The Gardens of Nibiru (The Ember War Saga Book 5) (21 page)

“I’m from Earth. I’ve encountered another probe like you before. I’ve been to Bastion and seen the Qa’Resh.” Hale brandished his rail rifle in front of the probe. “Does this look like Toth technology to you?”

“Curious. Earth should have been wiped out by the Xaros decades ago. The probe sent to your system was an older model. I didn’t think it had the ability to carry out the—” the probe shook with a wave of static “—protocol.”

“We’ll have story time later. Can you do what I ask or not?”

“I cannot. Those functions are severed from my higher functions, but you could adjust the programming,” the probe said.

“I’ll need to reconfigure the access protocols…” Lilith kept typing.

“How long will that take?” Hale asked.

“It’s a mess in here. Maybe a half hour?”

“We’re going to be up to our eyeballs in Toth warriors in five minutes if we don’t get this working,” Standish said.

“Do this.” The probe projected a screen with arrows pointing to flashing bits of code.

“Oh that’s…brilliant,” Lilith said.

“I have been trapped inside a force field since the day the Toth betrayed the Alliance, unable to carry out my self-destruct protocols,” the probe said. “Being trapped several feet from my salvation has been most frustrating, but I have had quite some time to plan my escape.”

The field around the probe broke apart. The jagged edges of the probe smoothed out, but it still looked like a sliver from a broken window. It floated off the plinth, projecting light like a tiny star.

“My base programming does not allow for pleasure, but there have been some modifications,” the probe said. “I cannot access the city’s power relays to disable the blast or energy shields…but I can commandeer the air defense turrets. If I have line of sight to them.”

“What good does that do us?” Hale asked.

“I could turn the cannons on the spires projecting the energy shield and blow a hole out of the blast walls. I assume you have transport out of the city,” the probe said.

“We do…can you unlock
all
the shuttles and disable the city’s fighters?” Hale asked. “More shuttles in the air, more confusion to mask our movement.”

The probe shimmered. “Done.”

“And the nuke inhibitors, can you turn those off?”

A muffled explosion and a slight tremor came through the chamber.

“Done,” the probe said. “A power surge overloaded the inhibitor, killing nineteen Toth technicians. Tragic. I am too weak to travel alone,” the probe said. “One of you must be my vessel.”

“Wait, what does that mean?” Standish asked.

The probe floated toward Standish, hesitated, then pressed into his forehead and vanished.

“Get it out of me!” Standish dropped his rifle and clutched at his head.

+Your distress is unhelpful. We should move along+ the probe said to Standish.

“Voices! I’m hearing voices!” Standish shouted, the words echoing off the walls.

“Quit complaining.” Cortaro slammed Standish’s rifle back into his chest and pointed to the ladder.

A flood of white light came from the far end of the chamber as a door slid open. Hale made out the silhouette of Kroar and Toth warriors. He raised his rifle and fired, the crack of the gauss weapon stinging his ears. Cortaro joined Hale and hit a Toth warrior as it tried to charge through the doorway.

A blast of energy from a Toth rifle tore through the air and blew one of the control panels into pieces.

Yarrow fell from the trap door and landed with a clang of metal on metal. He put a torrent of accurate shots into the distant doorway and stepped between his unarmored comrades and the attackers. Yarrow snapped off a shot each time he saw movement in the doorway.

“They’re going to figure out they made a huge mistake pretty quick,” Yarrow said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Corpsman!” Standish worked his way up the ladder. “Corpsman, I’ve got a probe in my head! It’s talking to me. It’s telling me to stop screaming and hurry up the ladder!”

“Oh, suddenly having some alien thing in you isn’t so funny anymore, is it Standish?” Yarrow yelled as he fired off another burst.

The Iron Hearts stood on the flight deck as deckhands standing on mobile scaffolds fixed jet packs and battery cases to the soldiers’ backs. Each stared into the space beyond the open bay doors, the deep blue crest of Nibiru in the distance.

“All right, laddies and lassie,” Chief MacDougall said as he leaned back from Kallen’s jet pack. He looked at the yellow and black radiation warnings on a long case attached to Elias’ thigh.

“You’re good to go.” MacDougall slapped a wrench against Kallen’s armored backside.

“Should I crush his head?” Kallen asked.

