Earth Defiant (The Ember War Saga Book 4) Read online

  Earth Defiant

  The Ember War Saga Book 4

  by

  Richard Fox

  Copyright © by Richard Fox

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

  ASIN: B015O2J9HI

  For Gordon

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  EMBER WAR SHORT STORIES

  An Excerpt from THE GARDENS OF NIBIRU

  CHAPTER 1

  The Toth evolved from pack hunters. The smaller, fast-breeding and less intelligent members of the race cooperated with larger warriors to run down the sauropods of their swampy home world. The smaller Toth were always expendable, herded beneath the feet of larger creatures to distract them from a striking warrior, or used as bait to lure out the larger predators when a pack leader desired something more unusual for dinner.

  The fleet in high orbit over Neptune held to the pack mentality. Dozens of ships ranging from destroyers to battle cruisers waited in high orbit. The warriors in command of each ship understood their place; they were servants to a larger master.

  Hidden within the icy strata of Neptune’s methane clouds, a leviathan lurked.

  ****

  A golden sun sunk through bands of red and ochre, its mottled reflection shimmering against the horizon of the Pacific Ocean. Two Marines sat on a boulder lapped by ocean waves, watching the sun’s final moments of the day. Puffs of water vapor billowed out to sea on the evening breeze from their e-cigarettes.

  “Ain’t this something?” Lance Corporal Standish asked. He took a deep breath from his vape stick and closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly as off-white fog exhaled from his nose. “No Xaros drones chasing after us. No insane horde of banshees trying to rip us limb from limb. No—”

  “No peace and quiet,” Bailey said. She stood barely even with the other Marine’s shoulder, her long black hair pulled tight into a bun on the back of her head. She tugged a sleeve of her service khakis away from her wrist and glanced at her watch.

  Standish drew in a quick breath to say something else, but Bailey grabbed his arm and he took the hint to stay quiet. Her face, bathed in the final golden rays of the sun, spoke of emotions roiling inside her. One corner of her lip twitched, wavering between a half smile and a frown. A tear glinted from her eyes. Bailey swiped a forearm across her face, leaving a stony countenance in its wake.

  “Sorry…” Standish said.

  “It’s not you. I’m just being a sook,” the Australian Marine said. “Just thinking about everyone who’s not here to see this with us.”

  Torni. She’s still hung up on her, Standish thought. Torni had stayed behind on the planet Takeni, giving up her spot on the last evacuation shuttle so more of the alien Dotok civilians, and a few badly wounded Marines that included Bailey, could reach safety. Torni died on Takeni, killed by other Dotok twisted into monsters by the Xaros.

  Standish struggled to find the right words that might help Bailey. Every human being on Earth or in the orbiting fleet had lost loved ones when the Xaros invaded. Less than half a million souls remained. Everyone grieved differently, and in Standish’s experience, it was best to let others volunteer their emotions, not go prying for details.

  Standish waited until the edge of the sun touched the horizon.

  “You ever do a training rotation here on Hawaii? The training area around Pohakuloa?” Standish asked.

  “Did a few low-orbit–low-opening drops off the Poltova to the Big Island,” Bailey said. “Never got to see the place.”

  “I heard there’s some new R&R complex over the hill from the Dotok camps,” Standish said, his voice quickening. “Everybody’s cycling through. Hot chow made by actual chefs, VR domes, fishing trips, white sandy beaches. Whole nine yards.”

  “You asking me on a date, Standish?”

  “No! No, Sarge. Just saying that we, the bloodied and battered Marines of the Breitenfeld, are due our time off the line. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “We can ask Lieutenant Hale about it once he and Gunney Cortaro are back from Phoenix,” she said. “Come on, our bird’s supposed to be wheels up in ten minutes.”

  They walked past the fenced perimeter of the Dotok camps, row upon row of military tents interspersed with sanitation pods. The Dotok refugees mingled between the rows, gawking at the spectacular sunset and wide sky, sights they’d never experienced on Takeni, a colony world where they’d lived at the bottom of deep, narrow canyons.

  Ibarra robots and 3-D printing factories had set up the camp for almost fifty thousand Dotok within days of their arrival, which was not a moment too soon. The ancient generation ship they’d escaped in, the Canticle of Reason, was falling to pieces in orbit.

  “What’re we going to do with them?” Standish asked, nodding his head toward the fence.

  “Above my pay grade,” Bailey said with a shrug. “Maybe they’ll fix their damn ship and help us fight the Xaros when the drones come back.”

  “Doesn’t seem like too much to ask. We did save their bacon back on Takeni,” Standish said.

  “You hear why we dropped them all on Hawaii instead of Phoenix with all the other civilians?” Bailey asked.

  They stepped onto a concrete tarmac and walked toward a Mule transport. Light spilled from the interior down the lowered ramp.

  “Beats me. Titan Station locked down the Breitenfeld’s commo soon as we came back through the Crucible. I haven’t heard a word from my contacts—I mean friends—in Phoenix,” Standish said. The young Marine was part of the “Lance Corporal Mafia,” a suborganization of the larger Marine Corps since the United States Marines formed at Tun Tavern a little over three centuries ago, and he had an ear for gossip and rumors.

  The Mule’s pilot, Jorgen, sat at the bottom of the ramp, his forearms resting on his knees. He squinted at the Marines as they neared, struggling to make them out in the twilight.

  “You’re on time,” Jorgen said. “But there’s a problem. Damn plane’s broken.”

