Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3)

by Richard Fox

  He called to Torni, but she ignored him as she ran for the pathway leading down the mountain where she found Yarrow, trying to drag Hale and Bailey the last few yards up the path. Yarrow, the armor of his helmet and upper body dented and ripped, had blood running from beneath a shoulder plate. He fell to the ground, never letting go of Hale and Bailey.

  “No…” Torni ran to Yarrow and helped him up. She took up his burden and got them over the top of the path.

  “Grenade, got us good,” Yarrow said. “Hale’s bad. Bailey’s worse.”

  “Shut up and move,” Torni said through gritted teeth. She dragged the injured Marines to the Mule and got them into the cargo hold. Dotok jumped out of the way as she pulled down the stretchers built into the walls. She grabbed the nearest Dotok adult, screamed at him to get the Marines strapped into the stretchers then charged back out of the Mule.

  Yarrow still hadn’t made it. He was down to a knee, firing poorly aimed shots as a banshee crawled up the pathway. Torni grabbed Yarrow’s rifle and put a round between the banshee’s temples. She tossed Yarrow over her shoulder and got him back to the Mule.

  “How bad are you?” she asked him.

  “It hurts, but it could be worse,” he said.

  “Do what you can for the others,” she said. Yarrow nodded. She slapped him on the helmet. “Move!”

  There were another half-dozen Dotok at the base of the ramp, reaching to Torni.

  “What’re we waiting for?” she demanded from Jorgen. “We’ve got room.”

  “I don’t have the air!” Jorgen shouted. “New Abhaile is on fire. We’re going to the Breit, no atmo. I take on any more civvies and they all suffocate.”

  Torni looked back at the Dotok and saw the woman and child Hale had risked so much to save. She grabbed the two of them and pushed them up the ramp. Torni reached under her armor and detached her O2 tanks. She took off her helmet and shoved them into Jorgen’s hands.

  “With my re-breather, that’s four hours of air. Get in the cockpit,” she said to the pilot.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m staying.” She pointed to the Dotok. “There are five more women and children out there. Who will stay with me so they can live?”

  Two Dotok men and Nil’jo came to Torni; one man held a child on his hip. He passed the child to its mother, who pleaded with her husband not to volunteer.

  “The little ones don’t breath as much,” a man said. He ran down the ramp and pulled the rest of the women and children up the ramp.

  Torni jumped off the ramp, and her volunteers came with her. The ramp rose out of the dirt and closed as the Mule took off, blowing up a cloud of brown dirt.

  Torni closed her eyes and listened to the Mule fade away. She took her rifle off her shoulder and looked at the five Dotok men who’d stayed behind. A banshee’s wail echoed up the mountain.

  “Sarge, is that you down there?” Standish asked, the IR already breaking up from range.

  “Standish, you’re a good Marine. Take care of everyone for me,” she said. Standish’s response was lost in static.

  Nil’jo picked up a rock. “I was honored to serve as your Chosen.”

  “Our families will be less without us,” said the father who gave up his spot, “but they will live, and become greater.” He lifted up a rock with both hands.

  The sound of banshees grew louder.

  ****

  Torni stabbed her pistol into the back of a banshee and fired a round. The banshee reared back and swung an elbow at her. She ducked under the blow and jammed the pistol into its face. The gun clicked empty.

  It knocked her pistol away, nearly breaking her fingers with the blow. Torni stumbled back and found her gauss rifle in the dirt. She swung it up like a club and cracked the butt across the banshee’s head. The blow staggered the monster and shattered the stock. She pulled the weapon back to her hip and jammed the jagged edges into the banshee’s throat.

  Gray blood splattered across her hands. The banshee lashed out and scored a glancing blow across the top of her head. Torni backpedaled, her world spinning from the concussion. She fell to the ground, the taste of blood and dirt in her mouth.

  She rolled onto all fours and spat. She’d taken too many hits for her adrenaline to tamp down the pain of broken bones and a dozen cuts up and down her body from the fight she never had a chance of winning. Her bayonet snapped from the forearm housing and she got up to face the banshees.

