The Battle of the Void (The Ember War Saga Book 6) (21 page)

Standing watch aboard Titan Station was a balance between controlled chaos and mind-numbing boredom. The fleet’s rapid expansion meant more and more void traffic in and around Earth, activity that waned and ebbed with the workday in Phoenix. With Phoenix local time still in the wee hours of the morning, space traffic was minimal. Those manning the control center took the time to prep for the approaching morning rush.

Colonel Mitchell took a last sip of coffee, sniffing the deep aroma of pure Kona beans brewed to perfection. Before the Xaros invasion, Kona coffee was highly prized by connoisseurs the world over. Which led to sky-high prices beyond what Mitchell could afford, or more than his wife would let him spend on something she’d considered frivolous.

He looked at the grounds stuck to the bottom of his mug, remembering the first morning of his honeymoon with his now dead wife. They’d ordered room service from their hotel on the Las Vegas strip and shared a pot of Kona.

Mitchell could afford his old vice with the Ibarra Corporation’s presence on Hawaii and new robotic farms across the islands, making Kona plentiful. He lost his wife in the invasion, but the smell of Kona always brought back fond memories of her.

“Berthing requests for next week.” His assistant passed him a tablet full of spreadsheets.

Mitchell frowned at the list, catching a half-dozen conflicts in seconds.

“When will the Luna yards be up and running? Or Mars? Or what they’re building out in the Lagrange Point? What’re they calling it?” Mitchell took a stylus from his breast pocket and highlighted requests for later attention.

“Just the star fort, for now,” the assistant said. “I think Ibarra has a contest going for a name.”

“Anything but the Alamo,” Mitchell muttered.

A siren blared from the ceiling as red lights flashed across the bridge.

“The Crucible has a gate request,” a crewman said.

“The
Breitenfeld?
” Mitchell asked.

“Can’t be, the mass displacement coming through the wormhole is too large for the
Breitenfeld
.” His assistant looked over the crewman’s shoulder and read off the screens.

Mitchell flipped the safety catch off the system-wide kill switch and pressed his other hand against a biometric reader. The kill switch went green. He could shut down every computer in the solar system with the press of that button.

“The
Breit
bringing home another stray?” Mitchell asked. “They came in over mass with that Dotok ship.”

“Just one ship…other end of the wormhole reads as coming from just outside Barnard’s Star. It has to be the
Midway
, but it isn’t broadcasting any of her codes,” his assistant said.

Mitchell opened a channel straight to Ibarra.

“Crucible, this is Titan watch. Can you shut down the wormhole? This doesn’t feel right,” Mitchell said.

“Can’t. Point of origin is too close for Jimmy to counteract,”
Ibarra said.

“Then I’m declaring a code black. God help us.” Mitchell took in a deep breath then shouted, “Prep for analogue!”

He looked at the button beneath his fingertips then pressed it.

A coded transmission emanated from Titan Station. Every single computer, robot and automated system it touched went into immediate shutdown as their CPUs shut down and power lines detached from batteries. Earth shut down within minutes; the transmission reached through the rest of the solar system at the speed of light.

The command center’s crew swapped out their now useless touch screens for control panels boasting keys and dials.

“The wormhole is collapsing,” his assistant said.

Mitchell slid a helmet over his head and connected to the life-support systems in his chair.

“Battle stations! Get the guns manned and get us to zero atmo ASAP,” Mitchell said. Once he was sure his orders were running through the station, he looked to the Crucible.

The
Midway
hung in the center of the Crucible, her hull burnt black, flight deck bays shut.

“Hail them,” Mitchell said.

“Nothing,” his comms officer said.

“Launch our alert fighters. Tell Hawaii, Luna, Okinawa, everybody to scramble whatever they’ve got,” Mitchell said.

“Sir, it’s the
Midway
,” his assistant said. “It looks badly damaged. What about search and rescue?”

“Then let’s hope I’m just being overly paranoid. Do it. Now.”

“She’s breaking up!” a crewman shouted.

