The Gardens of Nibiru (The Ember War Saga Book 5) (17 page)

“You think…when this is all over, we’ll be done fighting ourselves?”

“I hope. But hope in one hand and crap in the other, see which one fills up first.” Cortaro chuckled at his own joke. “Lilith, I don’t think she likes you anymore. Civilians are like that. Back home, I had some cousins who’re all upset with what I did for a living. Dummies never realized I did it for them. I told them if they didn’t want me fighting the Chinese, they’d better go to Beijing and convince them to stop occupying northern Australia, Korea and Japan. I didn’t get any more Christmas cards from them after that.”

“So what do I do about her?”

“Nothing. She’ll come around on her own or hate you forever. Civilians aren’t Marines. I can’t figure them out sometimes.” Cortaro pointed to the two snipers still in their armor. “They’ve got all our cloak batteries. They can stay out of sight for a couple hours at least.”

Hale fished out a data slate from his robes and looked at the time.

“Nineteen hours until we have to get back to the
Breit
,” Hale said with a sigh. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?”

“That’s why you get paid those big officer bucks, sir.”

****

Lafayette brushed dirt away from a stasis tube and looked at the Karigole woman sleeping within. She had two scars running down the side of her face, not unlike a pair Lafayette once had on his own face from a run-in with one of the dragon wolves on his home planet. He’d given up trying to keep his original features years ago and settled with a neutral prosthetic replacement. It wasn’t as if his brothers in the Centuria would have ever had trouble identifying him.

He attached a line from his gauntlet to the tube’s control panel just over the sleeper’s head and accessed the system. There were thirty adult Karigole in the village, each kept beneath the floors of the many huts. Hacking the programming was easy, but time-consuming.

“You are most astute for your species,” Naama said from the doorway, her hands folded over the slight bulge of her early pregnancy. She stepped aside and Lafayette saw Orozco walk past the doorway, a child hugging each leg and two hanging from his arms as they screeched in delight.

“Fee fi fo fum! I smell the blood of…you don’t know what an Englishman is,” Orozco said as he sauntered past the door.

“That one…seems simpler,” Naama said.

“Sometimes I wonder how humans mastered fire,” Lafayette mumbled.

“That is Teenut,” Naama said as she came closer. “She is a fine poet and an accomplished mathematician. Don’t judge us all by Steuben’s example. We were never a race just of warriors. We had a museum of the most lifelike sculptures. I took all my children there before they were weened and given over to their parents. My favorite was of a great hero looking down at a beast he’d just slain. I’d tell my children—”

“Consider your deeds. For it is not the battle, but the purpose,” Lafayette said.

Naama stepped back. “How do you know that?”

Lafayette put his hands on the side of his helmet, hesitated for a moment, then lifted it off his head. He knew what he looked like—a false visage of polymers meant to mimic his speech and emotions that bled through the neural interface, the exposed metal ligaments and tubes running blood from his brain to his artificial heart. The sound of his augmented voice might sound natural to a human, but to the keen ears of a Karigole, his words would carry a false tone.

“It is me, Mother. Baar’sun,” Lafayette said, using his true name. “I was badly injured but it is me. You would give me
cyynt
root porridge when I’d be good. You made me a—”

“No!” Naama twisted her fingers into a symbol to ward off evil and held her hands over her belly. “You are not Baar’sun. You are an abomination sent to harm this child.” She backed away from Lafayette and made for the door very slowly.

“No. No…it is me beneath all this. I swear it.” Lafayette took a step toward her. “I thought you were lost with the rest. That you’re here must be providence, a gift from our ancestors.”

She spat in the dirt and ran from the hut. Lafayette heard her shouting to the children and the young ones scampered away from Orozco.

Lafayette dropped his helmet into the dirt and went to his knees. His reflection didn’t waver, the prosthetic unable to match what he felt inside.

“What was that all about?” Orozco asked as he came in. “I thought you…oh, I get it.”

The big Marine came over and crouched down beside him.

“You’re not all right, are you?”

Lafayette shook his head.

“C’mere.” Orozco wrapped his big arms around Lafayette’s slight shoulders and hugged him.

“This is a…hug? Something meant to make me feel better?”

“Yeah, what do Karigole do?” Orozco let Lafayette go.

The Karigole pressed his knuckles to Orozco’s temple. Orozco mirrored the gesture.

Lafayette picked up his helmet and shook dirt out of it before he put it back on his head.

“I have work to do.” He went back to the stasis tube.

“What do we do about—”

“Work!” Lafayette snapped.

The shield dome over Mentiq’s city smeared sunlight over its surface, casting a twisted reflection of the sun and clouded sky above. A steady stream of Toth landers merged into a long queue of craft slowly filing through a single hangar entrance on the east side of the city just below the shield dome. Ships flew out of the city and angled up into space from an exit on the opposite side.

Hale stood next to Egan’s cockpit, his fingers drumming on the headrest.

“Well?” Hale asked. “How do we get in?”