  Tens of banshees surrounded her, standing over the ruined bodies of the Dotok who’d stayed behind. The monsters stared at her…and did nothing else.

  “What is this?” Torni kept her guard up. “What’re you waiting for? Huh?”

  No response.

  “What’re you waiting for!”

  A banshee in front rank twitched. Its arms and shoulders rose into the air like a scarecrow’s. The armor on its arms peeled away from the body and floated in the air. More armor ripped away from the banshees, all of it coalescing toward a single point over their heads. The armor swirled inside a vortex; wind rose from it and pressed Torni back. A point of light emerged from the armor, growing so bright Torni had to look away.

  Then…it all went silent.

  Torni looked up. Plates of red armor formed a humanoid shape in the air, encasing a being of pure light. It looked down on Torni, tendrils of light floating out of the eye slits on a flat mask.

  “You…” the word came from the banshees, all of them speaking in unison, “you are known. Your trace was on Anthalas. Now you are here.” The General descended toward the ground, its feet never touching the surface.

  “You must be in charge,” Torni said.

  “How did your species survive my purge?” the chorus of voices asked. “What did you take from Anthalas?”

  Torni felt fear rise in her chest. The General reached toward her, phantom fingers swinging toward her like tentacles of a leviathan.

  “Don’t know?” Torni backed away. Her foot hit the edge of the mesa, and she looked back and saw rocks and dirt falling to oblivion. “Let me tell you something about humanity. Gott. Mit. Uns.” She flung herself back and closed her eyes.

  A force grabbed her body like an enormous hand had just wrapped around her, pinning her arms and legs against herself.

  “You think petty gestures will deny me?” the voices said.

  Torni floated toward the General, its eyes burning.

  “All corruption will be cleansed. I will burn your species’ existence out of memory. Your fate will be no different.”

  Torni spat on the General’s faceplate.

  “You will respond to pain.” The General lifted a hand, and Torni felt fire dancing across the bottom of her feet.

  She clenched her jaw and fought against the scream begging to be let out. The pain subsided as quickly as it came. The General looked to the sky, then snapped its head back to Torni.

  A growl rose from the banshees.

  “You are not worthy of this honor,” they said. The General wrapped tendrils of light around Torni’s head. Images from her entire life raced through her mind with the fury of a tempest.

  Her head lolled from side to side. When she could look up, she saw swirling motes of light orbiting around the General’s hand. The light within the General’s armor launched into space, leaving an afterglow through its ascent.

  The armor collapsed and fell to the ground. The force holding Torni relented and she sprawled in the dirt.

  A banshee marched toward her, talons gleaming in the sun. She lashed out with her bayonet, but the blade bounced off the banshee’s armor.

  Talons rammed into her chest, piercing her heart. The banshee raised her in the air until Torni went limp then it dropped her to the ground. Torni’s blood dripped from the talons as the banshees moved on, leaving a red trail through the blowing dust.

  CHAPTER 14

  Durand watched as the electric onslaught from the Breitenfeld’s Q-shell died away from the Xaros drones. Disabled drones float
ed in space, their stalks twitching.

  “All right everyone, you know the mission,” she said to her combined Dotok and human fighter pilots. “Kill every drone you can and keep any that reactivate off the Mule. Glue, you and your gals get torps in those Canticle-class starships. Good hunting.”

  She redlined her engines and was the first to the drones. The Gatling gun on her Eagle went to work, blowing drones to disintegrating chunks. She looped around and found an easy target.

  A gauss shots zipped over her canopy and blew the drone away. A Dotok fighter flashed overhead. She’d bet her last cigarette that was Bar’en.

  “Show off,” she muttered.

  “Torps away!” Glue announced.

  Durand inverted her fighter and saw the burning engines of point detonating torpedoes streaking toward one of the big ships. The torpedoes looked like a fly charging a bull elephant, but the Dotok had told Glue exactly where to strike the generation ships. An explosion in just the right spot should knock its engines out of commission. They didn’t need to destroy those ships, they just needed the drones to think that was their target, anything to keep them away from the Mule and Lafayette’s bomb.

