The Siege of Earth (The Ember War Saga Book 7) (17 page)

“Let’s hope not.”

****

Hale’s good arm grabbed the edge of the pit and he hauled himself onto Pluto’s surface. Gravity lessened instantly as he moved beyond the effects of the last glowing orb. A brown haze of dust filled the sky directly over the pit, giving way to blue as the distant sun scattered through tholin particles in the upper atmosphere.

He searched the sky and found no sign of the Grinder…or the
Breitenfeld
.

“Egan, get comms going. Find our ship,” Hale said.

“I don’t think I can get anything through all the particulates in the atmosphere,” Egan said. “We could go radio,” he said, pointing to Abaddon cresting over the horizon, “but that’ll bring every Xaros drone still out there right on our heads.”

“Try,” Hale said.

“Sir,” Jacobs came over to Hale, “where did the task force go? The Grinder would have burned up if it was destroyed. It’s gone…shouldn’t the ships be out here trying to find us, at least send something down the tunnels to look?”

“Valdar wouldn’t leave us behind.” Hale felt a chill spread from his gut to the rest of his body. Where was the
Breitenfeld
?

Hale looked at his air and battery gauges; both were amber and dangerously close to low.

“Steuben, where is your drop pod?” Hale asked.

“Clear over those mountains.” The Karigole pointed to distant icy peaks. “It took significant damage when we landed.”

Hale scratched that course of action off a shrinking mental list of ways his Marines could survive.

“Sir,” Cortaro got close to Hale, “Drebin in Slate has life support for the next fifty minutes. His O2 scrubber got banged up and is malfunctioning. Rest of us have between one and four hours.”

Fifty minutes before his Marines started to die.

“What do we do, sir?” Mathias asked.

“Get Drebin back in the pit where there’s still atmo. Have him breathe that instead of his suit reserves until we’re ready to move,” Hale said. “Worse comes to worse, we’ll send a radio beam to Earth, see if they can—”

“Sir, got something.” Egan waved to Hale from a satellite dish stuck in the dirt. “Distress beacon on the search-and-rescue freq.”

“SAR freqs are radio spectrum. Are you sure?” Hale asked.

Egan’s face fell. “Yes, sir, I’m sure. Coming from an escape pod, telemetry says it’s off the
Scipio
.”

“Got it.” Niles held his rifle steady and pointed to the sky. “Sending.”

A pic of a corvette came on Hale’s visor. A tear in the hull ran across the rail gun; one vane was bent and misshapen. The ship lolled on its side, trailing debris.

“That looks like the
Scipio,
” Hale said. “I wonder why we’re getting a life pod hit off it and not the ship’s distress signal.”

“Hold on.” Egan touched the side of his helmet. “Getting another transmission off the beacon…dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot—SOS. There’s someone up there, sir.”

“Doubt they can come pick us up,” Cortaro said.

“You ever serve on a corvette?” Hale asked Cortaro. “How bad does the
Scipio
look?”

“Did a few Luna jumps off one. Didn’t get a real good look around, but you look at her on the infrared spectrum and her battery stacks are still hot. Ship could still have power,” Cortaro said.

“And atmo in her tanks,” Hale said. He looked at Abaddon. “If there were Xaros inside that thing, they would have come out to finish off whoever’s sending out the distress call. Egan.”

“Sir?” Egan looked up from his gauntlet.

“Xaros drones can break out of gravity wells much stronger than Pluto’s. You think that sled can get us up to the
Scipio
?”

“Only one way to find out,” Egan said.

Of all the things Stacey regretted about her life before the Xaros invasion, not learning to be a better public speaker was at the top of the list. She wished her grandfather, Marc Ibarra, the world’s richest man and the one who’d engineered Stacey’s birth to serve as humanity’s ambassador to the races united against the Xaros, had encouraged her to practice giving speeches—or done anything to teach her to deal with the crippling onset of anxiety that came before every one of these meetings.

The bastard knew I would end up here. Why didn’t he send me to Model United Nations or Toastmasters instead of astronomy camp?
she thought.

She paced back and forth on the small pod used by Bastion’s ambassadors for their full meetings. It took five steps to get from one side of the dome-shaped craft to the other and Stacey pinged from side to side so fast the turns were making her slightly dizzy.

Pa’lon shared the pod with her, the Dotok ambassador’s eyes watching her go from side to side. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, rocking back and forth on his heels slightly.

“Do all humans act this way before public events?” he asked.

“You want to go back to your own pod? You can.” Stacey shook her hands from side to side then patted her cheeks.

“You’ve been an ambassador for many years now. Perhaps the topic of discussion is causing this…behavior,” Pa’lon said.

“Ambassador Ibarra engages in this routine before every Congress, even during sessions where she is not scheduled to speak,” said Chuck, Stacey’s AI assistant, from a speaker on the control panel. “Variations include self-talk, snapping fingers, unexpected flatulence—”

“Thank you!” Stacey shouted. “Thank you for all that unnecessary information, Chuck. That happens one time—”

“Eight.”

