by Richard Fox
“Ta’mor,” Jena said, leaning forward.
“Cleric Jena, I… I didn’t know…my apologies, mistress.”
“Disregard sanction protocols and clear me a path to the port.”
“At once, mistress.”
The image vanished and everyone in Valiant’s cockpit turned to Jena.
“On my world, my position is… respected.”
“I’ll say,” Lincoln said.
“So, out of curiosity,” Carson said. “What exactly would the sanctions have been?”
Nunez laughed, shaking his head. “Geez, Chief, everywhere we go, we’re getting fired at or put in jail.”
“The Regulos’ idea of enforcement is somewhat different than ours,” Jena explained. “If I had not intervened and you had continued on, you would have been destroyed.”
“Well, if that doesn’t give us the warm-fuzzies about this place, I don’t know what will,” Nunez said.
Chapter 32
Tiny needles spun fine polymer thread over the face of what could be mistaken for brutish looking man. His skin was mottled in hues of green and brown, laden down with muscles that didn’t match a human physique.
Hale leaned closer to the glass between him and the thing under construction and squinted.
“No bellybutton,” Hale said to Shannon sitting in the midst of computers and workstations.
“Doesn’t need one,” she said. “The design is more about social acceptance. A number of human…evolutionary hold overs were edited out.”
“Is it ready?”
“He’s booting up,” Shannon smirked. “‘He’, all the units were ‘male’. Men fighting and dying on the front lines is the norm for society. The boss did simulations, studies on making ‘female’ versions. Unacceptable for those to be cannon fodder, no matter how tough and ugly he designed them.”
“Male privilege,” Hale said.
“Same as it ever was,” Shannon stood and pressed her hands against the small of her back and stretched.
Lights flashed above the glass on the tube and Hale stepped back, one hand going to a pistol holstered on his hip.
The doughboy opened his eyes and steam filled his assembly chamber. The glass slide aside and the construct stepped out, barefoot and wearing shorts. He came to the position of attention, heels and knees locked together, fists along an imaginary line running down his legs.
“Designation,” Hale said.
“Unit Agate 1-1-1 reporting for duty,” the doughboy said, his voice low and gravelly. “Systems online.”
“He seems a bit more coherent than doughboys I’ve come across,” Hale looked over his shoulder at Shannon.
“The root systems answer status questions. You ask anything requiring higher functions and they’re less…robust,” Shannon said while looking at a screen, lines of code projecting on her face.
“What are your duties?” Hale asked the doughboy.
“Agate 1-1-1 protects humans. Agate 1-1-1 obeys all orders to protect humans against threats. Agate 1-1-1 will maintain system integrity unless prior orders are in danger of being violated.”
“We can imprint further,” Shannon said. “But he’s as close to the original design as I can manage.”
Hale nodded at her then turned back to the doughboy. He pulled a fist back and punched the doughboy in the stomach. The doughboy grunted as the blow knocked air from his lungs. Hale planted his front foot and delivered a kick to the doughboys thigh that would have felled a normal man. The blow landed with a smack, but the doughboy didn’t waver.
The governor stepped back and drew his pistol.
“Woah, what the hell!” Shannon shouted and tried to move out of her computer banks.
Hale leveled the muzzle between the doughboys eyes. The construct didn’t blink. He swung the pistol toward Shannon and flipped the safety off.
Agate snapped forward and clamped his meaty hand over the pistol and yanked Hale’s arm upwards. Hale fired, blowing a hole through Agate’s palm and another through the ceiling.
Hale looked at the doughboy, his face a mask of calm.
“No. Hurt.” Agate said.
Shannon leveled a finger at Hale.
“You are a son of a bitch,” she said.
“Had to test the programming,” Hale said. He pulled his pistol free and holstered it.
Pale green fluid dripped from the bullet wound in Agate’s hand.
“Repair yourself,” Hale said and Agate went back to the assembly tube and reached inside. Silver waldos tipped with spider legs work arms began reknitting the doughboys flesh.
“You going to do that to every single one?” Shannon set her hands on her hips.
“How long to produce more?”
“Five minutes each,” she said with a sigh. “Longer if you want any modifications. Want me to get started?”
“Not yet,” Hale said. “Someone with my last name walks through the streets of Terra Nova with a dozen doughboys behind me and it won’t end well. I have to sell Agate, and all the Agates after him, as our best hope of defending this city when the Ultari return.”
Agate pulled his hands out of the tube and did a neat about face.
“Agate 1-1-1 ready,” he said.
