The Crucible (The Ember War Saga Book 8)

by Richard Fox

“Earth is the first habitable world we have ever visited,” the queen said. Her tentacles touched the glass gently. “Look what we have wrought. A brave race is our enemy. Our allies betray us. Blood spilt for nothing.”

  “I am the wrong person for poetry.” Torni tilted her head to Bodel and Ar’ri behind her. “They hate it even more than I do. Surrender. Now.”

  “We yield.” The queen wiped tentacles across her eyes, each the size of the shield on Bodel’s forearm. “Our ships will do as you command. Please spare the rest of my children from death.”

  Torni lowered Jarilla to the floor and withdrew the spikes from his suit. Water dribbled from the holes.

  “Get on the radio. Do what you need to,” Torni said.

  The queen floated away from the glass.

  “No!” Torni’s hand flared red. “You stay right where I can see you. Things might get better between us, but right now you’re going to learn what humans mean when we say, ‘Trust but verify.’”

  ****

  Yarrow led Lilith down the basalt-black hallway. She seemed content to keep her eyes on the ground but still shirked away from the sound of any and all gunfire. For a woman raised in a society with little to no concept of violence, Yarrow thought she wasn’t doing half-bad.

  Ahead, the two armor soldiers had stopped near an intersection. Short bolts of lightning from the Ruhaald hit the walls with a searing hiss. Enemy fire filled the cross section leading to a tall doorway marked CINC. Yarrow watched dozens of bolts cut through the air, and he knew it would be suicide to try to cross the last few yards to their destination.

  The Ruhaald knew where they were going and seemed most determined to cut the Marines off.

  “What now?” Lilith asked, clutching her cloth bag to her chest.

  “We wait for the captain to come up with a tactical solution that doesn’t involve running through that kill zone,” Yarrow said.

  “A ‘kill zone’? You bring the mother of your child into a place with a ‘kill zone’?”

  “OK, Lilith, I think it was pretty clear that this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. Things are going pretty well, even with the crash landing and losing our one way off the Crucible.”

  “You mean we’re trapped?” Lilith started to hyperventilate.

  “No. No! Darling, look at me.” Yarrow grabbed her helmet and raised her face to him. A Ruhaald bolt ricocheted off a wall and struck near Yarrow’s feet. “I’ve gotten out of much worse places than this.”

  “Yarrow!” Hale shouted.

  “Moving!” The corpsman took Lilith by the hand and led her forward, even as she tried to pull away from the torrent of fire zipping down the cross section.

  They passed Lieutenant Jacobs, a bandolier of grenades in her hand. Orozco charged up his Gatling gun, one foot stomping against the ground like a bull reading a charge.

  Hale ran to Yarrow and pointed to Elias. His shield unfolded from his arm into a circle.

  “Jacobs will throw out concussion and smoke, stun the enemy position. Elias will block their fire and get us across in one piece. Ready?” Hale hustled them toward the edge of the hallway.

  Yarrow felt the heat from passing bolts. Lilith tried to jerk her hand away from him.

  “No! There is no way I can—” Yarrow wrapped an arm around her shoulder and twisted her away from the kill zone as Jacobs swung the bandolier around the corner. A slap of air rattled his helmet and sent his ears ringing.

  Hale grabbed Lilith up by the ankles and shouted to the corpsman. The command was lost to the whine but Yarrow understood his commander’s intent. He clutched his arms around the squirming Lilith and carried her forward, past Orozco who unleashed the full fury of his Gatling weapon on the Ruhaald around the corner and behind Elias.

  Elias sidestepped, keeping his bulk and his shield between the enemy fire and the three as they crossed the kill zone.

  Yarrow heard the slap of hits against Elias’ shield. A hunk of aegis plating broke away and bounced over Yarrow’s feet. A lightning bolt caught Yarrow’s toes and he felt like he’d just kicked a buzz saw. He limped forward and fell against the door to the command center, his right foot blackened and smoking.

  “Jason!” Lilith shook the corpsman by the shoulders.

  “I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “How fine?” Hale asked.

  “Can still walk on it, still shoot.” Yarrow got up, keeping weight off the injured appendage.

  Hale went to the door and tapped keys on a control panel. There was an angry buzz.