  Durand returned to the task at hand, and watched as the drone she had in her sights came to life and slipped past her bullets.

  “Hurry, Lafayette,” Durand said.

  ****

  Elias’ gauss cannons blew a drone to pieces, shells ricocheted down the passageway that the drone had almost made it through. A stalk tip, glowing red with energy, popped around the edge and fired a pencil thin disintegration beam at Elias. He ducked behind his shield and the beam diffused against the surface.

  Kallen snapped off a single shot and blew the stalk apart.

  Elias charged towards the open door, his upper body protected by his shield. His right hand retracted into its forearm casing and a pneumatic spike took its place. Originally meant to pierce the inner tanks of enemy armor, the spikes had proved adept at cracking drone shells.

  A new stalk tip folded around the doorway.

  Elias bashed the edge of his shield against the stalk, using the edge of the doorway to sheer the point away. He swung his spike into and uppercut and impaled the drone hiding above the doorway. The tip penetrated the drone’s shell and Elias felt it struggle against his weapon like a fish caught on a line.

  He yanked the drone off the ceiling and stomped its cracked body, crushing it into dissolving fragments.

  Three more drones came into the long passageway, using their stalks to walk against the deck like giant arachnids. Elias fired off a burst and sidestepped the blasts of energy the drones sent back.

  “Lafayette,” Elias said, “how much longer?”

  “Another minute,” the Karigole said from behind Kallen and her shield. “Maybe two. The implosion device was damaged when I—”

  “Don’t. Care. Two minutes,” Elias said as he replaced his spike for his armor’s hand and leaned into the hallway…and didn’t see any drones. “What the…”

  “Elias!” he turned at Kallen’s warning. The armor floating above the plinth gloved from within. A ragged column of light roared up from the plinth and into the armor, overwhelming Elias’ optics with a torrent of light.

  The General stepped from the plinth and raised an ethereal hand to Kallen. A beam of red light as thick as a tree trunk lanced out and struck Kallen’s shield, blasting her back into the bulkhead so hard her armor cracked.

  Elias fired a double shot from his forearm cannons. The bullets flashed against an energy barrier around the General and vanished in a puff of smoke. The General turned its face toward Elias and casually swung its hand toward Elias.

  Elias grabbed the edge of his banshee armor shield and hurled it at the General’s arm. The shield caught the brunt of an energy lance. It sprang away from the general like it had been struck by a bat and shattered against the deck.

  The distraction was brief, but it was all Elias needed to close the distance. He leaped at the General and brought an armored fist down with an overhand strike. He connected with the General’s helm. For all the force his could muster, the blow managed to turn the General’s head aside. Elias twisted his body into the follow on strike, snapping his spike out mid-blow. The spike deflected off an armor plate and embedded inside the General’s body.

  A trill rose in the command center as the General lashed out at Elias, knocking a dent against Elias’ spike arm, the armor blackened and smoked at the General’s touch.

  Elias wrapped a hand around the General’s face plate, his fingers sizzling and melting.

  “This is for Earth!”

  Elias ripped the face plate from the rest of the armor. A flood of light erupted from the head less armor. The General’s arms rose to try and contain the light as it stumbled back to the plinth. The armor crashed into the plinth and white light spilled into it like water tossed from a bucket.

  The armor plates clattered to the deck.

  Elias kicked the armor plates, scattering them across the room.

  “Kallen?”

  “Yeah, that hurt,” she said, pushing herself off of the deck. Her right arm hung limp from the elbow actuator, the forearm split open and smoking. She detached the broken armor and tossed it aside. “Did you kill it?’ she asked, pointed her stump at the General’s loose armor plates.

  Elias looked down at the face plate fused into his damaged hand.

  “Not sure…Lafayette?”

  “I don’t know what that was either, much less if it’s deceased,” Lafayette said. “But the bomb is set and we should leave. Now.”

  Kallen and Elias activated their cutting torches.