“Come with me, doughboy,” Hale said. “You’ve got to win a battle of hearts and minds.”
THE END
The story continues in REDEMPTION’S SHADOW, coming Summer 2018!
From the Authors
Hello Dear and Gentle Reader,
Thank you for reading Bloodlines. We hope you enjoyed your time with this new galaxy of heroes and villains, much more on the way!
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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
Terran Armor Corps:
1. Iron Dragoons
2. The Ibarra Sanction
3. The True Measure
4. A House Divided (Coming Spring 2018!)
The Exiled Fleet Series:
1. Albion Lost
2. The Long March
3. Their Finest Hour (Coming 2018!)
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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Here’s a sample for you:
CHAPTER 1
THE NEAR FUTURE
Humanity’s only hope of survival entered the solar s
ystem at nearly the speed of light. The probe slowed as the sun’s heliosphere disrupted the graviton wave it rode in on from the abyss of deep space. Awakened by the sudden deceleration, the probe absorbed the electromagnetic spectrum utilized by its target species and assessed the technological sophistication of the sole sentient species on Earth.
The probe adjusted its course to take it into the system’s star. If the humans couldn’t survive—with its help—what was to come, then the probe would annihilate itself. There would be no trace of it for the enemy, and no chance of humanity’s existence beyond the time it had until the enemy arrived. The probe analyzed filed patents, military expenditures, birth rates, mathematical advancement and space exploration.
The first assessment fell within the margin of error of survival and extinction for humanity. The probe’s programming allowed for limited autonomous decision making (choice being a rare luxury for the probe’s class of artificial intelligence). The probe found itself in a position to choose between ending its mission in the sun’s fire and a mathematically improbable defense of humanity—and the potential compromise of its much larger mission.
Given the rare opportunity to make its own decision, the probe opted to dither. In the week it took to pass into Jupiter’s orbit, the probe took in more data. It scoured the Internet for factors to add to the assessment, but the assessment remained the same: unlikely, but possible. By the time it shot past Mars, the probe still hadn’t made a decision.
As the time to adjust course for Earth or continue into the sun approached, the probe conducted a final scan of cloud storage servers for any new information…and found something interesting.
While the new information made only a negligible impact on the assessment, the probe adjusted course to Earth. It hadn’t traveled all this way for nothing.
In the desert south of Phoenix, Arizona, it landed with no more fanfare than a slight thump and a few startled cows. Then it broke into the local cell network and made a call.
****
Marc Ibarra awoke to his phone ringing at max volume, playing a pop ditty that he hated with vehemence. He rolled off the mattress that lay on the floor and crawled on his hands and knees to where his cell was recharging. His roommate, who paid the majority of their rent and got to sleep on an actual bed, grumbled and let off a slew of slurred insults.
Marc reached his cell and slapped at it until the offending music ended. He blinked sleep from his eyes and tried to focus on the caller’s name on the screen. The only people who’d call at this ungodly hour were his family in Basque country…or maybe Jessica in his applied robotics course wanted a late-night study break.
The name on the screen was “ANSWER ME”.
He closed an eye and reread the name. It was way too early—or too late, depending on one’s point of view—for this nonsense. He turned the ringer off and went back to bed. Sleep was about to claim him when the phone rang again, just as loudly as last time but now with a disco anthem.
“Seriously?” his roommate slurred.
Marc declined the call and powered the phone off. He flopped back on his bed and curled into his blanket. To hell with my first class, he thought. Arizona State University had a lax attendance policy, one which he’d abuse for nights like this.
The cell erupted with big-band music. Marc took his head out from beneath the covers and looked at his phone like it was a thing possessed. The phone vibrated so hard that it practically danced a jig on the floor and the screen flashed “ANSWER ME” over and over again as music blared.
“Dude?” said his roommate, now sitting up in his bed.
Marc swiped the phone off the charging cord and the music stopped. The caller’s name undulated with a rainbow of colors and an arrow appeared on the screen pointing to the button he had to press to answer the call. When did I get this app? he thought.
Marc sighed and left the bedroom, meandering into the hallway bathroom with the grace of a zombie. The battered mattress he slept on played hell with his back and left him stiff every morning. Dropping his boxers, he took a seat on the toilet and answered the call, determined to return this caller’s civility with some interesting background noise.
“What?” he murmured.
“Marc Ibarra. I need to see you.” The voice was mechanical, asexual in its monotone.
“Do you have any frigging idea what time it is? Wait, who the hell is this?”
“You must come to me immediately. We must discuss the mathematical proof you have stored in document title ‘thiscantberight.doc.’”