  Elias rotated his shield against his forearm and used the damaged section as a firing nook. He leaned into the kill zone and let off a half-dozen shots from his arm cannon.

  An electrical storm of bolts answered him, cracking the shield in half before Elias pulled away.

  “Reinforcements,” Elias said. “Looks like they’re getting ready for a push.”

  “Let me use my breach charge,” Hale said as he reached down to his belt and found a singed patch of armor where the explosive charge should have been. “Figures. Elias, rip open the door.”

  Elias let off a few blind shots around the corner.

  “If I turn my back on them, this will get ugly real quick,” he said.

  “Ibarra!” Hale yelled to the ceiling. “Little help here!”

  One of the doors to the command center jerked open. Hale and Yarrow swung around the opening, their rifles ready.

  The probe hung in the center of the room at the bottom of a tiered amphitheater, a coral ring and dim force field surrounding the tear of light that made up Bastion’s first envoy to the human race. Ordona floated near a bank of control panels, then whirled in place to face the intruders.

  “I have this facility rigged to self-destruct,” Ordona said. “You will throw down your weapons and submit to the Ruhaald. Now.” He raised a mechanical arm, a thin finger pointed at a pulsating button.

  Hale got his aim on the wide-shouldered machine. His finger tapped against the trigger.

  The force field behind Ordona shimmered. A single word morphed against the wall of coherent light.

  SHOOT

  Hale hit the alien dead center. The suit wobbled to the side, then took another hit from Yarrow. Ordona let out a squeal then went to the ground as the containment suit’s anti-grav failed. He tried to prop himself up, but Hale drilled a bullet through Ordona’s bucket head and the encounter suit fell to the ground, red smoke churning from the wound.

  “Switch to air tanks,” Hale said, “no idea what that stuff will do to us if we breathe it.”

  “But what if I have to vomit?” Lilith asked weakly.

  “Don’t. You need to get the probe free right now, Lilith,” Hale said. Yarrow tried to guide her down the tiers but had to stop against a broken workstation.

  “Sir, I need to treat myself.” Yarrow handed her over to his captain and sank to the ground. Grabbing his injured foot, he pulled it to his face. The armor toe was missing, but his toes were still there, albeit blackened and oozing blood. He sprayed nu-skin over the bare flesh and felt icy pinpricks jab his foot.

  “So that’s what everyone’s always complaining about. At least there’s no nerve damage,” he said to himself.

  A Ruhaald bolt sprang off the doorway.

  “Hurry up in there!” Elias shouted.

  Yarrow got up and limped down the tiers to where Lilith stood hunched over the bank of computer stations, her cloth bag open. The Toth computer she’d used on Nibiru connected to the coral ring around the probe and into the workstations.

  Hale stood nearby, watching the other entrances.

  “Jason, the Naroosha are using Toth injects into the probe’s control prompts.” Lilith shook her head in disgust. “I recognize some of the code. Code that I wrote!”

  “What does that mean?” Yarrow asked.

  “It means the Naroosha are—how do you say, ‘script kitties’? Space-borne civilization can’t even do their own trinomial quantum calculations
…” Her fingers danced over the keyboard and the probe’s shape smoothed over.

  “Is she almost done?” Hale asked.

  “Hell if I…” Yarrow’s gaze went to Ordona. A panel had opened on the suit’s back. “Did you see that open?”

  A slimy tentacle with a clawed tip slapped onto a computer bank. A mass of pink tissue the size of a melon pulled itself up with a wet plop. Another clawed tentacle swung back.

  Yarrow darted forward and snatched Ordona’s true form up before it could strike Lilith. Tentacles scratched at Yarrow’s face like he’d picked up a maniac cat. Yarrow slammed it against a workstation twice but the onslaught continued.

  “Sir! Up!” Yarrow swung Ordona down then tossed it into the air.

  Hale hit the alien with a single shot and the Naroosha leader broke open like a dropped egg. The remains splattered against the steps, fluid bubbling and popping as it evaporated, leaving behind a husk.

  Yarrow wiped slime from his hands. “Is it dead?”

  “It sure ain’t happy,” Hale said.

  “Got it!” Lilith pumped a fist in the air.

