The Xaros Reckoning (The Ember War Saga Book 9)

by Richard Fox

  The car slowed as it veered around massive hauler trucks waiting in a line that stretched from a two-story-high excavator. Shannon popped the door up and slipped out of the still-moving vehicle. She snatched a construction helmet off a coffee station behind the foreman’s trailer and melded into the crew of workers and robots meandering around the collapsed remnants of a housing tower.

  She changed her gait to match the exhausted men and women around her, becoming just another overworked person trying to function through the trauma suffered by their once fair city. Shannon caught sight of warning tape wrapped around exposed sections of rebar and a group of workers in bright-yellow coveralls. There was her target.

  She walked along the hastily created perimeter of tape and saw a wrecked Condor bomber half-buried within the rubble, torpedoes still attached beneath the wings. Shannon’s steps quickened. The damaged torpedoes had denethrite explosive warheads that could rip a ship apart and she didn’t want to be around them any longer than necessary.

  James Howlett, the man she’d told Ibarra was planning on exposing the Ruhaald attempted nuclear strike, stood in the center of a scrum of the yellow-clad explosive ordnance team. He was stocky and had several days’ worth of stubble across his face. Holding up a data slate showing the crashed bomber and loose lines, Howlett outlined his plan for recovering the still deadly weapons from the wreckage. Shannon waited impatiently. Once he noticed her, Howlett gave her a slight nod.

  “I want the mark-fours fit with full spectral analysis kits before we send the robots down to get a closer look,” Howlett said. “Mendoza, get with the site boss and have him shoot down any and all equipment larger than fifty tons right now. The warhead casings are cracked and that ups the risk of a vibration det. Go. Run like our lives depend on it.”

  A woman in yellow gave a hasty salute and took off running.

  “The rest of you break out the robots and someone contact mortuary affairs. The tail gunner is still in there.” Howlett clapped his hands twice and his team broke away. He sauntered over to Shannon.

  “The hell do you want?” Howlett half-closed his left eye as he spoke, changing the meaning of his words to “welcome.” Those procedurally generated humans born with the Naroosha imperative received a sublingual form of communication from their alien masters. The barest inflection, slightest shift in body language or facial tick combined with their spoken words changed the message to something only another Naroosha servant would understand.

  To the uninitiated, the conversation between Howlett and Shannon was a run-of-the-mill work update. To each other, their words were far more sinister.

  “The timetable has accelerated,” Shannon said. “The Crucible is nearly repaired. Ibarra and the rest of the senior leaders will meet in the next few hours.”

  “Too soon,” Howlett said. “Our faithful have coopted the crèches across the planet, not the entire system yet. The procedural-human generation rate is at full capacity to replace casualties from the Xaros invasion. Every human coming out of those tubes is loyal to our cause—even if they don’t know it yet. Slow Ibarra’s plans for a few more months and we can take the solar system in a bloodless coup once our numbers are enough.”

  “It does no good to seize the system if we can’t deliver it—and the procedural technology—to the Naroosha,” Shannon said. “We need the Crucible intact and a ship with a jump drive.”

  “The Breitenfeld…its crew is almost entirely true born. To infiltrate the ship will be difficult.” Howlett pointed to the crashed bomber and rattled off statistics about defusing torpedoes. To cover his words.

  “We don’t need the crew,” Shannon said. “Just the captain. Their senior staff meeting is our chance. I can kill the admirals, Valdar. Ibarra will replace them with procedurals. All loyal to us.”

  “And the Ruhaald fleet at high anchor?”

  “I’ll see that they’re blamed for the attack. The Ruhaald won’t be a problem for much longer.”

  Howlett narrowed his eyes at her. “How does this involve me?”

  “I need explosives, enough to take out a room with a hundred people. Remote detonators…and no trail between us.” Shannon removed a pen from her pocket and used it to sign a messy signature on Howlett’s data slate. She let him keep the pen when she handed both objects back to him.