“Not yet, he’s hidden the last bottle of single malt Glenfiddich in the galaxy and I don’t know where to find it,” Bodel said.

“Payment for services rendered. I’ll not share a dram of that with anyone so stop asking about it,” MacDougall said. The chief had been instrumental in helping Elias recover from a coma, but the details of that event were rarely discussed since it involved several felonies and a number of very angry senior officers. Standish had dipped into a purloined supply of liquor to get MacDougall’s help in the affair; what the Scotsman did with the bottle was the source of speculation.

“I think we haven’t been asking the right way.” Bodel knocked his knuckles together.

“Get on with it, you tin bastards!” MacDougall pointed his wrench to the open bay doors. “Just make sure you all come back.”

“Let’s go.” Elias stepped free from the scaffolds and ran to the end of the flight line. He jumped through the force field and vanished as a cloak enveloped his armored body. Kallen and Bodel followed right behind him.

“Chief,” said one of the crewmen, edging closer to MacDougall, “did they say something about whisky?”

“Nah, don’t believe a word they say. They’re all crazy. Just look at what they wear to work.” MacDougall rapped the wrench against the scaffold. “Get this off my flight line! I’ve a feeling we’ll need this place ready for action sooner rather than later.”

****

Lafayette stepped over dead menials and ran into Steuben’s shuttle. He made it into the cockpit with a single leap and found his old friend lying in a pool of purple blood.

He pushed Steuben onto his side and felt for a pulse. It was weak, but it was steady.

The olfactory sensors in his nose picked up the smell of a Toth nerve agent from the discarded blade.

“We never thought to put Karigole medicine in this armor,” Lafayette said. “But then again, why would we? The human adrenaline injections probably won’t kill you, but the poison will stop your heart in another few minutes.” He ran a line from the back of his skull into the gauntlet on Steuben’s forearm.

“As our Marines like to say,
Gott mit uns.
” Lafayette sent a command to Steuben’s armor and injectors built into Steuben’s chest armor jabbed into his heart and delivered a massive dose of adrenaline.

Steuben reared up and took a deep, ragged breath. His head thrashed from side to side as air puffed in and out of his mouth.

“Good, you’re stabilizing,” Lafayette said as he looked over the readings coming off Steuben’s armor.

“What? What?” Steuben grabbed the Toth corpse by the tail and threw it across the cockpit.

“You’re not in shuttle twelve, by the way. You’re in fourteen.” Lafayette reached into the open control panel and fished out the slaver.

“Steuben, Lafayette, the Toth air defenses are firing on the city, and the security clamps on all my shuttles just went green. I think we’re about to leave,”
Egan sent.

“Confirmed, Egan. I’ve got Steuben with me. We’re ready to leave as soon as we’ve got a flight path out of this city.” Lafayette took his data line from Steuben and plugged it into the slaver unit.

“Laf…I feel horrible.” Steuben rolled forward and grabbed the deck.

“Your body is metabolizing the poison. It shouldn’t feel good.” Lafayette sent a command through his connection and closed the ramp.

“Don’t…ugh, don’t tell anyone I was stabbed by a little one. I’ll never hear the end of it.” Steuben pulled himself to his feet.

“A warrior got you?”

“Three warriors.”

“Fine. I suggest you hold onto something. This flight is going to be a bit bumpy.” Lafayette cycled power through the engines and lifted off the ground.

****

Elias felt the amniotic fluid in his womb slosh as he made a slight course correction with his maneuver thrusters. He and his Iron Hearts had trained for almost every combat insertion imaginable, from hiding inside a scan-shielded cargo container to naked drops from orbit, using their jet packs to arrest their fall in the final seconds before impact. Moving through space as an invisible ballistic object was a bit different.

The mass of ships crammed into the anchorage loomed ahead of them.

“We have a preference?” Bodel asked.

“Need line of sight to one or both of the dreadnoughts,” Kallen said, “and something we can stake into would be nice. I’d rather not go pinballing through space once we take our shot. Or am I alone on this?”

Elias zoomed in on a fat Toth cruiser floating toward the edge of the anchorage.

“There,” he said, sending a target designation to the others, “that should do it.”

“Lot of view ports,” Bodel said. “There are some not-Toth ships out there, but if some lizard looks out the window and sees us standing on the hull, I don’t think a wave and a nod will convince him everything’s perfectly normal.”