Holes opened across the
Midway
’s
hull. Mitchell switched a screen to one of the station’s telescope cameras and got a closer look at the ship. Her hull pulled apart into black lumps, which spun into oblong shapes…and grew stalks.

Blood drained from Mitchell’s face.

“Oh no.”

****

Ibarra watched a holo of the
Midway
, trying to estimate just how many drones were packed into the Eighth Fleet’s flagship.

“The drones…they replaced
Midway
’s aegis armor with drones,” Ibarra said. “The omnium derivative we used for the armor is close enough to the drones’ makeup that we didn’t even notice when they were coming through.”

+Can we deconstruct the Xaros trick after we’ve defeated them?+ the probe asked.

“I will now remind you that we have no weapons on the Crucible.” Ibarra called up a holo showing local space. “I’m so stupid. We should have prepared for this.”

+The Xaros are not known to use jump engines. There was no precedent for this.+

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better!” Ibarra zoomed the holo out and felt a glimmer of hope when he found a warship on the far side of the moon. “Jimmy, drones are coming for this command center, aren’t they?”

+Correct. Two hundred ninety-five are en route with roughly half of newly formed—+

“Turn on the doughboy tanks in nodes two and three. Full production,” Ibarra said.

+This will terminate all procedural humans still in the tubes. Are you sure?+

“Those drones get in here and they’re dead anyway. Do it.”

The doors to the command center opened. Steuben, half-dressed in combat armor, stormed into the room with his blade in hand, Lafayette following close behind.

“Ah, now we’ve got good news and bad news,” Ibarra said. “The bad news is that we’re about to be neck-deep in drones.”

“What is your good news?” Steuben asked.

“You two are here.”

****

Flight Leader Bar’en jumped off a catwalk and grabbed onto a pole the auto-lifters used to move cargo through the main flight bay on the
Vorpal
. He slid halfway down and leaped off. He swung his feet in a lazy somersault and kicked out, furthering his arc. The lower gravity on the flight deck made it easier to get the fighters in the air faster, and made acrobatic routines look easier than usual.

Bar’en slammed his helmet on and landed just shy of his fighter. He jumped into the cockpit, hands racing through pre-flight checks before he sank into the seat.

“Captain Go’ral, I could use an update,” Bar’en said.

“A Xaros ship came through the Crucible. We are maneuvering around Luna at best speed, but you and your squadron can reach them first. Our hosts ask that we engage the enemy at the Crucible first, then ‘shoot anything else that’s Xaros’ after that,”
the ship’s master said through his helmet comms.

“And why did our esteemed hosts let a Xaros ship through the Crucible?” Bar’en asked as his canopy closed around him. Eight more fighters with the rest of the alert pilots readied for battle.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant. Also, may I remind you of the three previous reprimands you received for excessive criticism of their military capabilities and competence?”

“I only get those when the humans accidentally hear what I have to say.” Bar’en charged up his weapon systems. As much as he derided Earth’s pilots, their gauss weapons were a step above Dotok, and they weren’t averse to sharing the technology.

“Prepare to launch.”

As the launch bay doors opened, the dull gray of Earth’s moon passed beneath the
Vorpal
as she came around the satellite. A crewman stood at the edge of the flight deck and raised two flags over his head.

Titan Station came into view, flack batteries firing into the void. Tendrils of flame reached out of hull breaches, feeding on the atmosphere bleeding from the hull. Flashes of exploding fighters and gauss weapons stretched a rough line from the Titan to Ceres as Earth’s new moon swept into view.

“Getting some video in…that’s their
Midway
,” one of his pilots said. “What’s happening to it?”

Bar’en turned on a screen on the side of his cockpit. Nearly half the carrier’s hull was stripped away and more peeled from the faux-armor and formed into drones. Bar’en checked his load out: he had two anti-ship rockets slung beneath his fighter.

“It’s a Xaros construct. Engage it as such. Odd numbers to kill strikes, evens fly cover. Switch for second pass. Don’t let there be a third,” Bar’en said.

The crewman at the front of the flight line lowered a flag, signaling that their launch was imminent.