“I assume we hail the flight control tower or—” The controls lurched out of Egan’s hands and the shuttle banked to the right. It flew beneath the line of waiting ships toward the open hangar.

“Or we wait for the autopilot to engage,” Egan said.

“Shuttle Arru, this is Primus,” came from a speaker on the control station. “You’re nine minutes late. The bazaar has a strict timetable and one that we can’t fool around with. I had to bribe the flight master to get you to the front of the line and I will take that money out of your pay with interest! Get the product loaded up as soon as you land and report to my office.”

Hale reached over Egan’s shoulder and hit a button to key the mic.

“Acknowledged,” Hale said.

“Lots of VIPs here this time, no more screwups!” The line went dead.

The shuttle swung beneath a ship that was nothing more than several off-kilter cubes connected by a single axis and slowed. Several banks of crystalline cannons guarded the hangar entrance, and more weapon emplacements circled a stone wall running around the city.

A pair of Toth dagger fighters hovered over the waiting ships. Hale watched as the fighters angled toward a shuttle as large as a Destrier and jetted toward it. The serrated edges came perilously close to the large ship, which held its ground.

Like dogs nipping at a cow,
he thought.

Their shuttle passed through the hangar, and Hale finally got a look at Mentiq’s city.

A palace of jagged towers dominated the center. Twisted spires like long seashells touched the underside of the dome, a single reptilian face with gigantic glistening jewels for teeth embossed on each spire. The palace within the spires looked like it was made from pure gold. Mosaics featuring an alien that looked like a larger—and much fatter—Toth menial were on each wall and the roofs, all depicting the large alien beatified by adoring Toth and other alien races. Hale picked out more than one human figure in the artwork.

“This guy’s not real humble, is he?” Egan asked.

The shuttle banked to the side and over a cluster of several large inverted funnels the size of apartment buildings and made of what looked like a single piece of glass. More of the structures were spaced out across the city, all far from the magnificence of Mentiq’s palace. One building resembled a terraced pyramid, wide and squat. The shuttle turned toward it and joined an orderly line of airborne traffic floating above the city.

The spaces between the larger buildings were a mess of tangled streets and low buildings in various states of disrepair.

Hale turned back and saw a wide open field in front of the main gate to the palace with pale-white stages laid out in an orderly fashion across the grassy surface.

Something beeped in Egan’s cockpit.

“We’re going to docking bay…twelve,” Egan said, reading from a display.

“Anyone going to meet us there?” Hale asked.

“Just lists three transport pods in the instructions.” Egan gently touched the control stick and a harsh buzzer sounded a warning. His hands flew away. A pair of turrets mounted on the inner wall came to life and swung up to track the shuttle.

“Bad idea,” Egan said. “Doubt we’d have any luck flying a bomb into the palace. Deviate from the flight path and they’ll blow you out of the sky.”

Their shuttle dipped low and landed in a landing bay built into the side of the wall surrounding the city. There was nothing in the shuttle bay but a small control station and three coffin-sized black boxes floating next to it.

“Look alive, people,” Hale said into the IR.

The ramp descended from the shuttle and the engines powered down. Egan tossed his hands up in despair.

“Not me, sir. There must be some central control system keeping everything in order. Like how Ibarra automated all the traffic in Phoenix with his smart cars,” Egan said.

“That’s going to make getting out of here a bit difficult,” Hale said. “Get changed into a kadanu uniform and meet me outside.”

Hale left the cockpit and went down the ramp with Cortaro and Standish. He saw the entire city from the raised hangar as a breeze brought the smell of damp earth and poor sewer lines. Hot, humid air surrounded them.

“Ugh, feels like we’re in Juarez,” Standish said. “I had a couple crazy weekends there when I was stationed at Camp Pendleton.”

“Juarez was off-limits for decades,” Cortaro said, his brows knitting in confusion, “and the border was sealed. How did you do that?”

“What was that, Gunney?” Standish wiggled a finger in his ear. “The war’s taken a real toll on my hearing.”

“Grab those caskets and get the bodies in there,” Hale said. “That should buy us enough time to get out of here and lost in the crowd.” He looked up the ramp and saw Lilith with Yarrow, the Marine donning the last stolen uniform. Lilith shook her head and moved a sash from Yarrow’s right shoulder to the left. 

Hale waved them down. Lilith caught herself when she saw the palace, her hands bunched beneath her chin.

“It’s beautiful, just like the stories I learned as a little girl,” she said.

“Focus, Lilith. I need you and Egan on that control panel. See if you can access the system. You’ve got the spikes, Egan?” Hale asked.

Egan ran down the ramp and patted a sack he had attached to his hip.

“Spikes?” Lilith asked.

“Old hacker tool,” Egan said to her. “Ibarra’s probe reversed enough Toth computer cores recovered from their wrecks to make us a couple disposable and undetectable intrusion devices.”

They made their way to the control station and Egan looked it over.

“Same tech as we’ve seen before, that’s good news,” Egan said. He took a marker-sized metal spike from his pouch and found an access port. “Here goes nothing.” He connected the spike and stepped back.

Screens lit up and Toth writing scrolled rapidly from side to side.