“—one time and it gets filed in some gigantic behavioral database.” Her face flushed red and she looked away from Pa’lon.

“I can make the request to Congress,” Pa’lon said. “My species is in as much danger as yours.”

“No, this is my job. I will get Bastion to send their fleets to help defend Earth. I failed miserably when the Toth came knocking. I’m not going to screw this up again.” Stacey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My bargaining position is significantly better this time around.”

“I wouldn’t go there, Stacey. There are already too many ambassadors afraid of what humanity could do with what Bastion’s provided: the procedural generation technology for new soldiers, the omnium reactor, the Crucible. We will win more support by being magnanimous, thankful.”

“Earth has lost billions of lives to Bastion’s plans. Don’t think we’re going to let the Xaros steamroll us just because it’s convenient for some race that’s never seen the business end of a disintegration beam.” Stacey set her face and threw back her shoulders. “Chuck? We ready?”

“The final ambassador is in place,” Chuck said. “The Vishrakath ambassador, Wexil, has petitioned to address the council before the vote.”

“Of course he has,” Stacey said.

Wexil had swayed Bastion away from supporting Earth when the Toth attacked, offering the reptilian aliens the proccie technology and the lion’s share of humanity. Wexil’s plan would have had Earth repopulated with more “compliant” humans from replacement proccie tubes to serve the Alliance. Relations between Stacey and Wexil had reached a nadir soon after she learned of this plan, and they had not improved.

The dark covering on the pod’s dome rolled aside. A gigantic stone pillar with a flat top large enough for a football field was in the center of the grand Congress. Hundreds of ambassador pods surrounded the pillar, all floating on an even plane.

A giant disembodied head appeared over the pillar: one of the Qa’Resh appeared as a middle-aged woman with a long braid of hair. “She” was really one of the giant crystalline entities that made up the Qa’Resh; that Stacey had seen their true form put her in a very exclusive club on Bastion. The Alliance’s hosts and nominal leaders were notoriously shy and paranoid, especially after the Toth killed one of their number in a kidnapping attempt many years before Stacey arrived in the station.

“Members of the Alliance,” the Qa’Resh said, “the Xaros are at the gates of a member world. Earth, which holds our only Crucible jump gate, is under threat. Ambassador Ibarra and Pa’lon have petitioned for military aid. It is time to decide.”

A pod rose from the other side of the pillar. Stacey felt anger swell in her chest as Wexil came level to the Qa’Resh’s pillar. Few things helped Stacey focus during public forums, but one was her hatred for that man.

“To our hosts.” Wexil bowed to the Qa’Resh. He looked like a patrician man in his late forties with slick black hair. Stacey did not know what the Vishrakath really looked like; Wexil hid behind the human projection Bastion kept around him at all times. Every ambassador looked human to Stacey, just as she resembled the races of each ambassador when they saw her—all in the name of cohesion and communication, according to Chuck.

“Ambassadors.” Wexil’s pod spun around and he held his hand to the side. “Earth and the Dotok are right to ask for our aid. They are under threat and have done much to aid our efforts against the Xaros.” He looked at Stacey and gave her a slight nod. “But expending resources to save that planet is no longer in our best interests.”

Stacey’s hand snapped out to activate her pod’s speakers. Pa’lon caught her by the wrist and shook his head.

“Let him finish. We’re in control. Let’s act like it,” he said.

Stacey jerked her hand away.

“We now have the means, thanks to our arrangement with the being known as Malal, to create our own Crucible jump gates. Once Malal finishes constructing his codex, we can access the entire Xaros network and strike at the heart of their leadership, this Apex of theirs.

“We have the path to victory beneath our feet, but defending Earth would be a mistake.” Murmurs spread through the ambassadors. Wexil raised a hand and a hologram of Abaddon appeared over the plateau. “This is what the Xaros sent to destroy Earth. A drone mass on par with the largest maniple ever to attack a world. The Xaros struck out from their gate around a nearby star and reached the Earth in a few years. A few years. If we commit lives and ships to stopping this attack, the Xaros will return again and in even greater numbers.

“I will mention that the Xaros’ arrival is earlier than the estimates we made when the decision to save humanity was made. A human ship, the
Breitenfeld
, against this council’s decision, went to the planet Takeni and there the Xaros saw that ship and then they knew—they knew—that something had gone awry on Earth. Our finely laid plans were ruined because of an impulsive human captain that could not see beyond the impact of his actions.”

Pa’lon smashed his palm against the broadcast button. Their pod shot into the air and came level with Wexil’s.

“That decision saved the last of the Dotok species, you vile bit of—” Stacey slapped Pa’lon’s hand away from the button before he could say more.

“Way to be magnanimous, Pa’lon, good job,” Stacey said.

“The Crucible near Earth is compromised,” Wexil said. “We have learned much from it, achieved great technological strides from its use, but now it is time to abandon it and Earth. With Malal, we can build another Crucible deep within Bastion space, far removed from the threat of the Xaros. We can take our time to carefully design a fleet to defeat the Xaros leadership and shore up defenses around that device.

