin boarding in a few minutes, but something about that dead drop set her instincts on fire. What did the other her want from this guy?

  “I’m going to regret this.” Shannon followed the man out of the terminal and into a concourse with a moving walkway leading to distant ground car and bus hub, lengthening her stride to catch up.

  She gave the man’s elbow a jog as she passed, signaling that she wanted him to follow her, then went straight for a maintenance door adjacent to the walkways. She saw him just behind her in the reflection off a glass panel next to the door. Her palm print against the handle overrode the locks and let her in.

  She kept the door open and backed up as Howlett joined her in the dimly lit, and otherwise empty, hallway. Howlett looked confused and his cheeks flushed when the two finally came face-to-face.

  “What locker did you use?” Shannon asked quickly. “You signaled the drop is down but it’s not there.”

  “Nineteen,” Howlett said. “Just like you said,” his accent changing to American Southern. “All is as planned.” He gave a nervous laugh and touched a pen fastened to a shoulder pocket.

  “You were supposed to use fifteen.” Shannon filled her words with annoyance. She’d berated her spies before and bluster would likely win against his weak demeanor. “Did you at least use the right lock combo?”

  “Yes! One…thirty-seven…twelve.” Howlett cocked his head to the side and said, “You’re expected back on the Crucible.” He added an odd inflection to the last word.

  “You’ve already put too much exposure on us. Return—” Howlett snapped a jab into her throat.

  Shannon stumbled back, croaking as she tried and failed to breathe, and dodged a hasty kick that pulled Howlett’s balance forward. Shannon twisted her hips and smashed her shin against the man’s knee. He fell forward, one hand grabbing her by the sleeve and bringing her down with him.

  Her lungs burning, Shannon hammered a fist against Howlett’s face. His nose broke with a crunch of cartilage. He jerked Shannon’s arm aside and rolled on top of her, his strength and mass more than her lithe frame could fight. He pinned her to the ground with his bulk, blood pouring out of his nose and across her face.

  She heard the click of a pen.

  Howlett reared up, the pen grasped in his fist like a dagger. He grunted and swung it down, bending at the waist.

  Shannon got an arm up and struck her forearm against his, deflecting the strike aside. With one hand, Shannon grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him close. With her other hand, she cocked her thumb out and stabbed it into his eye.

  Howlett wailed in pain and rolled off her, a palm pressed against his ruined eye.

  Shannon wiped his blood away and finally managed a shallow breath. She looked around for anything to use as a weapon, but the hallway was empty. Turning her attention back to Howlett, she readied a stomp that would crush his skull…but he lay on his side, his body jerking in seizure.

  The pen stuck out from his stomach, the tip embedded in his flesh. Howlett’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull as white foam seeped from his mouth and mangled nose.

  Poison, one she’d used before by the looks of what it was doing to Howlett.

  She gave the dying man a quick pat down, searching for anything that might help her understand his purpose. He had nothing but his ID tag from a munitions unit. She touched her throat gingerly. She’d have a hell of a bruise in a few minutes, but she could breathe. She looked over her clothes. A little of his blood stained the dark-colored cloth, not enough to draw attention in passing.

  “What the hell is going on here?” He’d known her. Answered her questions. A habit of flying into a homicidal rage wasn’t a trait she wanted in her sources.

  The drop.

  Composing herself, she left the body behind and went back to the food court, her appearance attracting only a few glances from others. Locker 97 opened with the combination Howlett gave her…but it was empty. Shannon’s head snapped around, looking for her doppelgänger. She caught a glimpse of a woman with a familiar walk just before she turned a corner.

  “God damn it.” She shut the locker and caught a peculiar order. Leaning closer, she took a deep sniff. Cordite and a faint scent of bleach. It smelled of a certain explosive she’d used many times before—denethrite.