  “Locker 97. Spaceport Terminal G,” she said. “Drop the munitions off then take the poison before you leave the port. It will look like you were trying to flee the planet and chose death instead. The toxin is painless and quick.”

  “For the Naroosha,” Howlett said.

  “Your service will be remembered.” Shannon shifted out of the sublingual and scolded Howlett for the delay to the reconstruction efforts before she left.

  ****

  Captain Valdar scrolled through an engineering report and frowned. The replacement battery stacks’ efficiency ratings had gone down for the third day in a row. He typed out a terse text message to his chief engineer and pawed a hand over his desk, searching for a cold cup of coffee as he kept his eyes glues to the data slate.

  The ventral rail gun batteries still wouldn’t traverse a full 360 degrees. Valdar took a sip of the stale sludge that passed for coffee on his ship and contemplated just how big of a metaphorical stick he’d use to beat Utrecht before he got the battery fully mission-capable.

  There was a knock at his ready-room door.

  “Enter.” Valdar didn’t bother looking up as the door opened and shut with a hiss. His brow furrowed at a logistics report. A discrepancy on cargo weight from the Breitenfeld to Phoenix. Over a hundred kilograms of mass had somehow vanished while a Mule was in transit. One Private First Class Standish was on the manifest. This wasn’t the first time he’d noticed Standish connected to such discrepancies.

  A throat cleared.

  Hale stood in front of the desk, his face turned away from Valdar.

  “Ken? I-I didn’t know you were back aboard.” Valdar set the data slate aside.

  “I’m a big boy now, Uncle Isaac,” Hale said. “Amazing how many fires I have to stomp out as a company commander. I imagine it’s worse for you and an entire ship.”

  Emotion welled up in Valdar’s chest. Hale hadn’t called him “uncle” since the Marine learned that his godfather had manipulated him during the Toth negotiations. Their relationship had been icy ever since.

  “You want to sit down?” Valdar motioned to a chair covered by a fresh jumpsuit. “I’ve got…” he said, looking through his desk drawers and pulling out a pair of silver-wrapped ration bars, “nothing worth offering. Sorry.”

  Hale folded the jumpsuit over an armrest and sat. He bent forward, elbows resting on his knees.

  “Did you hear what happened on Earth? Outside Phoenix?” Hale asked.

  “Something about Ruhaald attacking an outpost. I had my own share of issues with them in orbit.”

  “I was on the Crucible when you brought the Mars fleet through the gate.” Hale looked up and gave Valdar a half smile. “That was...satisfying to watch. The Naroosha didn’t last long.”

  “They got a few hits in. They never answered our demands to surrender like the Ruhaald did and their ships didn’t leave much for us to salvage like the Toth. Something tells me that’s not why you’re here, son.”

  “No.” Hale shook his head. “In Phoenix, right after we killed the Xaros general and the Ruhaald parked themselves over our heads, I thought I’d found Jared.” Hale recounted the rescue mission to the firebase outside Phoenix where he’d found a procedurally generated officer made to look and sound just like his absent brother. It took him a few tries to describe Lieutenant Bolin’s fate.

  “I…we never got to say good-bye to Jared,” Ken said. “He joined the colony mission to Terra Nova while we were stuck out in the void. He told me he wanted to go accomplish something. I think all this—” he shook his head quickly, “attention I’m getting for the Toth and the war got to him.”

  “Now he’s out there doing great
things. Building a new home for humanity,” Valdar said.

  “And I’m the star of a movie I still haven’t seen.”

  “Your father and I used to talk dad stuff all the time,” Valdar said. “My boys were a bit younger than you two, but a lot of the same lessons applied. You know what your dad used to say about you two? That you were always competing against each other. Jared won a science fair and then you worked extra hard to win a diving trophy. You went for armor selection and Jared just had to be the honor graduate from his combat engineering course.”

  “Really? I never saw it like that.”

  “Parents know, Ken. We always know. Your father let it go on—every dad wants to see his kids do well. He said at some point the two of you would realize you have to live your own lives, by your own terms. Jared finally decided it was his time.”

