The Battle of the Void (The Ember War Saga Book 6) (20 page)

“Indigo’s getting scared. I need you to act hard before he loses it.” He cocked his head to the doughboy standing opposite to them.

“He is?”

“Yeah, you see how the colors in his face are all messed up? That’s what happens when they get scared. Didn’t you read the manual?”

“Huh…hey, big guy. We’ve got your back.” Derringer banged a fist against his chest.

Indigo tore his gaze away from the corridor and grunted.

“Good job, Marine,” Brannock said. He didn’t mind lying, not if it meant Derringer would think about something other than their worsening situation.

Xaros will zap any life pods. They don’t take prisoners,
he thought.

He keyed his mic. “Devil Dog command, this is station 3-7. There an update?” Nothing but static greeted him.

Stalks broke through the bulkhead of the connecting passageway. The tips bent over and stabbed into metal walls. A drone ripped opened a hole with ease.

“Contact!” Brannock leaned around the corner and fired. A ruby glow filled the corridor from the drone’s stalk tips. The Marines got off another shot and pulled back. He knew the bulkhead wouldn’t be much protection. He squeezed his eyes shut as a disintegration beam ripped through the corridor.

The deck rattled, but Brannock found he was still alive. Indigo was in the passageway, the muzzle of his oversized rifle glowing red hot. The drone crumbled in the entrance it had made.

A long gash cut across the bay where Stephens and the rest of the control team were working. The gash was wide enough that Brannock could have stuck his head into the bay with ease. The bay was full of wrecked equipment and floating bodies.

“Oh no…” Brannock opened the door. Stephens fell against him, a briefcase in her hand.

“We didn’t get it,” she said. “Almost there…then the power cut out. So damn close.”

“Didn’t get what?” Brannock asked.

“The mines! Two more mines and we could have taken down their propulsion rings. How do you not know about this?”

“No one tells us anything!” Derringer said.

“If I had line of sight to the
Abdiel
or the mines…” Stephens held up her briefcase. “So damn close. Now all of this will be for nothing.”

“No, not for nothing.” Brannock pointed at the rip in the bulkhead. Through a mess of damaged pipes and broken deck plating, they saw the void. “Come on.”

Brannock pulled Stephens along and peered into the hole. Sparking electrical wires and empty vac suits filled the next compartment.

“Let’s go, field trip!” Brannock pushed aside an arcing power line with the tip of his rifle and cut across to the next wound in the
Midway.

Stephens and the rest followed. He waved Derringer and Indigo into the next compartment.

“Line of sight. I get you to the hull and you can make this work, right?” Brannock asked. “Because there are a lot of drones out there and I’m not one of those armor soldiers that can take on a hundred Xaros and still win.”

“Get me out there,” she said.

The breach in the outer hull was just big enough for Brannock to squeeze through. He locked his boots to the hull and looked around.

Abaddon loomed above. The
Bull Run
, a few hundred yards away, fired off a broadside and took a dozen hits from energy beams in return. A rail cannon ripped away, flipping end over end like a coin. The next hit broke through the opposite side of the hull, splintering aegis armor outward like a misshapen volcano.

An Eagle, pursued by a pair of drones, streaked overhead so low that Brannock ducked, fearing decapitation.

“Bad idea. Such a bad idea.” He pulled Derringer and Stephens out of the breach. Indigo looked through the gap.

“Too small,” the doughboy said. He was right; his broad shoulders wouldn’t fit.

Brannock pointed to a nearby bunker.

“Can you get to that bunker? Get out through there?” he asked.

Indigo grasped the broken hull with both hands and bent it aside.

“Or that.” Brannock pointed to Stephens, who had her briefcase open. Wires ran from her gauntlet to a screen and touch pad inside the case. “Let’s get to that bunker.”

“No, I need line of sight and I’m not going to get it in that pill box…I’ve got a link! Just give me…why the hell is that over there…two minutes!” Stephens said.

Brannock and Derringer crouched next to her. There were five human ships still fighting in the void above, rail cannons and point defense turrets blazing. The
Midway
’s bridge was dark, drones scuttling around and through holes torn in the superstructure where the admiral should have been leading the battle.

