The Xaros Reckoning (The Ember War Saga Book 9), Page 2

  “Sell. That kid’s never missed a chance to make a buck. I tell you what, sir, I used to finish off a half-dozen of these at a time after training maneuvers out near Twenty-Nine Palms. Nothing like these after weeks in the sun and sand eating tube mush and drinking my own purified piss. I’ve got a couple for Yarrow too. You think he’ll like them?”

  “What’s not to like?” Hale squeezed the empty wrapper into a ball and tossed it into the bag. He looked at the pile of burgers for a second, then took out another one.

  “I don’t think he’s ever had this before—not really, since he’s a proccie. You think Ibarra put the memory of what these taste like into his head?”

  “Given the line we almost had to stand in to get these, I’d say all the proccies share some core memories,” Hale said.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, sir, but the next time we’re in an hour-long line and someone recognizes you from that movie and offers to let you cut to the front, just take the opportunity.”

  “I ended up signing autographs for twenty minutes while you placed the order. This being-famous stuff will take some getting used to.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping you from screwing up too bad, but I’m not trained to navigate the fame business. You’ll be on your own once this war’s over.” Cortaro gave his stomach a pat.

  Hale looked back across the tarmac. Yarrow had Lilith and his daughter, Mary, in an embrace. The captain tapped his fingertips against his lap.

  “You thinking about leaving him behind?” Cortaro asked.

  “No!” Hale snapped. “No…just because he’s the only one on the Breitenfeld with a family. The only one with a ch—” Hale shut his mouth.

  “With a child. I get it, sir. My wife and kids are with God.” Cortaro crossed himself. “That’s how it is now. How it is for everyone since the Xaros came. But I look over there and I see hope for what we could have in the future. People having families again. It sucks having to take him away from that. Poor Yarrow’s got to explain that he’ll be back soon and in one piece.”

  “That’s not a promise he or I can keep,” Hale said. “Best way we can guarantee that little family will continue is to transfer him dirt side. I can’t do that—won’t be fair to the rest of the team. Wait…did he ask for that?”

  “No, sir, he knows his duty. He’s been with us since Anthalas, lockstep through having that Malal devil in his head, finding out he’s a proccie and every mess since then. Esprit de corps is a strong bond, but family is stronger. Yarrow understands that what we’re doing ultimately keeps his family safe. I know that feeling he’s got right now. It’s like a cold stone in his gut. Never goes away until you get back home again.”

  Hale crossed his arms over his chest. “This next mission is more dangerous than anything we’ve done before. We leave him back and maybe there’s one less widow. One less child that never had the chance to be raised by her father.”

  “So you’re considering it?”

  Hale set one ankle atop another. “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s alright, sir. Means we’re more to you than just warm bodies to be thrown into the breach. I knew those captain’s bars wouldn’t ruin you. You’re in a shitty position. Take him back with us and what will that mean for his family? Leave him behind and what’ll that mean for us if we lose our best corpsman? That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

  “I hate leaving people behind, no matter the situation. Torni. Rohen. I hate losing Marines too…”

  “You can do everything right and still get killed. That’s just war, sir. Here he comes.”

  Yarrow walked toward the Mule, a slight limp to his step. Hale heard a little girl sobbing.

  “I hate this part,” Hale said quietly.

  “We all do. Maybe peace will break out once this is over and this’ll be the last time we have to do this.” Cortaro banged a fist against the bulkhead. The Mule’s engines whined to life a few seconds later.

  Yarrow came up the ramp and sat across from Hale. The corpsman wiped a sleeve across his eyes.

  “Yarrow,” Hale said over the rising engines. He waited until the young Marine looked up at him. “I’m going to bring you home, understand?”

  A smile spread across Yarrow’s face. “Sir, in case you haven’t been keeping score, I’m normally the one that has to bring you home.”

  He looked back across the tarmac to his family as the ramp closed.

  “Hey, catch.” Cortaro took a burger out of the bag and tossed it to Yarrow.

