The Gardens of Nibiru (The Ember War Saga Book 5) (25 page)

“I’ve got a flight deck full of civilians.” Valdar punched a button on his desk and a camera feed showed the villagers, all eating food from the ship’s stores. Children laughed and ran across the deck as parents looked on, concern writ across their faces. “Civilians you saved from…God knows what fate waited for them. Certainly better than what they had before.

“Then we’ve got the Karigole. Karigole you saved from extinction. We may be changing, but that was inevitable. Earth is part of a much larger, much more dangerous galaxy. We have to adapt to it. I’m going to keep fighting for what we were, what we still are in our hearts, but things will change,” Valdar said.

“You’re starting to sound like Ibarra.”

“He is a snake, but in the end he just wants us to survive—and survive on humanity’s terms, not some far-off collective’s ideals of what they want us to be,” Valdar said. “It won’t do us a whole lot of good to fight him every step of the way.”

Hale turned to the door, then paused.

“I’m going to see to Rohen’s personal effects. Will you ask Chaplain Crowe to perform a memorial service?”

“I will.”

Hale nodded and left the ready room.

Valdar felt an ache in his heart. Even though he’d sold his soul to Ibarra to keep Hale in his life, he still felt like he was losing his godson forever.

Dust billowed around Torni as the Mule rose into the air. She looked down at her hands. Red blood from Hale, Bailey and Yarrow ran from her fingertips up to her elbows.

“Sarge? Is that you down there?”
Standish asked over the IR.

“Standish, you’re a good Marine. Take care of everyone for me,” she said. Dotok men, those that chose to stay behind, closed around her.

Her perspective shifted. She was on top of a boulder with Minder, watching the memory play out. Watching her self was surreal and made her a bit sick to her stomach.

“What is this? Why are we here?” she asked Minder.

“We’re not having the success we need. The armada will leave for Earth very soon. I’ve chosen a rather unorthodox method for breaking through to your blocked memories. It will be…unpleasant for you.”

“I can’t…I can’t remember much more after this. The banshees are coming.” She pointed to the edge of the mesa. “We fought…then…”

“Then the memories we have from your scan ends. I am sorry for this, Torni. Truly. It’s the only way.” Minder vanished.

A howl that sent a chill down her spine echoed over the mesa. Her memory-self passed a gauss pistol to a Dotok man, then leveled her rifle. She tried to get off the boulder but her feet were locked in place.

“Minder! Let me help! I can’t just watch this happen!”

The first banshee ran up the road and veered toward the Dotok and her memory-self. It went down with a single shot from a gauss rifle. More banshees scrambled up the road, a flood of claws and burning eyes.

The banshees tore into the Dotok, ripping them to pieces with wild fury.

Her memory-self swung the rifle like a club, crushing a banshee’s skull. She unsheathed her Ka-Bar blade and stabbed wildly.

Torni felt the blow that sent her memory-self into the dust. Blood poured down her face. Ribs broke as a kick connected to her side. Torni fell to her knees and reached out to herself. A banshee stomped on her arm and her elbow snapped with a wet pop.

“No! Minder! Stop…please!”

The attack stopped, but the pain remained.

The mass of banshees stood still and then armor plates peeled away from the banshees and flew into a swirling mass. The plates grew bright, so bright she had to turn her eyes away. When she looked back, the General was there, tendrils of energy snaking out from the seams of its armor and hands.

Her memory-self backed to the edge of the mesa, then jumped off. She felt the General’s hold on her, felt the terror as the alien brought her close. The General glanced to the sky then held an ephemeral hand to her memory-self’s head.

Everything froze.

“Minder?”

The world shifted around, and Torni found herself inside a banshee. The hulking thing’s breathing echoed in her ears as time shifted back into gear. The General shot away in a burst of light, the empty armor clattering to the ground.

Her memory-self tried to crawl away from the banshees.

Torni felt her host lumber forward, its claws clicking into a single point. It pulled its arm back, then rammed the spear into the other Torni’s heart. The banshee lifted her into the air and Torni felt her own life’s blood run down the claws.

The other Torni grasped at the claws impaled through her chest. Her mouth opened and shut as blood gushed over her lips. The dying woman went limp, then slid down the claws. The banshee flung the body into the dirt and turned away.

Torni came free of the banshee and stood over her own corpse.

“No…” She fell to her knees and reached out and gently touched her body. “I’m dead? This can’t be.” She sobbed and covered her face with her hands.

“I’m sorry, Torni. This was the only way,” she heard Minder say.

She took her hands away. The gas giant planet of Qa’Resh’Ta spread around her, a horizon that went on for thousands and thousands of miles of swirling pillars of gas and lightning strikes.