“The humans saved us from Takeni. Shared their home with us. Now we earn our place.” Bar’en cycled power to his engines.

The crewman dropped the second flag then fell face-first to the deck.

Bar’en brought his fighter a few feet into the air and shot out the hangar, directly over the prone crewman. There was talk about ending the tradition of assigning the youngest sailor to flag duty, talk Bar’en wouldn’t stomach. Some things were just meant to be.

He pushed his engines to their limits, eyes darting from his control panel to the approaching Crucible. The new capacitors and battery stacks held up as the fighter rumbled beneath him. Acceleration pressed him against his seat and a chill swept over his face as blood squeezed out of the fleshy parts of his nose and cheeks.

His blunted beak clicked as he saw the first drone flitting through the Crucible’s giant thorns.

“Claws out, take what you can on the pass. Stay on me,” Bar’en said. He cut his afterburners and veered toward a handful of drones cutting into one of the many control nodes spread through the thorns. He let off a burst, shattering a drone. His pilots wiped out the rest a moment later, leaving a scar of gauss bullets across the dome.

“The imperfection was mine,” one of the newer pilots said.

“You think the ghost haunting the place will care that you scratched the paint?” another asked.

Bar’en banked over a thorn and flew into the inner section of the Crucible. The Xaros peeled away from the
Midway
’s fore sections, exposing bare frames and open decks to the void. Bodies of sailors escaped from the ship. Bar’en brushed his knuckles against the prayer beads attached to his chest, an old superstition to ward off the attention of the dead.

“Odds, ready rockets, target the aft armor plates.” Bar’en pressed his thumb against the missile release. A pair of drones streaked past him and he weaved up and down, dodging laser fire.

“Loose!” He clicked the release twice and his fighter surged forward, free of the rocket’s mass. He pulled his Eagle into a climb, heading straight for the thorns.

“Three solid hits…no chain kill, localized damage, but they’ve stopped separating,” one of the even-numbered pilots said.

“Follow me. Evens, prep your strike.” Bar’en looped around the outer edge of the Crucible and rolled his fighter over. Half his pilots jumped out ahead of him, eager to make their attack. One of the thorns cracked apart as they flew over the inner edge, round craters blown out of the surface that might have come from Dotok rockets.

“This is Marc Ibarra aboard the Crucible to whoever just blew up my jump gate. Stop it.”

“The beggar does not bite the coin tossed into his bowl,” Bar’en said.

“Keep shooting the drones. Just be more careful about it!”
Ibarra yelled so loud Bar’en’s ears rang.

Rockets leapt from the leading fighters. Xaros fighters managed to take down a pair before the rest slammed home. Compounded drones burned away as if an inferno sprang from the rocket strikes.

“Well done,” Bar’en said. “Now we finish off the rest…and try not to shoot the Crucible.”

Steuben leaned against a metal weapons rack and pushed. The wheels weaved through the sandy floor and veered to the side. Steuben let off a stream of Karigole curses that had no real translation into English and pushed again.

“Steuben.” Lafayette ran up the corridor and tossed an aegis reinforced armored jacket to Steuben. The cyborg Karigole had two gauss rifles attached to his back. “I’ll get this.”

Lafayette gripped the side of the rack and pushed it ahead, barely breaking his stride as Steuben donned the armor.

“Show off,” Steuben muttered.

“The door, if you please.”

Steuben ran ahead, snatching a rifle off Lafayette’s back as he passed, and tapped a code into the keypad bolted onto the basalt-colored doorway. The doorway opened from a center seam, tiny bits collapsing to the side like a crumbling sand castle.

Inside, dozens of large cylinders held doughboys. Mechanical arms tipped with tiny needles, attached to tubes leading to swirling vats of liquid, worked over each soldier, building them in a flurry of additive materials.

A shiver went down Steuben’s back. The Karigole believed that life was too sacred to mimic and seeing the doughboys under construction filled him with revulsion. Despite his personal feelings, he’d take any help he could get against the Xaros cutting their way into the Crucible.

Lafayette rolled the weapons rack into the middle of the room and locked the wheels. His eyes narrowed in concentration.