The hull around them was pitted and torn. Fragments of aegis shielding skittered past their knees as the ship rolled over.

One of the last ships exploded—its battery stacks gone critical—in a flash of yellow light. Drones crossed in front of distant stars, moving like shadows across the void. Brannock felt exposed, helpless before the awesome might of the Xaros ripping apart his fleet.

“How long we gonna be out here flapping in the breeze?” Derringer asked.

“One more…” Stephens tapped on her forearm screen. “Got lock on connection gamma. Now I need to—”

“If you can work faster without talking, I’m all for it,” Brannock said.

A peal of armor pressed up from the breach. Indigo tried to squirm through the wider hole, with little success.

“Corporal…” Derringer whispered, “think one’s coming at us from the bridge.”

Stephens started to get up. Brannock held her steady. A drone climbed down from the bridge to one of the hull defense bunkers.

“Stay on it,” Brannock said.

A stalk shot up from the approaching drone and bent toward the humans.

“It sees us.” Derringer slowly pointed his rifle toward the drone.

“You don’t know that.” Brannock felt a cold splash of fear against his chest. “Just stay calm and—”

The tip of the stalk lit up with red light.

Derringer put himself between Stephens and the drone and raised his weapon. His rifle fired just as a beam struck his chest. His shot ripped a gash across the drone’s surface. Brannock hit it again. The drone slammed against the hull and broke apart.

“Derringer?” Brannock grabbed the Marine’s slack shoulder, his grip collapsing the empty armor, red mist clouding Derringer’s visor.

Brannock grabbed Stephens by the back of her armor and dragged her toward the bunker.

“What are you doing? What happened?” she asked.

“Keep working!” Three more drones came off the bridge and flew toward them. He set her against the side of the bunker and took out his only quadrium bullet. He slipped the round into his rifle’s breach and clicked a button to overcharge his capacitors. The rifle hummed in his hands.

“Here we go.” He stepped around the bunker and stared down the charging drones. A red beam shot past his knees. Brannock aimed for the drone in the center of the pack and fired. The drones flew apart, but not before the quadrium shell exploded into an electrical storm that arced between two of the drones. The affected drones slammed into the
Midway
and skipped across the hull.

Brannock ejected his spent battery and slapped his belt to get a fresh charge, but the pouch was empty. His hand went to another pouch—empty.

“No no, no…” He reached behind his back and found a fresh battery pouch on his belt. He struggled to get the battery loose.

The single drone that evaded the quadrium round landed atop the bunker, stalks raised like a spider about to strike. The stalks scythed toward Brannock and Stephens, the stalk tip missing his face by mere inches.

The drone slipped over the side of the bunker.

Indigo gripped the drone by its stalks and slammed it against the hull. He roared and bashed it against the bunker, cracking the shell.

“Hammer! Use your damn hammer!” Brannock yelled as he finally slapped a fresh battery into his rifle.

Indigo drew the hammer off his shoulder and slammed it against the drone. The spike split the shell and cracked the drone in half. Indigo smashed the disintegrating drone again and again.

“I’ve got it!” Stephens called out. “Final countdown activated!”

Indigo tossed aside the last of the drone.

“Good job, Indigo!” Brannock stood over Stephens, searching for the other two drones.

“Indigo, good.” The doughboy slammed a fist against his chest. The soldier’s head snapped to the side. He squared his feet and raised the hammer over his head.

All Brannock saw was a blur as a drone slammed into Indigo and carried him away. Brannock heard the doughboy grunt and shout for a few seconds before his IR cut out.

Searing pain erupted in Brannock’s arm. He twisted aside as the beam burning into his arm ripped into the bunker. 

A drone landed just before Brannock and Stephens. He tried to bring his weapon to bear, but his arm refused to respond. The drone slashed a beam across the bunker. Brannock heard a brief scream from Stephens then he found himself spinning through the void.

His right arm flopped in front of his face, hanging by a thread from his nearly ripped vac suit. His legs itched with pain then went numb. He refused to look down, knowing what he’d see, and what he wouldn’t.

“Anyone?” he broadcast. “I’m Dutchman. Dutch…off the
Midway
.” His head felt heavy.