“We cannot throw resources at defending Earth, not when the planet’s doom is assured when the third wave of the Xaros arrive. I will remind you all what happened to Jelben’s Star and the great defeat we suffered there,” Wexil said.

“What’s he talking about?” Stacey asked.

“Ancient history, one of the first attempts to fight the Xaros when they first arrived. A group of five species in a close star cluster combined their fleets at Jelben. Beat a small force of Xaros that arrived, then the Alliance sent every ship they could build and crew to beat the second wave. They kept up the same pattern for the next two hundred years, kept the crews in suspended animation and bled the planets white to fight the third wave. Third wave was…trillions of drones. Swept the fleet aside like it was nothing and wiped out the species that were in that alliance. Rest of the galaxy took a dim view of going toe to toe with the Xaros after that.”

“I propose an amendment to the motion before us,” Wexil said. “The humans and Dotok evacuate what they can to a member world and aid in the construction of a new jump gate. They scuttle their Crucible and let us trade space for time and confront the Xaros in a more deliberate fashion.

“How much do you want to bet that new jump gate will be well within Vishrakath space?” Stacey asked.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Pa’lon said.

Text for Wexil’s motion came up on the dome wall.

Stacey cleared her throat and hit the broadcast button.

“To my fellow ambassadors.” Stacey felt butterflies in her stomach as she flicked a button and brought her pod higher than Wexil’s. “Earth is under siege. We did not join this Alliance to be shunted aside when it proved convenient for other members. We joined to fight, to beat the Xaros with
your
aid and fight beside you and save
your
worlds when the time came. Xaros maniples are a few years away from the Ruhaald and Naroosha Collective. Will this body decide to let them slip beneath the Xaros tide too? Will Wexil argue that your race should be left to their own devices for the greater good as well? When will we stop retreating and finally take a stand against the enemy?

“Defend Earth. You’ve all seen the projections from the data gathered from Malal’s vault. The Crucible on Earth can be completed within months. Then we can strike the Apex while it is still beyond our galaxy. If we wait too long, the whole of the Xaros leadership will arrive and we will be forced to deal with who knows how many Masters instead of the General that’s been encountered. The time to turn this war around is now.

“I know I’m the newest ambassador here. I haven’t been around for centuries to watch the slow erosion of free space back to this little corner of the galaxy. I saw what the Xaros did to my world firsthand and I am not willing to let that happen to another planet if I can help it.”

Stacey paused. She looked over the ambassadors and saw many scrutinizing Wexil’s proposal.

I’m not going to fail again. I won’t let them throw us under the bus like they did with the Toth,
she thought.

“Let me make something clear,” she said. “If the Alliance does not send ships to defend Earth, we will not part with Malal.” There was a pause before the implication of what she said registered with the ambassadors. “You will not make your own Crucibles or access the Xaros network without Malal. If you do not help us now…Earth will withdraw from the Alliance and you will be back where you started before that probe ever contacted my grandfather.”

Stacey stepped back and the pod sank slowly to become level with the rest of the Congress. Hundreds of vid screens popped up on the inside of the dome. Ambassadors attempted to speak directly to Stacey, stepping over themselves with anger, support and bewilderment.

A dark covering swept over the dome, isolating Stacey and Pa’lon.

“That could have gone better,” Pa’lon said.

“It’s time to play hardball, Pa’lon,” she said.

The long-haired Qa’Resh woman appeared against the dome.

“There is disquiet.” The Qa’Resh looked at the two ambassadors, her face emotionless.

“You don’t say,” Stacey said, shrugging slightly. “The decision comes from Earth. We’re not going to stuff our ships full of civilians and scurry off to another planet. Eventually, we will run out of places to hide. Humanity was born on Earth. We will die there.”

The Qa’Resh glanced at Pa’lon and then focused on Stacey and said, “We gave your species Terra Nova. A sanctuary world safe from the Xaros. Your species will survive there.”

“What’s she saying?” Pa’lon asked. “Her lips are moving but there’s no sound.”

“You didn’t hear that?” Stacey frowned.

“Now you’re not making any sound,” Pa’lon said.

“You did not share Terra Nova with the Dotok,” the Qa’Resh said. “Your species has few friends in the Alliance. We do not wish to see you lose another.”

“You gave us Terra Nova to survive the Toth, out of guilt for letting us fight those monsters on our own. We would have left the Alliance without that show of good faith from you, the Qa’Resh. We trust you, the Dotok, and the Karigole. Don’t expect us to bleed for anyone else unless they prove they’re in the fight with us.”

The Qa’Resh cocked her head slightly.

“They are ready for the vote,” she said and vanished.

“What’s going on? What was that all about?” Pa’lon asked.

“The system’s overloading with people screaming at me,” Stacey said. “She had to cut your audio to get through to me. The Qa’Resh wanted confirmation that I really would leave the Alliance. I told them as much. And it’s time to vote.”

“That’s suspiciously fast,” Pa’lon said. “Normally there would be hours between an amendment like Wexil’s and a vote.”