She was on the sled. Stacey Ibarra’s hologram watched as Hale touched the crystalline form of a Qa’Resh, the two communing before the alien removed the entity from Yarrow. She remembered now…she remembered everything.

Minder stood off the side of the sled, floating in midair.

“There’s still some residual changes to the memories, but enough to get what we need,” Minder said. He looked to the sky and saw a giant blue star paired with a small red dwarf at the center of the star system. “A unique gas giant, binary star system. Yes, we’ll find them soon enough.”

“And then what?” Torni got to her feet and looked away from the memory-self watching Hale.

“Then we will end this conflict. Just as I promised.”

“If I’m dead, then where am I? Is this hell?”

“I don’t have that answer.”

“Am I like Ibarra? My soul trapped in a machine?”

Minder brought them back to the glade. He watched as tears went down Torni’s face. His mission was now complete. It was his duty to end her simulation, report his findings to the master, and accept his fate.

He froze Torni with a thought, then compressed all the data he gathered into a deep memory bank, one too insignificant for the master to bother checking. He suppressed the last few hours of the simulation’s memory and sent her back to Coronado Island.

Minder reverted to his singularity form and reached out to summon an ephemeral…then hesitated. The report wasn’t complete. Some areas of the scan were still hidden. It couldn’t share this with the master, not yet.

My final work will be perfect
, it thought as another long-hidden emotion came to the fore.

Doubt.

The sun sank into the Pacific Ocean, the riot of reds and yellows splaying out through the horizon and through distant clouds.

Orozco, Standish, Bailey and Egan lay on beach chairs, all wearing swimsuits and obnoxiously loud shirts, watching the sun bid farewell for another night.

“You know,” Standish said, stretching his hands over his head, “I can get used to Hawaii. Maybe if they ever let us muster out, I’ll—”

Bailey shushed him.

“What? You think—”

Orozco beaned Standish with a pebble from the sand beneath his chair. The rock bounced off the side of Standish’s head.

“Hey! Do you know what’s been going on in there lately?”

“Do we want to know?” Egan asked.

“Where’s Gunney? Hale?” Orozco asked.

“You want them to be here?” Bailey asked.

“No, just don’t want them sneaking up on us.”

“Gunney’s getting his new leg in Phoenix. Hale’s doing officer things. Probably learning about our next mission to go and wrestle the Great Chicken of Garabula IX…or something.”

A robot with wide feet to better traverse the sand came over, a silver tray with four coconut shells with straws and tiny umbrellas in its arms.

“Your drinks,” the robot said. It handed a shell to each Marine and walked away. None of the Marines took a sip.

Orozco looked over and watched as the robot turned a corner.

“Clear.”

Standish reached under his chair and took a bottle of rum out of a bag. He poured a generous amount into his coconut shell and passed the bottle to Bailey. She took a swig straight from the bottle before adding more to her shell and passing it to Egan.

“No alcohol while on shore leave…my pasty white ass,” Standish said.

Orozco topped off his coconut and sent the bottle back to Standish.

“To Rohen,” Standish raised his drink. “Good Marine. I wish he was here to share this with us.”

The Marines raised their cups and drank.

“Good shot. Brave man,” Bailey said.

Egan took a second sip and winced.

“Is it me, or is this really strong?” he asked.

“You’ve got no tolerance, proccie,” Bailey said. “Try not to spill your drink when you pass out. More for me.”

“Where’s Yarrow?” Orozco asked. “I thought we were going to get him laid.”

A peal of a woman’s laughter came from the beach. Lilith ran through the sand and splashed into the surf, Yarrow followed a few feet behind her. The two kicked water at each other before swimming off together.

“Kid’s doing just fine on his own,” Standish said.

****

The village looked to have everything his people would need. Ibarra’s construction crews had built homes for each family, all with their front doors centered on the geth’aar’s residence at the center. A small fabrication shop could build everything the village would need, from clothing to household items. Old holo videos that Steuben and Lafayette had carried over the centuries gave the fabricators a decent idea of what a Karigole home needed.

Lafayette, standing atop a small hill overlooking the new settlement, took in the Serengeti plains. Herds of wildebeests and a family of giraffes lounged around a watering whole. There were lions in the tall grass; he could see their thermal signature skulking toward a lone wildebeest. The predators were of little concern, not when each Karigole had a sonic alarm on their person to ward off the animals and warn of their approach.

The children would learn to hunt. It wasn’t their home world, but it was a start. 

The full-grown adults had all come out of their stasis tubes in good health. Sorting children with their parents proved a challenge, but the geth’aar would guide their people to harmony, just as always.

Steuben walked up the hill, still moving a bit slowly from the poison’s aftereffects.

“Well?” Lafayette asked.

“They still won’t accept you. I’m sorry, brother.”