Abaddon spun slowly across his vision. The propulsion rings collapsed, giant cracks forming from one spoke to the other. Gleaming crystal shards broke out of the brass-colored rings and trailed away from Abaddon.

Brannock watched in awe as the crystals burned away. His mind went to a childhood memory of a camping trip, sitting around a fire with his father, watching embers rise into the night sky and die away.

Blood loss sent Brannock unconscious. Death came moments later.

Minder felt his connections to the Xaros network sever with one swift stroke. The
Breitenfeld
had wrecked the Crucible’s ability to generate wormholes, not the network hub embedded within the structure. There had never been an anomalous drone during the long course of the Xaros invasion, and if there was one thing that caught the Master’s attention, it was data that did not conform to expectations.

He got to his feet, remembering how Torni fought to die the same way.

A smoking mass of abyssal darkness seeped through the wall opposite him. Keeper had sent a null-beast, a legend from their home galaxy used as a tool in the Master’s assassination games. Minder took Keeper’s choice in murder weapons as a compliment.

“We cannot continue like this, Keeper,” he said. “We destroyed our home through hubris. Doing the same to this galaxy only compounds the crime.”

The null-beast coiled into a twisted lance and swung a tip to Minder.

Minder kept his eyes open as the lance shot into his chest. He felt his photonic core disintegrate slowly, like ice spreading through his chest. His body froze in a rictus of pain then crumbled into dust. The null-beast stretched across the laboratory, annihilating everything it came into contact with.

With Minder and all evidence of his existence gone, the null-beast turned upon itself. Black smoke poured from its shrinking body. The last of the creature burned to a tiny mote of light then departed reality with a faint pop.

****

The General watched as the propulsion rings crumbled away, their remnants flowing behind his arsenal like a comet’s tail.

Never before! Never before had one of the polluting species of this galaxy ever dealt him such a blow as this.

He willed the drones still inside the planetoid to replicate. This was but a setback. He would bring the arsenal to Earth, the materiel loss of the rings and what he’d expended to defeat the human fleet was insignificant next to the ultimate strength his arsenal possessed.

Gravity enveloped him and pulled him toward the arsenal. He struggled briefly against the sudden spike in gravitons. Another of the human’s mines…farther away and on the path to Earth.

The human support ships had raced away during the battle. He ordered a segment of his available drones to give chase. They set out, moving unacceptably slow. The graviton mine disrupted the drones as they tried to form their own Alcubierre fields. The drones would pursue, but not catch up for months.

No…

The General spread his drones across the surface and ordered them to propel the arsenal forward. The planetoid lurched forward. He felt the loss of thousands and thousands of drones as they struggled to overcome the interference from the graviton mine.

Another human mine exploded farther ahead and the General realized what the humans had done.

The support ships were minelayers. They would bleed his arsenal white before it reached Earth and there was no way he could catch the ships or stop them from seeding space with their mines.

Light erupted from the General like a supernova as he raged. He flew to a wrecked ship and ripped it apart. He hurled the prow into another dead ship, knocking them both on an infinite journey through space.

He went to the human capital ship, the carrier, and peeled an aegis plate off the hull. He crushed the plate into a sphere and reached behind his head, ready to smash it into the bridge…then stopped. He burned a path through the ship and stopped in the engine room.

The jump engines remained intact. Keeper might withhold the technology from him, but here was a crude approximation of the forbidden technology. The General rolled the ball of compressed aegis shielding between his fingers, deep in thought.

A faulty jump engine had doomed his home galaxy, erasing it from existence and sending the Xaros on the long journey to this, their new home. The General had asked for the jump technology to investigate the humans’ meddling on Earth, but Keeper refused.

The Masters decreed that the jump engines would never be used again; violating that would mean sanction—a sanction the General wasn’t sure he would survive.

Only if they find out...

The General summoned drones to the
Midway
. Keeper kept a smothering presence around everything the General did since waking after the human incursion on Anthalas. Yet…the General didn’t feel Keeper now. Something else had the other Master’s attention.

The General cut his connection to the Apex. He came up with a plan, one he had to execute quickly. Keeper would never know, and victory required no explanation.