  Chapter 3

  Caas and Ar’ri walked down a maintenance hallway buried beneath Mount Olympus. Small mounds of red sand were piled in the corners and in the wrought cracks of the rock walls. The two Dotok stopped in front of a door tall enough for a suit of armor. Caas matched the number on the door to a piece of paper in her hand.

  “This is it,” she said. “You ready?”

  “I still don’t understand this human ritual. We recited the oath of service when we joined the Home Guard. I don’t know why we have to do…whatever is on the other side of that door. We fought the Ruhaald with Elias and Bodel. Aren’t we Iron Hearts already?”

  “We’re Iron Hearts when they say we’re Iron Hearts. The humans keep calling us ‘slick sleeves’ because we haven’t been accepted into a team. This is what we have to do.” Caas straightened her overalls and smoothed down her quills.

  “I’m going first.” She reached up to knock on the door but Ar’ri grabbed her sleeve.

  “I’m bigger. I’m going first.”

  “I’m older and you lost the coin flip. Don’t make me punch you before we go in there.”

  “Fine. Go.” Ar’ri clicked his beak. “Mom and Dad would be proud. Couple low listers like us fighting in the best fighting unit the humans have.”

  Caas rapped her fist against the door three times. A metal slot slid aside, and a pair of blue eyes looked at her. One half of the man’s face was slack, the effects of a stroke Bodel suffered years earlier on Takeni when he was removed from his armor after being badly wounded.

  “Who goes there?”

  “Caas Val Howsa of the Dotok—” The slot slammed shut.

  “That’s not what they told us to say.” Ar’ri shook his head.

  “Shut up.” Caas knocked again.

  The slot opened again.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  The door opened inward, just enough for Caas to step inside.

  Suits of armor formed a cordon leading to a table covered in a thick burgundy cloth. Ten soldiers stood in front of the suits on either side, all humans wearing simple overalls with different patches on their shoulders. One suit of armor knelt on one knee next to the table, Elias.

  Colonel Carius, the leader of the Armor Corps, stepped up behind the table and lifted a sword with a straight guard and rounded pommel emblazoned with an iron cross. He leveled the tip at Caas.

  “Come forward!” Carius bellowed. The door shut behind them.

  Bodel walked slowly, leaning heavily on a cane for support. They passed the second pair of soldiers when a woman with a scarred face stepped in front of Caas.

  “This one is unworthy,” she said. “I do not know her deeds.”

  “I am Caas—” A backhand slapped the Dotok across the face and staggered her back a step.

  The soldier pointed a bloody hand, cut against Caas’ beak, at Caas.

  “No, you’re not. I still do not know your deeds.”

  Caas’ face stung, but she fought back anger.

  “I fought the Xaros on Mars. I defended Phoenix from the drones. I fought beside the Iron Hearts against the aliens’ commander. I spilled Ruhaald blood to save soldiers and doughboys under siege. I—”

  “You?” A Hussar stepped away from his armor, a sword with a curved tip hanging from his belt. “All I see is weakness.”

  Caas was frozen, unsure how to respond. A nudge from Bodel sent her walking toward the next challenger.

 
“This is not a place for lies,” he said. “I will see proof for myself, or you will pay a price.”

  Soldiers grabbed her by the arms and forced her to her knees. She struggled briefly until Bodel’s hand touched the base of her neck. The Hussar drew his sword with the hiss of metal on metal and set the blade against the other side of her neck. The blade was honed to a razor’s edge and inches from her exposed flesh.

  Bodel touched the back of her head and pushed her face toward the ground. She felt fingers against the neural-plugs in the base of her skull, where she connected to her armor, then the blade at her neck flicked away.

  “She has given her body to the Corps,” the Hussar said. “She may be worthy.” The grasping hands released her and she continued toward Carius and Elias.

  “Who is the petitioner?” the colonel asked Elias.

  “She still does not know.”

  “Does she know why she fights?” Carius asked Caas.