Marc shot to his feet. The boxers around his ankles tripped him up and he stumbled out of the bathroom and fell against the wall. His elbow punched a hole in the drywall and the cell clattered to the floor.
He scooped the phone back up and struggled to breathe as a sudden asthma attack came over him.
“How…how…?” He couldn’t finish his question until he found his inhaler in the kitchen, mere steps away in the tiny apartment. He took a deep breath from the inhaler and felt the tightness leave his lungs.
That someone knew of his proof was impossible. He’d finished it earlier that night and had encrypted it several times before loading it into a cloud file that shouldn’t have been linked to him in any way.
“How do you know about that?” he asked.
“You must come to me immediately. There is little time. Look at your screen,” the robotic voice said. His screen changed to a map program, displaying a pin in an open field just off the highway connecting Phoenix to the suburb of Maricopa.
“Come. Now.”
Marc grabbed his keys.
****
An hour later, his jeans ripped from scaling a barbed-wire fence, Marc was surrounded by desert scrub. The blue of the morning rose behind him, where his beat-up Honda waited on the side of the highway.
With his cell to his ear, Marc stopped and looked around before deciding how to continue. Spiked ocotillo plants looked a lot like benign mesquite trees in the darkness. A Native American casino in the distance served as his North Star, helping him keep his bearings.
“You’re not out here, are you? I’m being punked, aren’t I?” he asked the mysterious caller.
“You are nine point two six meters to my east south east. Punk: decayed wood, used as tinder. Are you on fire?” the caller said.
Marc rolled his eyes. This wasn’t the first time the caller had used the nonstandard meanings of words during what passed as conversation between the two. Marc had tried to get the caller to explain how he knew about his theorem and why they had to meet in the middle of the desert. The caller had refused to say anything. He would only reiterate that Marc had to come quickly to see him, chiding him every time Marc deviated from the provided driving directions.
“If you’re so close, why can’t I see you?” he asked. He took a few steps in what he thought was a northwesterly direction and squished into a cow patty.
“Continue,” the caller said.
Marc shook his foot loose and tried to kick the cow leavings from his sneakers.
“You know what this is? This is exactly what’s all over my shoes, you monotone bastard. Forget it!” Marc shoved his phone into his back pocket and limped back toward his car, his right foot squishing with each step.
The route back to his car was comparatively easy; he just had to walk toward his headlights. That was the plan, anyway, until the lights on his car shut off.
“Marc, this is important.” The muffled words came from his pocketed cell.
“How are you doing this?” Marc shouted into the night.
“Turn around, please.”
Marc did as asked and a silver light like the snap of a reflection from a fish twisting just beneath the water flared on the ground ahead of him. No one was there a moment ago and Marc hadn’t heard any movement.
“I swear if I get my kidneys cut out I will be so pissed about this,” Marc said as he made his way to where he saw the light. He stood for a moment, then flopped his
arms against his sides. “I’m here.”
“You’re standing on me.” The voice came from beneath Marc’s feet.
Marc skipped aside like he’d just heard a rattlesnake’s warning.
“Holy—did someone bury you? Why didn’t you tell me to bring a shovel?” Marc went to his knees and poked at the ground, which felt solid. “How deep are you? Do you have enough air?” Marc asked, using both hands to shove earth aside.
“Two inches ahead and three down.”
Marc’s face contorted in confusion as he kept digging. He moved a mound of gray dirt and pebbles aside and a silver light washed over his face.
A silver needle no more than three inches long rested in the dirt. Tiny filaments of lambent energy crept from the needle and undulated through the air like a snake in the ocean. Marc was frozen in place, his jaw slack as the filaments extended away from the needle, shades of white swimming in and around it.
“We don’t have much time.” The words came from the needle in the same mechanical voice as his mysterious caller. A point of light appeared in the air above the needle, sparked, and then lit into a flame no bigger than he’d seen on a match head. The white flame, which gave off no heat, rose and grew in size. A flame the size of Marc’s head came to a stop a few feet in the air.
Marc, transfixed by the flame until now, got to his feet. The filaments from the needle had extended past him and formed a perimeter ten yards in diameter. Tendrils of energy writhed against each other and against an invisible boundary. His heart pounded in his ears and his innate fight-or-flight instinct made a decision.
“This is a different experience for you. Let me—”
Marc turned and ran away. He got to where the tendrils had stopped and ran into what felt like a wall of water. Air thickened around him as he tried to push through and find purchase on the ground ahead. It felt like he was moving through clay.
