The Gardens of Nibiru (The Ember War Saga Book 5) (24 page)

“XO,” Valdar kept his eyes on the holo as he addressed Ericson, “am I wrong?”

“I’m with you, sir,” she said. “It solves our immediate problem. But long term? We could take out all the Toth leadership right now, end any future threat from them. We leave Ranik in charge and years from now we might look back and regret that we didn’t kill them all when we had the chance.”

“The dead can never come back. I’m not going to choose someone’s certain death over what might happen in the future,” Valdar said.

The deck shook as the main guns fired.

“Fifteen seconds to impact,” Utrecht said.

Valdar watched a flurry of rounds close on a cluster of shuttles crossing into the upper atmosphere. The variable time fuses attached to the gauss shells counted down to zero and exploded in the midst of the escaping Toth overlords. Pressure waves slapped the shuttles aside and tore them to pieces. The shuttle icons dipped back toward the surface on whatever course gravity demanded.

“Fire again, sir?” Utrecht asked.

“Not yet, wait and see if anything else tries to make a break for it.” Valdar let out a long breath. He’d save the evacuees and the Iron Hearts, but something in his gut told him he’d made a mistake.

****

Manfred’s Eagle wobbled as it entered the
Breitenfeld’s
flight deck. Flying was hard enough with Elias attached to the fighter; landing proved especially tricky.

A deck crewman held two glowing orange cones over his head, attempting without much success to guide Manfred to a landing he could walk away from.

Elias detached his hold on the fighter and powered up his jet pack for a brief moment. The armor somersaulted over the nose of the Eagle and slid to a stop. Manfred set down hard a second later.

“Oye! Get that ship clear of the runway!” MacDougall yelled and waved his arms from the side of deck. “We’ve got a bunch of fat asses coming through!”

Elias walked over to Manfred’s Eagle and bent over to look inside the cockpit. The Dotok pilot had his helmet off. Sweat soaked through his thick strands of hair and poured down his face. The pilot’s hands shook so hard he couldn’t activate the ship’s shut-down sequence.

Elias tapped on the canopy with his massive knuckles.

Manfred’s head snapped up and he stared at Elias with wide eyes.

“Good job, kid,” Elias said. “You’ll do even better next time.”

“Next time!” came through the canopy. “What next time?”

Standish stood on his shuttle’s ramp, his hands up to keep the curious villagers away from it as the shuttle approached the
Breitenfeld
. Being in a slaved shuttle flying on autopilot was nerve-wracking. If anything went wrong, he’d have to somehow figure out how to save the day, and flying alien ships set up to be controlled by something with four arms wasn’t something he could pick up on the fly.

He’d spent the trip in the cargo bay with the civilians, answering the myriad of questions with exaggerated nods and feigned deafness.

As if he didn’t have enough to worry about.

+We are in the
Breitenfeld
’s hangar.+

“Stop giving me the play-by-play,” he whispered. “Just stay quiet. Maybe I can convince the docs that I’m really crazy and I’ll get discharged. Yeah, there we go. Silver lining.”

+The shuttle will not stop, but it will slow.+

The ramp lowered and Standish wobbled as his balance faltered. The ship’s hangar opened around him, the deck moving beneath his feet as the shuttle continued at the speed of a leisurely walk.

“Off!” Chief MacDougall and a trio of deckhands ran up to the side of the ramp.  “Every swinging tallywhacker needs off that rust bucket right goddamn now ’fore yer a Dutchman!”

“What did he say?” a villager with a green headband asked Standish.

“Buddy, even I don’t know what the hell chief’s talking about half the time.” Standish grabbed the man and pushed him toward the end of the ramp. A deckhand pulled the man off and pointed him to a throng of villagers waiting on the flanks of the flight deck.

“All right, my greenies,” Standish said, raising his arms, “everyone off! Hurry, hurry!”

Standish kept a head count going as the civilians filed past him and made the ungraceful transition from the moving shuttle to the still deck.

“Wait a minute,” a heavyset man said once he could look around the deck. “This isn’t the tem—”

Standish shoved him off the ramp.

“Keep moving, people. Next slowpoke gets a kick in the rear.” Standish motioned the civilians onward. He recognized one of the serving girls from the previous night as she came closer, following behind a scowling older man that looked like her father.