  The force field faded away and the probe rose into the air.

  “All systems will revert to my full command in six seconds,” the probe said. The ground shifted beneath Yarrow’s feet, sending him stumbling into a seat bolted to the floor.

  “What’s happening?” Hale asked.

  A blue-white hologram of Marc Ibarra appeared between Hale and Yarrow. Ibarra stretched out his arms and cracked his neck.

  “That was miserable,” Ibarra said.

  “Answer me,” Hale said.

  “Hale! My boy, I knew you’d come through. I had my doubts about your minions over in dome C, but they did OK.” Ibarra looked up, as if listening to a faraway voice. “Jimmy just broke away the thorns the Ruhaald were hiding in and dumped them into the void. Now we’re about to see something really special.”

  A holo of the Crucible appeared with a wave of Ibarra’s hand. Naroosha vessels flew away from the outer ring. A whirlpool of light formed in the center of the jump gate.

  “Front-row seats to the turning of the tide,” Ibarra smirked.

  The wormhole widened. The Breitenfeld burst forth and the Mars fleet followed.

  ****

  Captain Valdar blinked away the afterimage from the wormhole transit. His vision cleared…and he saw a silver Naroosha ship dead ahead and closing fast.

  “Helm!”

  The Breitenfeld lurched down as the ventral thrusters sprouted to life. Valdar’s vision went gray and his hands fell to the armrests, so heavy they were impossible to lift. The glowing edge of the Naroosha ship shot up and out of view.

  “Cut…the…grav plates!” Valdar struggled to get through his clenched jaw.

  The crush of artificial gravity vanished and Valdar felt a swell of blood through his head.

  “Target acquired!” Utrecht announced. The ship’s top rail cannons flashed with light as they accelerated shells the size of a full-grown man to a very small percentage of the speed of light. The recoil shook Valdar’s chair like there was an angry man kicking it from behind.

  The leading edge of a fireball cut through the upper third of the bridge’s view ports. A spinning blade of silver metal slammed into the hull just beside the number one rail cannon. A hunk of wreckage the size of a Destrier transport was embedded against the ship’s aegis armor. The inner edge still burned. Blue light on the outer weapon’s edge flickered and died.

  “Good shooting, guns,” Valdar said.

  “Got a priority target from the Falklands,” Utrecht said.

  “Bring us about and lay the guns.” Valdar unbuckled his restraints and popped out of his chair. He got two steps toward the holo tank when his ship lurched aside. He felt a sharp vibration through the deck and stumbled against the tank.

  “Minor damage to port armor plate seven,” Ericcson said. “Dotok fighters moving to engage.”

  Valdar mag-locked his feet to the deck and brought the holo tank to life. Dozens of capital ships popped up around the Crucible, along with more and more fighters launching off the Falklands and Waterloo. He’d jumped his ship to Mars as Gor’al began the attack on the Naroosha ships. Once as many ships of the Mars fleet as his engines could carry formed around the Breitenfeld, he started knocking at the Crucible’s proverbial door with the gate code over and over again.

  Without the Crucible generating an open gate for Valdar, it would have taken almost an hour for the Breitenfeld to jump back to Earth with even a fraction of the ships now in a pounding match against the Naroosha.

  Valdar had waited with zero patience for Ibarra to finally reassert control and open the gate as planned. Now it was up to him and the fresh ships to end the traitors’ occupation once and for all.

  The Naroosha ships had scattered away from the Crucible when the wormhole had formed and were off-balance, making them easy targets so long as Valdar could seize the opportunity.

  The top rail cannons fired again. The rounds zipped away from his ship’s location in the holo and intersected with shells from the Falklands through a Naroosha ship.

  “Clean hit!” Utrecht announced.

  “Provo, Kingston,” Valdar sent over his captain’s channel, “concentrate your fire on the enemy at the Crucible’s two o’clock. Condor squadrons six and twelve, drop torpedoes on the three ships moving toward each other…here.” Valdar’s fingers danced within the holo, relaying commands to several different units at once.

  “Task Force Vorpral, where are you?” Valdar looked over the list of ships broadcasting an IFF signal. There were three Manticore frigates in the fight around the Crucible…and that was it.