“I can’t even teach? The children need to learn engineering, mathematics, the great works of our people,” Lafayette said. Steuben shook his head.

“I had hoped, but I expected as much. This is a new land. They won’t risk anymore stress to the unborn.” Lafayette kicked a pebble loose and sent it rolling down the hill.

“They named you wraith. If you come to the village, they will claim it has been tainted and abandon it. If we hadn’t saved them all…I would have been banished as well,” Steuben said.

“And if you continue to keep my company?”

“The purification ritual each time I return,” Steuben said with a shrug.

“The oath we took to our Centuria is fulfilled. Mentiq is dead and the Toth overlords will kill each other fighting for the scraps. We have our people, and they are the future, Steuben.” Lafayette looked straight at his old friend. “I want you to stay with them. I will do what I can for the humans, for the fight against the Xaros. I will never return.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Steuben drew his sword from the small of his back and ran the blade against his temple, drawing blood. “Oath. I will the fight the Xaros at your side until the day our people are safe. Will you take it with me?” He held the handle of his blade to Lafayette.

Lafayette took the weapon and cut across his temple. Clear fluid seeped out. The two touched their knuckles to each other’s cut.

“Thank you, Steuben.” Lafayette held his arms wide.

“What are you doing?”

“The humans would hug each other at a time like this.”

“No, stop that. You’re a bad enough influence on me as it is.” Steuben shook his head.

Lafayette sat in the dirt and glanced at the sky.

“We’ve a few hours until transport returns,” he said. “Tell me about the children. Names? Any relation to those in our Centuria?”

****

Hale and Valdar followed the yellow arrows on the Crucible walls leading them through the tall corridors. The last time Hale had been on the Crucible he’d been in a running gun battle with drones. Walking through the station at a leisurely pace without his armor or his weapon made him feel nervous and exposed.

The sandy floors shifted slightly beneath his feet as they came to an intersection. The arrows changed into a red hand. The corridor shifted as the connected hallways slid away, replaced by the starlit void. Hale looked back; the hallway they’d come from was still intact.

“I’m not going to get used to this,” Valdar said. The intersection dipped into the giant thorns that made up the Crucible and connected to a domed section of the structure.

Inside the dome were several tiered levels extending to the far walls of the dome. The stadium resembled the command center, but without the central control plinth. In the middle of the room was a floating object the size of a basketball. Three people stood around the object, two real and one holographic.

“Isaac, Ken, won’t you join us?” Ibarra asked. Stacey gave a little wave to Hale. The man in navy coveralls next to her had no name or rank on his uniform.

“I take it there’s a good reason you’ve taken me away from my ship,” Valdar said.

“What is that? Some kind of Xaros art?” Hale asked. The floating object was an intricately carved sphere with open sections; within was a smaller sphere that rotated against the current of the outer layer. Hale saw another sphere within, and another. He caught glimpses of a glowing jewel at the center.

“‘Art’? I can’t believe how far I’ve fallen,” the man said.

“I’m sorry. Have we met?” Hale asked.

“It isn’t art, young man,” Ibarra said. “It’s a space station lying in the deep space between the Perseus and Cygnus arms of our galaxy. There’s nothing around it for light-years…which makes getting to and from a bit of a challenge if the Xaros know about it.”

“This thing looks like it still works. Wouldn’t the Xaros destroy it if they find it?” Hale asked.

“As far as the Xaros know, the Ancients are long gone. They’ve maintained other remnants. This vault should be pristine,” Stacey said. 

“I take it someone’s going to start explaining things,” Valdar said. “Like why Admiral Garrett isn’t here and why you think my ship is going to go on another damn treasure hunt.”

“He’s working on another crisis.” Ibarra waved a dismissive hand in the air. “This, though, this is much more important. What you found on Anthalas was a game changer for Earth and the Alliance. The omnium tech will buy us time, but it won’t win the war. What’s here…” Ibarra said as he watched the spheres dance within each other, “that’s what we need.”

“The
Breitenfeld
is one of two ships with a jump drive and a cloak. So long as the Xaros don’t suspect you’re there poking around, they won’t bother looking for you. The drive on the
Midway
is needed for something else,” Stacey said.

“What ‘something else’?” Valdar asked.

“Need to know, Captain. Can’t have the Xaros glean what else we’ve got up our sleeve if you’re compromised,” Ibarra said.

“We didn’t even know what to look for on Anthalas,” Hale said. “How do we even…get inside?”

“If it makes anyone feel better, I’m going on this mission,” Stacey said sheepishly. “Plus, we have a guide.”

The man standing next to Stacey looked at Hale. His skin morphed into a smooth countenance of bronze with dark fractals moving over his face.

“Hello again, Lieutenant Hale. My name is Malal. And yes, we’ve met.”