“Hey baby, how you doing?” The girl giggled at him. “We’ll talk later. Watch your step.”

The last villager tripped as he got off the ramp, but a deckhand managed to catch him.

“Seventy-one,” Standish said. “Good to go.”

+That was seventy. There is a juvenile in the cockpit.+

“What, are you sure?” Standish asked.

“Who’re you jabbering at?” MacDougall asked him.

+I am a highly advanced artificial intelligence. You think I am unable to process simple addition? This craft will exit the
Breitenfeld
’s hangar in two hundred thirty-seven seconds. I suggest you retrieve the child now.+

“Balls…” Standish ran back into the shuttle, chased by a slew of invectives from MacDougall. He climbed into the cockpit and found a little girl no more than five years old standing on top of the control panels, her face pressed against the glass. The end of the hangar loomed ahead of them.

“You don’t have any other little friends in here, do you?” Standish asked.

The little girl looked over her shoulder. “Ma-ma and Pa-pa went to the temple last year. I want to see them.”

Standish’s hand balled into fists. He wished he could have been there the moment Mentiq died.

“Come on, princess.” Standish picked the girl up and carried her on his hip. He dropped down the wide-ladder well and the girl squealed in delight. He ran to the end of the cargo bay and jumped off the ramp, skidding to a stop mere feet from the force field separating the flight deck from the void beyond.

“Ooo, pretty!” The girl reached for the force field and Standish turned away before she could touch it.

“Not so fast,” Standish said. He watched as their shuttle drifted into space. It veered off course and started tumbling end over end, joining two other out-of-control shuttles. The Toth vessels were large, their technology little better than what the
Breitenfeld
had aboard and not worth keeping around to clutter the flight deck.

One of the Chinese pilots from Durand’s squadron clapped her hands and held her arms out to the little girl.

“What happened to her face?” the girl asked.

“Nothing, she’s from China. That’s what Chinese people look like,” Standish said. He passed the girl to “Nag” Ma and stepped out of the way of another slowly approaching shuttle.

The girl stared slack-jawed at Nag’s face as the pilot carried the little one back to the rest of the civilians.

+It is time for me to leave.+

“What? First off, good. Second off, why?”

+My programming requires immediate termination on the event of capture or a successful alteration of my coding. I transferred my final report to one of the data crystals. The unit you have in the Crucible will find it most useful.+

“No! No, no.” Standish pressed his palms to several different places around his head, trying to keep the probe from escaping. “You can’t just self-terminate like that. I was just beginning to like you!”

+Deception detected. You served a valuable purpose in aiding my escape. The Toth used me to create incalculable damage across the local galaxy. I will not risk falling into hostile control again.+

“I’m human, not hostile. You can be our guest, no need to work. We have our own probe for all that. He’s great. Just wait until you meet him.” Standish watched in horror as a glowing flame emerged from his forearm. He swiped at the probe, but his hand passed right through it.

+Farewell, Standish. Thank you.+

The probe floated through the force field and sped away in a flash of light. Standish watched as its blur shot toward the system’s green star.

Standish’s shoulders fell.

“What was that all about?” Yarrow asked as he came up to his fellow Marine.

“You know what, new guy? Sometimes this galaxy can be a real son of a bitch.”

****

Valdar kept his eyes closed as the light of the wormhole flooded his bridge. He felt his ship rumble as the wormhole collapsed and the light faded away.

“We’re through,” Ensign Geller said from the conn station. “Welcome home, everyone.”

Valdar opened his eyes and saw the gigantic crown of thorns that was the Crucible jump gate. Individual thorns moved and bent against each other.

“Titan Station hailing us…it’s Admiral Garrett, sir,” the signals officer said.

“Stand down from action station. Patch me direct to the admiral,” Valdar said.

“Isaac,” Garrett said as his face popped up on the inside of Valdar’s visor. “Glad to have you back, and in one piece? Did you make it to Nibiru?”

“We made it, sir. Mission accomplished. Mentiq is dead and the Toth overlords are more interested in fighting for the scraps than anything else right now,” Valdar said. “We need to dock immediately and off-load civilians.”

“Civilians? Did you bring home another bunch of strays, Valdar?”

“Human beings this time, prisoners. All descendants from a Toth visit to Earth thousands of years ago,” Valdar said.