  ****

  Durand’s head snapped back as she watched three Dotok fighters race overhead. All on a vector towards a Canticle –class ship, not towards the Mule that was blasting off the surface of the proto-Crucible.

  “I said abort your attack runs! Pull back to the package and get ready to break contact!” Durand shouted into the IR.

  “If we can destroy the Xaros infecting the ship,” Bar’en said, “maybe we can bring it with us to—”

  “Not our mission! Cover the extraction. Get back to the Breitenfeld. That’s all we’re here to do,” Durand said. She caught a glimpse of a drone from the corner of her eye and made an inverted dive just in time to dodge a blast of red energy.

  “Got one on me!” Durand’s Eagle slalomed from side to side as she dove toward the Crucible. She flinched as a Xaros beam singed her cockpit.

  The yellow trailing the Mule with Lafayette and the Iron Hearts rose up from the half-complete surface, heading directly into a mob of drones. She hit a button on her fire control panel and charged up her only Q-shell.

  “Good a time as any,” she muttered, and pulled the trigger.

  A silver arrow of light connected to the mob of drones, electricity connected them all in a spider’s web of lightning. Durand steered her ship for the mass of disabled drones and a tendril of energy leaped out and stabbed into her ship.

  Electric panels shorted out as her engines coughed and died. She looked back for the drone pursuing her and saw it suffer the same fate as her, but the pursuer collided with the rest of the drones, knocking them apart like a cue ball into a rack of billiards.

  “Glue? Anyone?” there was no answer from Durand’s dead IR.

  She pressed against the back of her seat and grabbed the yellow and black handles of her ejection seat controls. She closed her eyes and steeled her body for the ugly kick that came with punching out of a fighter jet.

  Her hands squeezed white knuckle tight…then relaxed. There was no Search and Rescue craft that could pick her up. There was no way back to the ship if her Eagle was out of the fight. Bile rose in her throat as she realized her fate. She found some peace in the inevitable.

  The Mule with the bomb team soared away on pillars of light from its overworked engines. It couldn’t come for her, not it if wanted to make it back to the ship.

  “
This is Gall. If anyone can read this, return to the Breitenfeld. Do not stop for anything,” she said. Sparks snapped beneath her communication panel.

  “If I’m going to die out here, I’ll do it in my Eagle,” she said.

  She kept her eyes on the Crucible, waiting to see this mission had all been in vain. Space around the command dome blurred, then the Crucible collapsed against the dome, like the hand of some great and ancient celestial being had reached out and squeeze the Crucible until it cracked from the pressure.

  She felt a brief pull toward the station, then the weightlessness of the void returned.

  “Good job, Lafayette.”

  A shadow crossed over her cockpit. She looked up, ready to stare at the drone that had come for her.

  Instead, she saw the cockpit of a Condor bomber. The Ma cousins waved to her from the triple cockpit. Durand waved them off, pointing back towards the Breitenfeld.

  The Condor rotated on its axis, the underside of the bomber now above Durand’s head. A torpedo bay opened. The bay was empty…and just big enough for her.

  “Here goes nothing,” Durand found a red handle on the base of her canopy and pulled it open. The glass dome popped off, and she pushed it aside, sending it tumbling into the void. The Condor was almost fifty feet away, plenty of distance for her to miscalculate.

  She unsnapped her restraints and crouched on her seat, then pushed off and launched into open space, her ankle caught against an armrest and sent her tumbling. Her arms flailed as she went end over end, catching sight of the approaching Condor with each rotation.

  Her feet and shins hit the Condor. She twisted and grabbed for the open bay door, her finger tips slid against the exposed wiring and circuitry as her momentum dragged her across the surface of the Condor.

  “No!” she slid free and into the void.

  A hand grabbed her wrist.

  Glue had one hand on Durand, the other holding on to Filly in the Condor’s open cockpit. Glue nodded to her slowly, then gave her hand a jerk. Durand floated back toward the Condor. She got a grip on the edge of the open bay doors, then maneuvered into the empty space. She braced herself against the sides and slammed an elbow against the plane twice.