  No. This can’t be. Valdar signaled a new IFF pulse, demanding every ship that could hear the call identify themselves immediately.

  A distress call came from within the great thorns of the Crucible. The Vacaville had crashed into a confluence of the basalt spikes.

  “Sir, something odd’s happening,” Utrecht said. “Look at the enemy.”

  Valdar zoomed in on the nearest silver spiral and watched it nose over, blue light racing up and down the weapon’s edge.

  “Pull back!” Bar’en cut into Valdar’s command channel. “They’re going to blow. Pull back!”

  “All ships disengage. I repeat, all ships—”

  The tips of the Naroosha ships tilted toward the Crucible. A glut of destructive power the width of each ship spat out and struck the jump gate, the thorns glowing so hot they looked like the surface of the sun. Cracks broke along the axis, glowing lava red as they grew wider.

  Valdar felt a lump in the pit of his stomach. Malal and his knowledge were gone. If the Crucible broke into a trillion pieces and disintegrated, the human race had a destiny with extinction.

  The captain winced as the cracks jumped to spikes touching those struck by the Naroosha’s attack. The cracks slowed…then came to a complete stop.

  Nothing I can do but stop another hit on the Crucible, he thought.

  “Why are my guns silent?” he asked Utrecht.

  “All targets read as destroyed, sir.” He double-tapped his screen and an image popped up in Valdar’s tank. A Naroosha ship broke apart, shedding fragments of silver as the ship moved away like driftwood on the sea.

  “Sir, communication from Septon Jarilla,” the XO said, “they surrender. All the Ruhaald ships are broadcasting the same thing now.”

  “All ships, begin search-and-rescue operations.” Valdar pointed to Ericcson. “Jarilla. Now.”

  Video feed popped up next to the Ruhaald ship over Anchorage. Jarilla, his head bent low, did not look into the camera. Torni, her shell alive with fractals, held a disintegration beam high and ready, aiming at something Valdar couldn’t see.

  “Captain Valdar,” Jarilla said, “on behalf of my queen, the expeditionary—”

  “You will eject every single nuclear warhead on your ships toward the sun. Immediately. Then you’ll take every one of you
r ships to the L3 Lagrange point and anchor them so close together your hulls trade paint. You try to move an inch and every last macro cannon in the solar system will blow you to dust. Execute my instructions now, or I will let Torni Xaros-zap whatever she’s looking at and then I will personally smash every last one of your ships into scrap.”

  When Jarilla didn’t answer, Torni flicked the back of his helmet with her fingers.

  “Immediately,” Jarilla said.

  Valdar cut the video with a swipe of his finger…and saw the transponder for the Vorpral between the moon and Ceres. He double-tapped the icon and heard the hiss of static.

  “Captain Gor’al, this is Valdar.”

  There was a crackle in the static and nothing else.

  “Ensign Geller, get scopes on the Vorpral. Tell me if we need to send search and rescue to the ship or not.”

  “Aye-aye, skipper,” the navigator said.

  “Valdar,” came from the Dotok ship, “you took your sweet time getting back from Mars. Take lunch?”

  “Gor’al? What’s your status?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Took a good hit from the Naroosha, but the ship’s held together. Our engines are out and we seem to be on a very slow crash course to Ceres. If you and some of your other larger ships could nudge us out of the way before that happens, we’d appreciate it.”

  “Roger, Vorpral, we’re en route.” Valdar stepped away from the holo table, went to the fore of the bridge and looked out onto the battlefield. Debris from destroyed human and Naroosha ships floated aimlessly through the void, electricity arcing over the silver fragments of the enemy’s hull. Much of the fleet he’d sent to attack the Naroosha was gone, thousands of lives lost. The Crucible was damaged, to what extent he didn’t know.

  All for nothing, he thought.

  The view shifted as the ship maneuvered toward the stricken Vorpral and the blue-white marble of Earth passed by.

  “Captain Valdar? This is Hale,” came through his earpiece. Valdar’s head shot up, his malaise forgotten.

  “Ken? Are you alright?”

  “Everything’s under control in the Crucible, or at least it will be soon. Ibarra says the damage to the station isn’t fatal. It’ll just take time for the place to heal itself. Some minor injuries to my Marines. We got lucky.”