  A cold pit formed in her stomach. This wasn’t how she and Ibarra worked. Something was very wrong with the entire situation. As much as she hated Marc Ibarra at that moment, she still felt a degree of loyalty to his cause. Freedom could wait.

  She took out her Ubi and tapped in a call to an emergency line to the Crucible…and got an error message. She tried two more backup channels and got the same result. The other Shannon must have changed the communications protocols.

  If I go to the military or security services, she’ll know, Shannon thought. If she gets wind of something odd, she’ll accelerate her plan. That’s what I would do.

  “Flight Bravo Two-Zero now boarding for Ceres at Gate 12,” came over the PA system.

  Ceres. It wouldn’t take much to redirect the flight to the orbiting Crucible.

  Shannon ran for the gate.

  ****

  The Crucible’s air was cold and dry, which played hell with Shannon’s sinuses as she walked down the hallway that curved around an auditorium. In a few hours, the admirals, generals and senior leaders from across the solar system would gather to discuss the next steps to defend the Earth.

  There were no guards, but what did the unified commanders have to fear from each other? Ibarra’s paranoia made sure that security fell to his most trusted aide.

  Shannon keyed a command onto a forearm screen, disabling the cameras throughout the sector. She took a length of burn cord from a pouch and fastened it to the wall of the auditorium. The wire burned white-hot and cut out a lump of basalt the size of her head. It fell to the ground and disintegrated into pale embers.

  A denethrite charge went into the hole and the Crucible’s self-repair systems reformed the wall around the explosive, hiding it perfectly. A simple, low-frequency radio pulse was all Shannon needed to detonate the device.

  She emplaced the next four charges around the outside of the auditorium. It would take only two of the explosives to kill everyone in the room, but she found no harm in adding a little extra as insurance.

  Once humanity’s senior leaders were dead, she’d manufacture evidence that the Ruhaald—still waiting their fate and under threat from macro-cannons—were responsible for the attack. The official inquiry would deduce that the aliens must have left sabotage devices behind when they surrendered the Crucible. The public would practically demand the Ruhaald be blown out of space. Once the new leaders came out of the crèche, there would be no one to oppose the Naroosha’s takeover of the system.

  Shannon ran her hand over the wall where the final device waited, unable to find a flaw in the repairs. She reactivated the communications and surveillance systems with a tap to her screen.

  “—annon!” Ibarra screamed in her earpiece.

  “Yes?” Shannon’s face contorted in annoyance. Ibarra had become even more of an incessant pest since he became a hologram. At least he used to sleep back when he was alive.

  “What the hell’s going on over there in node four? Station command and I’ve been trying to reach you for almost five
minutes.”

  “Either the Ruhaald or the Naroosha ripped out every surveillance system we had when they took the place over. Whoever reinstalled the cameras did a piss-poor job. The data lines are a rat’s nest and the audio wasn’t coming through. It took me a half hour to unscrew the problem. You’re welcome.”

  “Fine. Give yourself a pat on the back. Make it two. Then get back over here. A shuttle en route to Ceres is losing life support and they’ve got to make an emergency landing. Come dissuade anyone from taking a look around. They might touch something delicate and you know how I hate it when strangers play with my toys.”

  Shannon sighed in relief. He bought her excuse.

  “Moving,” she said with a roll of her eyes. She couldn’t wait until the Naroosha deleted him.

  ****

  Ibarra paced around the dais, glancing up at the probe floating high above. Tiny lightning bolts of activity flit over its glowing surface. He passed by the cylinder holding Pa’lon’s simulacrum body, which was covered by a black curtain.

  “Why do you insist on pacing?” Stacey asked. She lifted a slice of pizza covered with pepperoni and onions out of a box and took a bite. “The food out of the omnium reactor tastes so much better than the crap from the fabricators. This is amazing.”

  “Glad you decided to use that precious resource to make yourself lunch,” Ibarra said.