“Then we hide.” Elias adjusted his course to the target vessel.

“You know we’re not ten-foot-tall murder machines anymore,” Kallen said. “We’re
fifteen
-foot-tall murder machines.”

“I still think you two made up that whole Xaros general thing so we could get new suits,” Bodel said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Get ready to decelerate.” Elias swung his feet in front of him and aligned his jet pack against his direction of travel. “Slow burn. Don’t overwork the cloak.”

“Yes, Dad,” Kallen said.

Elias activated the jet pack and felt g-forces pull him to the bottom of his womb. His bare toes pressed against the metal. He felt pressure against his skin, but no heat. He focused on his big toe and tried to move it. He saw his armor’s foot flex, but there was nothing from his true body.

He’d gone past the redlines of what his nervous system could handle while defending the ship from the Xaros and suffered trauma from which most armor soldiers never regained consciousness. He’d recovered enough that he could move and fight in his armor, but there was no way he’d ever survive outside the tank within his armor.

Accepting that he’d be locked in armor until his death had come easy…until he learned of Kallen’s disease. The prognosis from Batten’s Disease was terminal, always. Elias looked to his fellow Iron Heart; a wire outline of her cloaked armor displayed on UI. He drifted toward her as the thought of losing her stirred something deep inside.

“Hey! Watch it.” Kallen veered away from Elias.

“Sorry.” Elias pinged the surface of the Toth cruiser with a laser pulse to get range and fed more power into the thrusters integrated into his heels and calves. The pearlescent hull loomed ahead of him.

“Gently…” Elias’ thrusters flared, blowing dust away from his landing site. His feet hit with enough force to rattle his tank. Magnetic linings clamped onto the hull and held fast.

Kallen’s thrusters blazed against the void and she came to a complete stop a few meters above the hull. Her mag linings pulled her to the hull with grace and ease.

“Top that, Bodel,” she said.

“Just watch—I’ve got a malfunction in my number-six thruster.” Bodel tipped to the right as his maneuver thrusters fired haphazardly, one knee against his chest and the other leg straight out with fire blazing from the heel. Bodel hit the hull hard enough for one leg to pierce the flimsy armor.

Gas and freezing water vapor burst from around Bodel’s leg, embedded in the ship up to his knee.

“Oh, they won’t notice that.” Kallen grabbed Bodel from behind and pulled him free.

Elias looked into the damaged hull and saw nothing but darkness. His infrared cameras picked up nothing but an empty room exposed to the vacuum. He grabbed a torn metal section of Bodel’s puncture and flipped it inside out.

“If I make the hull rupture look like it came from inside the ship,” Elias said, “that might buy us some time.”

“At least I didn’t land on a Toth galley or something,” Bodel said.

“You know what’s better than putting a hole through an unused compartment? Not ripping a hole in anything at all when you land!” Kallen punched Bodel on the shoulder. “If they send anyone on EVA to examine the damage, we’re in trouble.”

“We’ve still got our cloaks,” Elias said, looking at the battery timer on his UI, “for three minutes. Let’s get clear and lock down. Spider time.” He reached down and used the magnetic plates in his fingertips to secure himself to the hull. He slid his hands and feet along the hull, barely touching the hull to minimize the disturbance his passing might make to any alien on the other side of the ship.

Kallen and Bodel followed Elias’ lead. The three moved across the hull like they were climbers scaling up a mountain.

“Freeze!” Bodel yelled as a pair of Toth dagger fighters crested over the hull. The ships inverted, and Elias saw a six-limbed pilot beneath the canopy as a fighter drifted over him. Elias pointed the double-barreled gauss cannons at the fighter as it lounged over the hull puncture. He resisted the urge to power up the magnetic accelerators in the weapons, knowing it would drain precious seconds of life off his cloak.

“Their response time is pretty good,” Kallen whispered.

“We’re on IR and they can’t hear you through the vacuum,” Bodel said.

“It’s called mindfulness, you twit,” Kallen said.

“If they’re this fast, we’ll only have one shot at putting Valdar’s plan in motion,” Bodel said.

The Toth fighters rolled over and blasted away, sending a wave of heat across Elias’ armor.

“Then let’s not have any more screwups. Head for that weapon emplacement. We should find an anchor point there,” Elias said.