  “I just wanted to say good-bye,” Hale said. “When I saw him lying there dead…not him…but I won’t ever have that chance now. Mom and Dad are gone. Xaros took them. I can accept that. With Jared it just feels unfair.”

  Hale looked up, a tear running down his face. “You and Jared were all I have left from the old world. He’s gone and then I pushed you away.”

  “No, son, that’s my fault,” Valdar said. “I put ideals before family. You know what? Someday this’ll all end. I’ll put the uniform away and then what will I have if I don’t have you? I may have screwed up, but you’re still my godson. Can you forgive me for that mess with the Toth?”

  “You left my ass on Pluto.”

  “I was going to come back!” Valdar tossed his hands in the air. “Mars was screaming for help. Then Earth. Then the damn Ruhaald stabbed us in the back. By then you were already home.”

  Hale chuckled. “I saw all the equipment on the flight deck. Something big’s coming, I can feel it. I’d rather we be on…good terms before it plays out. I forgive you for what happened with the Toth.”

  Valdar stood up and came around the desk. Hale stood up and the two shared a quick hug.

  “We’ve got each other again,” Valdar said. “I promise to keep it that way.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Isaac. Whatever comes next,” Hale said, “we’ve got to win this thing. Nothing else matters if we lose.”

  Chapter 6

  Shannon held a hand over her eyes to shield them from the too-strong sun bearing down on her. She shuffled forward with dozens of other men and women in a mishmash of uniforms and incomplete flight suits down a ramp from the Destrier that had brought them all to the Phoenix spaceport.

  The smell of unwashed bodies came with a gust of wind. Specks of sand bounded across the tarmac as Shannon’s hair whipped around her face.

  The poor weather, for Phoenix, was a welcome relief from the holding cell aboard the Ruhaald ships. The aliens found her drifting in space, mere minutes of air remaining before asphyxiation would have ended her life. Her attempt to infiltrate another section of the Crucible with a trio of Marines had run into an unexpected problem when she’d missed her stop at the dome where the Crucible housed the omnium reactor.

  She’d spent a long time in the void before being rescued, having decided not to activate her emergency beacons for fear of attracting the Ruhaald. How she ended up in space so close to the Crucible would beg a number of unfortunate questions, questions that would lead to the Marines she’d broken out of the alien’s brig and the one Marine with the skills to reconnect the Crucible to the fleet locked down around the moon. That humanity seized control of the station and that Phoenix wasn’t a radioactive hole in the ground told her that the mission succeeded without her.

  Accepting death to ensure a mission, especially one so vital, hadn’t bothered her. She’d spent her final hours contemplating what she’d seen in a procedural crèche and what it meant. There was another…her. Perfect down to the Caesarian section scars and long-healed bullet wounds. Part of her, the rational espionage agent, accepted that Ibarra wanted to keep an agent of her training and caliber at hand. Another part hated the holographic monster for such callous disdain. Having a replacement in the wings meant Ibarra had the option to discard her—any iteration of her—on a whim.

  There, floating in the vacuum, as her space suit’s life-support systems began failing, Shannon decided she wanted to live her own life. On her own terms. Then, the Ruhaald appeared and scooped her out of space.

  The aliens hadn’t interrogated her or demanded anything more than her name and if she required medical care. Given how different the amphibian species was from humans, Shannon was glad her needs stopped at a life-sustaining environment. What could a Ruhaald doctor do for her—besides open her up like a frog and marvel at her biology?

  She’d spent days in a Ruhaald holding cell, alone. The smell of low tide and antiseptic still clung to her. She’d subsisted on damaged food packs that must have been pulled from a wrecked human warship and contemplated a new life away from Ibarra. Then word came that she’d be repatriated to Earth.

  “All freed prisoners of war please continue on to the debriefing room,” said a captain standing on a small stage, her voice amplified through speakers. She pointed to a flag-draped doorway across the tarmac.