  “I was weak,” Caas said, “just a child when the Xaros came to Takeni. My mother, my father, they died so that my brother and I could get away. Marines saved us, but it was armor that protected us. We were worthless orphans but you saw us as…something worth protecting. Earth took us in, and we knew the Xaros would come back. I wanted to fight, to save my people, my new home. If I was going to fight, then I would wield the strongest weapon there is.” She thrust a finger at Elias.

  “Will you have her?” Carius asked Elias.

  “I do not know who she is,” Elias said.

  “I am—” She caught herself when Bodel clenched his fist out of the corner of her eye. Several long seconds passed as Caas struggled with what to say next.

  “Take her away,” Carius shook his head.

  Bodel grabbed her with surprising strength, and another soldier took her by the other arm and they led her away from the table.

  “No! I’m not leaving like this.” Caas struggled until the two soldiers pulled her off her feet and dragged her toward the entrance. “I know who I am—let me go! I am armor like you. I am armor!”

  Caas fell to the ground.

  “I heard something,” Elias said. “Maybe she does know.”

  She got up and stalked toward the table.

  “I…am…armor!”

  Applause broke out from the soldiers behind her. They stepped away from their suits and clustered around her, smiles across their once taciturn faces.

  “Will you have her?” Carius asked Elias.

  “She is an Iron Heart,” Elias said.

  Carius reached into a pocket and pulled out a small metal pin, a gray heart with two tiny brass spikes on the back.

  “This belonged to another soldier,” Carius said. “One who earned her place beneath Mount Olympus and at the right hand of God. Will you take it?”

  “Kallen?” Caas asked.

  Elias nodded his head.

  “I will honor her memory and her deeds,” Caas said.

  Carius stepped around the table and pressed the pin just against the outer layer of her jumpsuit.

  “Sir, what’re you doing?”

  Carius reached back, then slammed a punch against the pin, knocking Caas against the soldiers around her and driving the spikes into her flesh. The pin embedded in her chest stung, and a trickle of blood stained her uniform, but Caas kept her composure.

  “We have an Iron Heart!” Carius thrust his fists into the air.

  Soldiers shook Caas’ hands and offered words of encouragement that were lost in the overwhelming moment. She looked up at Elias, who turned his helm to the side slightly, and gave her a slow nod.

  Chapter 4

  Within the Crucible’s command center, two artificial beings clustered around a holo tank. Stacey Ibarra pressed her hands against the tank’s raised edge and leaned toward the re-creation of the Crucible floating before her. The gargantuan thorns comprising the wormhole gate moved slightly, like an urchin’s spines against a gentle tide.

  The Qa’Resh probe floated over the holo tank, its light an angry red.

  “Are they done yet?” she asked.

  Her grandfather, Marc Ibarra, present in the form of blue and white hologram, reached into the tank and made a quick gesture. The table zoomed to a slight gap in the circumference where a Xaros drone was attached to an unfinished thorn, held fast to the surface by long stalks. The drone’s other stalks spun glowing thread from a cube of omnium into a basalt-colored material, layering it onto the gap a few feet at a time.

  Floating over the drone was a man with no space suit, his knees and hands bent into a lotus position. In the light of the drone’s work that smeared across his swirling surface, it was possible to see he had no face.

  “We don’t want them to finish,” Ibarra said. “We’re not ready. Not yet.”

  “Can they take a break at least?” Stacey tried to raise her hands from the tank but found them frozen against the railing. With the sound of cracking frost, she pulled them away and wiped rime from her forearms and shoulders, shivering against an imaginary cold.

  Ibarra frowned and sent a quick command to the room’s environmental controls to reduce the humidity down to nothing. The bone dry air would be uncomfortable for Shannon, waiting against the outer walls, but he’d send her away soon enough. Ibarra’s body had died decades ago, but his consciousness remained within the Qa’Resh probe that once linked back to Bastion, the Alliance against the Xaros.

  Stacey had returned from Bastion in a body not her own. The simulacrum bodies, as the Qa’Resh called them, were meant to keep Stacey ageless and safe from harm while at the Bastion space station. The Xaros’ sudden attack on the heart of the resistance against their advance across the galaxy had called for a sudden evacuation—and for Stacey learning the truth of her situation.