“What?” Steuben asked.

“Ibarra?” Lafayette cocked his head to the ceiling. “These doughboys are programmed to see Steuben and I as friends, correct?”

“Yes, of course…” Ibarra’s voice echoed around them. “Probably. Let me double-check.”

The glass shell of a cylinder rotated aside and the newborn doughboy within opened his eyes.

“Ibarra?” Steuben clicked off the safety of his gauss rifle with a claw-tipped finger. The doughboys were programmed to defend humans at all costs. Steuben’s first encounter with a doughboy, whom he was trying to rescue from kidnappers, ended in violence for no other reason than Steuben was nonhuman. Having to fight a room full of doughboys was not going to help defend the Crucible.

“You’re good. New subroutines added last week to all units,” Ibarra said. “Now, if you’re done being all paranoid, there are hull breaches in corridors three and twelve. I’ll point the way.”

A doughboy stepped out of the construction cylinder wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, his skin glistening from the last brush of the needles.

Steuben tossed him a rifle. The doughboy pulled back the charging handle, saw the gauss dart in the chamber, closed the bolt and hefted the weapon against his shoulder.

“Purpose?” he asked.

“The Xaros are here,” Steuben said. “Follow me and fight.”

“Fight.” The doughboy nodded his head.

****

Steuben ran down a corridor, his rifle swinging from side to side in tune with his stride. Doughboys struggled to keep up, their heavy footfalls echoing off the walls.

The end of the corridor broke away from the junction and lifted up. It passed through the thick hull and opened to the void. Steuben saw drones and Dotok fighters battling over the connected thorns. The opening passed over another hull section.

“Why can’t I feel it moving?” Steuben asked. He couldn’t wait to get off this alien place; he never understood why Lafayette liked it so much.

The corridor opened up to a stadium-sized control node. Crates of shining omnium were stacked high on one side of a tall building, plates of aegis armor awaiting delivery on the other. Xaros clung to the side of the building, cutting into it slowly but surely.

“Defend the omnium reactor at all costs,” Steuben said. He aimed down the rifle’s iron sights and blew a drone off the top of the reactor housing. He ran into the reactor chamber and took cover behind slabs of aegis plates.

Doughboys fired on the drones, advancing slowly into the chamber. Soldiers armed with nothing but pneumatic hammers charged ahead, war cries bellowing from their lips. Steuben loaded a quadrium shell into his rifle.

Drones lifted off the reactor housing and raked their beams across the firing doughboys. They evaporated into red mist with the briefest touch of the drones’ weapons. The soldiers kept up disciplined fire, destroying several drones before those armed with rifles were reduced to a few.

Steuben’s rifle beeped with a full charge. He swung it over the top of the armor pile and fired on a pack of drones. Drones rained down from the sky as the q-shell knocked them off-line. They fell, right to the eager group of hammer-wielding soldiers that the drones had ignored.

Primitive soldiers armed with melee weapons were of little threat to the drones while they were airborne. Once forced to the ground, the matter was different. 

Doughboys tore into the drones, ripping them apart with an atavistic fury that Steuben had no choice but to admire. The Karigole picked up a weapon coated in the dusty remains of a soldier and tossed it to a doughboy holding a broken hammer.

“Get rifles! Watch the skies!” Steuben pointed to a breach in the dome and shot at a drone squeezing through. The soldiers took up arms left by the fallen. Those without rifles manhandled plates of aegis armor into crude bunkers.

Steuben tapped a mic on his throat. “Ibarra, omnium reactor is secure, for now. You either send me more ammo and soldiers or cut off the Xaros reinforcements to keep it that way.”

“Lafayette just saved my bacon in the command center. More doughboys are coming off the line. I’ll see what I can do for you,”
Ibarra said.

Steuben took careful aim at a drone zooming across the sky and blew it in half. A heavy hand slapped him on the back, fouling his aim on the next target.

“Good shot, ugly!” a doughboy shouted.

“Who’re you calling ugly?” Steuben shook his head and aimed again.