  “There was a break between aegis armor production batches. I regret nothing.” She took another bite. “Is there Molson beer in the reactor’s database? Why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

  “Are you flaunting your ability to eat and drink just to piss me off? Because it’s working.”

  “This could be my last real meal before we jump off to Ruhaald Prime. Then it’s nothing but crap galley food for who knows how long. Don’t spoil this for me,” she said.

  “Quantum connection established,” came from the probe.

  “’Bout time.” Ibarra stopped pacing and faced the dais.

  A small projection of a many-limbed Qa’Resh materialized in front of the Ibarras. Crystalline plates glinted over the being’s dome-shaped upper body. An image of a middle-aged woman, her long hair in a braid over a shoulder, appeared in front of the Qa’Resh.

  “We have a consensus with the Ruhaald queen aboard the Forever Tide,” the woman said.

  “At least something’s easy,” Ibarra said.

  “Can she sway the other queens?” Stacey asked.

  “Other queens? What other queens?” Ibarra whirled toward his granddaughter, his body alive with static.

  “The Ruhaald aren’t a unified whole like we are,” Stacey said. “Their royalty work together as a synod, which barely makes sense to me, but I can slap the ‘I believe’ button for the negotiations. For what we’re asking, the entire council will have to agree to our proposal.”

  “If you would accompany the expedition,” Ibarra said to the Qa’Resh, “it would be a big help.”

  “Don’t think I can do it?” Stacey asked, her nose rising in the air.

  “Of course you can, my dear, but the more the merrier. Same as any fight.”

  “Our lesser selves cannot survive away from the whole,” the Qa’Resh said. “If Qa’Resh’Ta leaves, Earth will be vulnerable without us to maintain the quantum disruption field that prevents the Xaros from opening a wormhole above your skies.”

  “Didn’t hurt to ask,” Ibarra said. “We’re nearly ready for the council. I’ll brief Admiral Garret as to the particulars soon as he arrives. There was a small security issue that’s being taken care of which reminds me that—”

  A door along the outer wall opened and Shannon came down the stairs. She gave Ibarra and Stacey a smile.

  “Speak of the devil,” Ibarra said. “We need every last doughboy sequestered when Jarilla arrives. We don’t want another incident so late in the game.”

  A door on the other side of the command center opened…and another Shannon stood in the doorway.

  Ibarra looked at the Shannon standing next to him, then back at the other woman who was now racing down the stairs.

  “What the hell?”

  The Shannon next to him reached behind her back and drew a snub-nosed pistol, leveling it at Ibarra’s chest and firing twice. Ibarra recoiled out of sheer instinct, his hologram unaffected by the bullets.

  “Grandpa?”

  Ibarra turned around and found Stacey leaning against the dais, an arm pressed against a bloody stomach.

  “Stacey!” He reached for her as she collapsed to her knees, a dark line of blood escaping her lips and dribbling down her chest. Ibarra tried to grab her, but his projection lacked all substance.

  Stacey let out a low moan and fell forward.

  More gunshots snapped in the air. There was a cry of pain and the gun went skidding past Stacey.

  “Stacey, you’ve got to get up! I can’t help you like this,” Ibarra said.

  A pool of blood spread out from Stacey as her breathing slowed.

  The two Shannons grappled against a control station, both sets of eyes alive with hate.

  Ibarra tried to set his palm against Stacey’s head.

  “You’ve got to get up, honey. Please, sweetheart, I need you to—”

  Ibarra’s hologram vanished.

  One of the Shannons wrenched the other’s head aside and smashed a hook into the other’s jaw. Her knees buckled and she fell against the cylinder holding Pa’lon’s body.

  The other pinned an arm against broken ribs and spat at the doppelgänger.

  “You’re not Shannon Martel,” she said, “and I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  The other pushed herself to her feet and wiped blood from split lips.

  “You’re not little Eddie’s mother,” she said. “But deep down you know you’re still the reason he and his father are dead!”