  Ibarra regretted keeping the truth hidden from his only granddaughter. He’d meant to reveal everything to her once she’d become comfortable with her position as Earth’s ambassador to Bastion. He’d engineered her birth as something a bit more than human to serve as the permanent ambassador. Telling a woman in her early twenties that she’d never have the life she’d envisioned—marriage, children, aging—wasn’t something he thought she could handle.

  Damn me for thinking I was so clever and she so naïve, he thought.

  In her simulacrum body, Stacey looked like a normal human at first glance. Her porcelain-smooth skin, emotionless eyes and neck-length hair that flexed as if made of heavy wire were unnatural compared to Shannon, the fifth re-creation of Ibarra’s longtime associate, hitman and provocateur, standing behind her.

  Stacey had spent years in her simulacrum body on Bastion without being aware of her altered state, but once she’d been taken away by the Qa’Resh during their retreat from the Xaros attack, a particular difference from her flesh-and-blood body had come to the fore. Her body was cold, like the kiss of artic wind against bare flesh. Stacey had refused to set foot on Earth since her return, confiding in Ibarra that she was terrified of being labeled as a freak or a monster.

  Ibarra had promised her that a solution was available, one that he was about to deliver.

  A line of text appeared next to Torni.

  “The new material has to cure,” Ibarra said. “Jimmy can divert his attention to you in a few minutes.”

  “Will Jimmy finally explain why I’ve had to stay like this for days?”

  Static washed over Ibarra’s hologram.

  “The Naroosha badly damaged the Crucible before the Breitenfeld and the Mars fleet blew them all out of space. The self-repair protocols barely kept this place from flying apart. Then you and the Qa’Resh popped up on Jupiter and told us the Xaros are using wormhole technology. That means they could be here, Earth, at the time of their choosing…unless Jimmy and our crystalline friends, the Qa’Resh, keep pumping a quantum distortion field through the Crucible to keep the enemy from opening a portal right over Phoenix.”

  “I spent years like this on Bastion.” Stacey looked to her hands and flexed her finger
s slowly. “The ignorance was bliss, but now I feel like my entire body is one big itch I can’t scratch. I don’t know how Torni does it.”

  “Your situation—unlike hers—has a solution. I have a spot of business to attend to first. Shannon?”

  Shannon stepped away from the outer wall and came down the stairs leading to the holo tank at the bottom of the room’s central recession. She wore a simple work jumpsuit over a thin space suit with an Ibarra Corporation patch on her left shoulder, the standard uniform of civilians assigned to spaceports and logistics efforts across the solar system.

  During their many decades together, Ibarra had seen Shannon shift identities from a diplomat’s faux-spouse to jailer to indigent within less than twenty-four hours. Her ability to slip into whatever role was needed—and her utterly ruthless nature—made her an asset he never wanted to lose. Just by glancing at the uniform she wore, Ibarra could guess most of what she was about to say.

  “Public sentiment against the Ruhaald is still hostile, but not to a degree we can’t manage,” Shannon said. “Knowledge that three of their ships dropped inert nukes on cities is mostly contained.”

  “Mostly?” Ibarra asked.

  “Everyone that had eyes on the nukes has been reassigned elsewhere in the system after a stern warning to keep their mouths shut about how crucial those Ruhaald ‘devices’ are to the war effort. We’re monitoring them for compliance and all but one bought into the cover story of how we’ll reverse engineer the technology. Hence the ‘mostly.’” Shannon swiped her fingers over a forearm screen then flicked her hand at the holo tank. The employee jacket of a balding man in his late forties popped up.

  “James Howlett. Assigned to third munitions command,” Shannon said. “Lost a couple friends on the Stockholm when the Naroosha destroyed it. Has a healthy hatred for the Ruhaald, guilt-by-association sort of thing. Mr. Howlett has pics of the nuke that landed outside Phoenix and sensor logs of the radiation coming off the warhead. The nuke inhibitor field that kept the bomb from going off also futzed with his data, so he’s waiting to break the story until he can explain those errors.”