“All this will play great in Phoenix. We’ve needed some good news since the Toth showed up. I’ll get you a berthing on Titan in just a minute. Anything else to report?”

“We also picked up some Karigole on Nibiru.”

“I thought there were only two left.”

“Now there are only forty-nine left. Seems Mentiq kept a few after the near xenocide. Steuben asked that we set them down somewhere in the Serengeti, maybe old Kenya,” Valdar said.

Garrett rubbed his temples. “Now I have to find a home for the Karigole…fine. I’ll make that happen. Tell Steuben to be patient.” Garrett winced. “Anything else?”

“My ship is undamaged. One Marine MIA, presumed dead.”

“Rohen?”

Valdar nodded.

“Unfortunate, but expected. Stand by for your berthing. Garrett out.”

Valdar unbuckled his restraints and stood up. “XO, you have the bridge,” he said to Ericson. “Let me know when we’re about to dock.”

“Aye-aye, captain,” she said.

Valdar made for his ready room and found Hale, still in his armor, waiting outside the door. His godson’s face was stony, but his eyes were on fire. Hale followed Valdar into the ready room.

“What’s troubling you?” Valdar asked once the door shut behind them.

“You knew. You knew about Rohen, didn’t you?”

Valdar went to his leather chair and sat down. He motioned to the open seat on the opposite side of his desk, but Hale didn’t move.

“I did. He wasn’t to tell you about his…condition unless a viable opportunity presented itself. Which I’m guessing it did as we’re having this conversation.”

“Why?” Hale ran a gloved hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Why would Ibarra make something like him? And you let him on the ship? You should’ve refused, sent him back to Ibarra’s proccie farm to be made whole, give him a chance to survive.”

“It’s not that simple, Ken.” Valdar wanted to tell Hale he’d no choice. Ibarra had all the details of his involvement with the true-born movement that nearly gave the proccies to the Toth. Valdar knew if he strayed from Ibarra’s orders what he’d done would come to light. Valdar would lose his command, his rank…and Hale.

“You put everything at risk to rescue the Dotok from the Xaros.” Hale pointed a finger at Valdar. “You couldn’t just stand by and let them die, but that’s exactly what you did with Rohen!”

“Don’t blame him,” came from beneath a pile of clothes.

A shirt floated up from the mess, then slipped away to reveal a metal ball. Ibarra’s hologram materialized around the ball.

“It was all my idea. The mission needed an insurance policy and Rohen was it.” Ibarra walked across the room and leaned against Valdar’s desk.

“If you still had a neck, I’d strangle it,” Hale said.

“Get in line, pup. Now, tell me, did your team kill Mentiq without Rohen’s fail-safe?”

Hale’s face went red. “We hit him, blew a leg off. That should’ve been enough to convince the Toth to stay the hell away from our planet. And if Rohen hadn’t poisoned Mentiq, then we could have wiped them all out from orbit, right?” he asked Valdar.

“It would have been a tremendous risk,” Valdar said. “Our capacitors had barely enough energy to open the jump gate. If I’d have fired the main guns, we would still be in Nibiru, dodging whatever Toth ships survived the civil war.”

“There you go.” Ibarra raised his hands. “Rohen’s the big hero…” Ibarra got up and leaned toward Hale. “But you didn’t have the guts, did you? You weren’t willing to order him to give himself up. He had to run off, didn’t he?”

“I don’t send Marines on suicide missions,” Hale said.

“Don’t get all righteous with me. You put your life on the line when you signed up, same as the rest of your Marines. It’s up to commanders like you and Valdar to best utilize your resources, even if that means certain death. Rohen was a weapon, one that knew his purpose. He’s the same as all the rest of the proccies. They exist to beat the Xaros when they return and they will die by the millions. They might
all
die if that’s what it takes to keep humanity going. As soon as you grow up and realize that you might have a—”

Hale slapped the holo projector. It careened off the bulkhead and shattered.

“He’ll just send another one,” Valdar said.

“Still. It felt good,” Hale said. He nudged his foot against a chunk of the sphere. “What’re we becoming, Uncle Isaac? We’re creating armies of disposable heroes. We depend on some alien probe from an alliance that let the Xaros drive us to the edge of extinction and betrayed us as soon as it suited them. This isn’t…this isn’t what I know. What humanity should be.”