  The woman jumped onto the other, banging her head against the cylinder and pulling the drape free. It fell over the two as they thrashed in a mass of flailing limbs and angry curses.

  Pa’lon’s simulacrum twitched. Its arm shot up and cracked the glass with a snap. The hand flopped against the casing like it was made of rubber before finally shoving the lid up on its hinge.

  Marc Ibarra rolled himself onto the ground. The new body was all wrong, the limbs too long. The splayed feet didn’t grip the floor and the fingers with one knuckle too many refused to move the way he demanded.

  He tried calling to Stacey, but only gibberish came out from the beak of his mouth. Clawing his way to Stacey, he reached over her, picked up Shannon’s gun and put a thick fingertip against the trigger. He rolled over and aimed the pistol at the melee.

  The gun fired once and one of the Shannons reared back with a cry. The other woman looked at the Dotok body and raised a hand to stop him.

  Ibarra shot her in the face. Both women lay still.

  “Gogi!” Ibarra said. He worked his beak several times, trying to speak with another’s lips and tongue. “Gogi ti raggathi.”

  “I cannot understand you,” the probe said. The dais rose out of the ground, Stacey’s blood streaking the side.

  “One bullet caused severe lacerations to Stacey’s heart,” the probe said. “The other damaged her diaphragm and is currently lodged in her spine beneath the T10 vertebrae. She will expire in the next three minutes unless she receives immediate medical attention.”

  “Gogi ti raggathi!” Ibarra touched Stacey on the shoulder, instantly freezing the blood creeping up her clothing. He yanked his hand away.

  The dais stopped and the casing slid aside. Stacey’s simulacrum stepped out.

  “Place her in the stasis chamber,” the probe said.

  Ibarra looked at the other body, the body Stacey hated so much, and hesitated.

  “She will die if you do not.”

  Ibarra grabbed Stacey beneath her shoulders and dragged her into the chamber. Her blood spilled across his hands and arms, hardening into icy scabs within seconds. Her eyes flut
tered for a moment. Just before the door slammed shut, she reached toward Ibarra and then she froze, drops of blood from her fingertips hanging in midair.

  Ibarra’s feet slipped on the bloody floor. He pressed his face against the casing and slapped a palm against the glass.

  “‘Tacey!”

  “I’ve begun the transfer, but the system was not designed to work while the mind is under such trauma. There may be some adverse long-term effects.”

  Ibarra felt pins and needles along his hand. The fingers shortened as the feeling spread across his entire body. The pins became white-hot with pain as they reached his face and neck. Ibarra pressed his hands to his face and let off a yell that undulated in pitch. When the pain subsided, he took his hands away and saw a familiar reflection in the glass.

  “Jimmy? What happened?”

  “The simulacrum shells adopt their user’s neural pathways. The benefit should be apparent. One of the procedural humans conforming to Shannon Martel is still alive. Please investigate before she interferes with Stacey’s transfer.”

  Ibarra grabbed the gun from the floor and stumbled toward the two women. Although he had a new body, after years of living as a hologram, walking proved a difficult task.

  The Shannon he’d hit in the head hadn’t moved. The other sat up against a workstation, her skin deathly pale and blood flowing from an exit wound beneath her clavicle.

  “Hey boss,” she said, “you’re…here again.” Her words came out slurred, a sure sign of shock from blood loss.

  Ibarra aimed the pistol at her head.

  “She’s got denethrite. Don’t know what for,” Shannon said. She smacked her lips over a dry mouth. “Sorry I didn’t come back. Just wanted to be free…for once.”

  “What denethrite?” Ibarra lowered the gun. “Where?”

  “You tell Eric I’m sorry. Sorry for bringing him into this kind of life. Boss…let me go. I want to be with my little Eddie…and Tom.” She looked up at Ibarra, her eyes struggling to focus. “Let me go. Please let me go.”

  Her head tilted backwards. Her breathing stopped a moment later.