  A group of civilians clustered around the doorway, clapping and smiling. They passed out cups of juice and small flags to the returnees as they passed. Shannon knew the old repatriation game; she’d gone through it several times over the course of her career. Beyond the doors would be a series of speeches from very concerned high-ranking officers and chaplains, promises of time off with family…then a DNA scan followed by a very collegial sit-down with an intelligence officer to identify any enemy sympathizers or collaborators among the freed POWs.

  Shannon didn’t have time for such pedestrian concerns, especially ones that could alert Ibarra to the fact that she was still alive.

  She stepped through the doorway and into a hangar full of empty chairs and an even bigger stage. Ibarra security robots formed a cordon to the seats, blocking off doorways and a hallway leading to a small enclosure within the hangar. She squeezed past a pair of haggard-looking Marines who had their eyes locked on a buxom woman clapping her hands on the stage and she went to a security robot, tilting her face up so the machine’s optics could see her face.

  Instead of gently escorting her back into line, the robot swung aside and let her pass. Every Ibarra security system came with overrides tuned to her biometric profile, something she’d take advantage of to slip away.

  A door to a locker room opened at her touch and she darted inside. She waited a few seconds, listening for anyone that followed or took notice of her escape. After a minute, she found a locker with a set of clothes her size. Leaving the wire-mesh door slightly ajar, she went to the showers, stripping her space suit off along the way.

  ****

  Shannon carried her tray of spaghetti and meatballs to a table against a far wall of the spaceport’s food court. Her instincts demanded she sit with her back to the wall and facing the entrance to keep track of anyone and everyone that decided this was the time for bland Italian fare.

  Sniffing at her steaming plate, she felt her mouth water. The smell of under-seasoned tomato sauce was ambrosia compared to the days of nutrient paste. She sat down and gave the wad of money in a front pocket a reassuring pat. Cash came back in vogue after the great crash of ’37 wiped out financial data across the planet; trust in debit cards and electronic fund transfer hadn’t. She’d pickpocketed a half-dozen unsuspecting travelers in the spaceport and now had enough to live on for at least a week.

  As she dipped a hunk of stale garlic bread into the red sauce and took a bite, she slipped a stolen Ubi from another pocket and pressed her palm against the screen. Lifting the occasional wallet would keep her fed, but staying in Phoenix for too long ran the risk of Ibarra learning she was still alive.

  Her palm print overrode the device’s security and it came to life, connecting to the local networks anonymously. The city’s networks would automatically erase all trace of he
r passing. Working for Ibarra had its perks.

  Shannon opened the personnel management dashboard for the city and glanced at a holo with departure times: shuttles to warships in orbit, transports bound for the outer planets, a science vessel bound for Sedna. With only a few edits to a file marked “recently deceased,” she could take up a new life and go to any place in the solar system with a new identity. The path of destruction left by the Xaros threw the entire system into turmoil. No doubt there were plenty of people who’d been mistakenly listed as dead who were now trying to convince the personnel system that the rumors of their death were greatly exaggerated.

  The thought of actual freedom kindled something in her heart that she hadn’t felt for years…hope. She decided on Europa and found a dead computer technician whose skills would be needed.

  A squat man walked into view just beyond the glass wall surrounding the restaurant. Judging by the way he walked, the small case in his right hand must have been heavy. He walked quickly, his gaze focused on a trash can in front of a Chinese fast-food kiosk. Shannon watched as he brushed past the can…and left a white slash against the rim with a piece of chalk.

  Shannon’s glimmer of hope turned into a shard of fear. The man with the case just made a dead-drop signal, a bit of spy craft centuries old. The man had something important to deliver and the mark meant he was certain he wasn’t under surveillance. She knew…because that was a technique she’d used before with her contacts in Phoenix.

  But I’m dead and I’ve never seen him before. Shannon pushed her tray away. Why is he signaling me? I’m dead…but that thing I saw in the crèche…

  Shannon got to her feet and made for the exit. Her mind raced as she tried to grasp that the other Shannon was active and could be nearby ready to pick up the dead drop. What was it doing here? What did it want with that man?