“OK…we’re in. I’ve got the local networks on the screen. Now let me…that’s not right.” Egan frowned at a large keyboard covered in runes and jabbed at a few characters.

“What are you trying to do?” Lilith asked.

“I’m trying to find a map to this damn place but this keyboard isn’t what I was trained on,” Egan said.

“Open the secondary overlays and load up the utility network,” Lilith said with a shake of her head.

“Is that…this key?”

“Move!” Lilith pushed Egan aside and her fingers flew over the keyboard, tapping with amazing speed. A wire diagram of the city appeared on a screen, a red pulsating dot showing their hangar.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“How do we shut off the shielding? What about the turrets?” Hale looked over her shoulder.

“That…I can’t do from here,” she said. “All essential functions route through the palace…no they don’t. Someone set up a shunt relay to make it
look
like the hub is beneath spire three. Amateurs. When in reality…” A green dot appeared on the map over the stepped pyramid Hale’d seen on the flight through the city. “Sub-basement level two,” she said.

“What is that place?” Hale asked.

“Kadanu headquarters,” she said.

“What about Mentiq? Any way we can get to him?”

“There’s the bazaar. He’s mentioned during the schedule for the opening ceremony. Think he’ll make an appearance?” Lilith asked.

“Doubt he’d miss the big event, not when it seems like everything on this planet is done in his honor.” Hale touched the screen with the map and zoomed in. A raised platform, just on the opposite side of the gates to Mentiq’s palace, was covered in red markings. “Is that where he’s going to sit?”

“You can read Toth?” Lilith asked.

“Snipers,” Hale said into the IR. “Find a nest with line of sight to this point.” He pointed the camera on his gauntlet at the map and sent an image to Rohen and Bailey.

“You think we can get IR with the
Breit
?” Hale asked Egan.

“Yes, sir. The shield must let heat out or this place would turn into an oven. I’ll go set up the dish and finally make myself useful.” Egan trotted back to the shuttle, crossing paths with Standish, Cortaro and the three floating coffins.

A message flashed on one of the screens.

“Some place called the ‘distribution center’ in the palace wants an update on the ‘product,’” Lilith said, reading. “It wants me to send the coffins there right away.”

“When that happens, they’ll look inside and see they’ve got the wrong delivery,” Hale said. “Then things will get difficult.”

“About that, sir,” Standish said, raising a hand. “I have an idea. Can you send these meat sticks anywhere else?” he asked Lilith.

“There are distribution nodes…all located at the big glass buildings we saw. Those seem to all belong to different corporations…Tellani’s, Naalfur, Anshul’jik, bunch more,” she said.

“Here’s what you do.” Standish leaned over the control station. “Send the coffins to Naalfur’s distro center, have them linger for an hour then forward them on to Tellani and disable the trackers. They’ll start looking for their ‘product’ eventually and when they find three dead kadanu in Tellani’s storehouse…”

“Tellani will blame Naalfur,” Hale said. “Claim the other corporation got the real anointed and sent off the fakes to their storehouse so they’d get the blame. The two corporations will point the finger at the other.”

“And the harder they claim innocence, the guiltier they’ll look,” Standish said with a smile. “The old quartermaster two-step. One of my favorite ways to launder goods. If I still did that. Or ever did that. Hey, look at the time.” Standish gave one of the coffins a pat. “These boys have someplace to be.”

“Do it,” Hale said to Lilith. The coffins floated away on their own a few seconds later.

“I’ll change the point of origin to a hangar on the other side of the city,” she said.

“Sir, Bailey. Rohen and I can get a great shot from the top of that pyramid-looking place,” the sniper said.

“We have to head over there anyway,” Hale said. “Knock out the central computer core.” He opened an IR line. “Egan, can you get us a local IR network? Something the Toth won’t detect but will reach back to you here?”

“So long as you’ve got line of sight to the snipers and they’ve got line of sight back to here, we’ll be secure,”
Egan said from the top of the shuttle where he was setting up a satellite dish.

“I see where you’re going with this, sir,” Cortaro said. “Trick’s going to be bringing enough firepower to the party.”

“I think I’ve got an answer for that,” Hale said as he opened a channel to the entire team. “All right, Marines, here’s the plan.”

****

Valdar walked behind the bridge’s workstations, glancing at the clocks on the crew’s screens.

Any minute now
, Valdar thought. Hale should have coopted a transport to Mentiq’s city by now. The lack of any news from the lieutenant was a good sign; he wasn’t calling for extraction from a botched operation. Still, the time of flight from the human enclave to the city wasn’t long; they should have checked in by now.

“Guns,” Valdar said to Lieutenant Commander Utrecht, “any progress on a firing solution to get through the city’s energy shields?”

“No, sir.” Utrecht shook his head. “Even with the little data we got from the Marines on the ground, the disturbances in the upper atmosphere throw off the impact time—”

“Sir!” Ensign Erdahl nearly jumped out of her seat at the communications station. Valdar crossed the bridge to her. “Message from Hale. They made it in.”