  “Broken? We came down just fine half an hour ago with a load of orphans,” Bailey said. “How is it broken?”

  “Well,” Jorgen said as he stood up and stretched, “my crew chief found out there’s a mess hall just through there.” He pointed to a lit path cut into the jungle beyond the landing pad. “And they’re serving chow right now. Real chow. Not the rehydrated emergency hardtack the galley’s been feeding us for the last six weeks. Turns out, the Mule’s computer core took a dump and we’ve got to wait at least two hours for it to reboot.”

  “Oh…that kind of broken,” Standish said.

  “Damned shame, lowest bidders and all that. Let’s eat,” Jorgen said.

  ****

  The mess hall was a man-made cavern, plastic sheeting stretched across a metal frame large enough to enclose an entire football field. Hundreds of Marines, black-uniformed Aerospace Corps men and women, soldiers and sailors lined up at serving stations. More crowded around banks of coolers holding canned drinks before they found an open seat at the long tabl
es to sit down and eat.

  Standish and Bailey, each holding trays of steaming food, watched in awe as the mess hall seethed with activity.

  Standish glanced at the shoulder patches on passing sailors’ uniforms: Ottawa, Eylau, Crimea.

  “Sarge,” Standish said, pointing to a sailor sitting at the end of a table, laughing at a joke lost in the din, “that guy’s on the Tucson.”

  “So?”

  “Xaros blew the Tucson to pieces. Saw it with my own eyes,” Standish said. “The girl across from him? Her patch says she’s on the Ticonderoga.”

  “Only twenty-two ships survived the attack on Ceres. Not one of them was named the Ticonderoga,” Bailey said.

  “I know.”

  “Let’s just eat, OK? We’ve been gone awhile. Things can change.” She led Standish to a pair of open seats and sat down, keeping her eyes on her tray as she ate, and not the crowd around her.

  “Holy—Sarge, there’s five officers over there with Midway patches.” Standish had gone pale. “Midway went down in the mountains south of Phoenix. There’s no way it’s back in service so soon. The crew complement on that super carrier was almost nineteen thousand squids. Did they empty out half the fleet to-to-to…”

  “Standish,” Bailey hissed as she leaned toward him. “Eat. Your. Food.”

  “How long have we been gone?” Standish whispered. “I was on the Breit when we had that flash of light and—” he snapped his fingers “thirty or so years gone just like that. What if every time we jumped to Anthalas and Takeni, we lost a bunch of time?”

  “Look at your forearm screen. It should’ve connected to the local network and auto set to the local time and date,” Bailey said. She waited for Standish to check the screen on his arm. The Marine’s brow furrowed in deep confusion.

  “We didn’t do the time warp again,” Standish said. “Then…who the hell are all these people?”

  The lights across the mess hall dimmed several times and silence fell across the crowd.

  A naval officer, with the physique of a champion mountain climber and red hair pulled into a bun behind her head, climbed atop the banks of freezers in the middle of the hall, the four stars of a full admiral’s rank on her shoulder boards. A petty officer tossed her a megaphone.

  “Eighth Fleet.” The megaphone whined with feedback as her words boomed through the mess hall. “This is Admiral Makarov. I hate to do this to you, but all shore leave is cancelled effective immediately.” There were a few grumbles from the crowd, all quickly silenced by sharp words from chief petty officers and gunnery sergeants.

  “There is a threat, an alien race called the Toth, on course to Earth,” Makarov said. “I’ll give you a complete briefing as soon as I can. Now…I want every last one of you to return to your barracks. You’ll muster for transport back to your ships in the next few hours.” She lowered the megaphone and shouted her next words.

  “Who are we?”

  “Eighth Fleet!” thundered hundreds of voices.

  “Who are we?”

  “Dragon slayers!” Hoots and cheers followed.

  Standish and Bailey traded a look, both too stunned to say anything.

  Makarov lifted the bullhorn to her mouth. “That’s right. And we’re going to make these Toth regret ever setting foot, or claw, or whatever alien filth they have, in our solar system. I’ve got six more mess halls to get to. You have your orders.”

  The admiral tossed the megaphone to an aide and jumped off her improvised stage, rolling through her landing with the grace of an acrobat, then striding through a gap between tables toward open doors.

  A group of sailors stood up from the tables and made for the doors, buffeting around Standish and Bailey like they were rocks in the middle of a stream.

  “Hey, Sarge. I thought Admiral Garret was the only flag grade officer left in the fleet,” Standish said.

  “I think you remember right.” Bailey tossed her fork onto her plate of spaghetti and meatballs and sighed.

  “Then where did Admiral Makarov come from?” Standish asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s get back to the Breit before things get any weirder.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Captain Valdar sat with his fists balled against his lap, his back straight and his entire body tense. Pictures of Toth starships lay across Admiral Garret’s teak wood desk, dozens of pearl-hued vessels dotted with jagged crystal weapon emplacements.

  Valdar had sparred with a single Toth cruiser above the skies of Anthalas. The…thing in command of the alien ship, nothing but a disembodied nervous system floating in a tank, had taken some of his crew hostage and demanded Valdar surrender the secret to the “false minds and weed bodies” of the humans the Toth overlords had discovered when they feasted on their human prisoners.

  Valdar, clueless to what the Toth spoke of, had launched his own investigation and discovered that some of his crewmen had very young bodies, only a few months old, but each of those with “weed bodies” had no inkling of what they truly were. He’d kept his findings close to his chest, waiting for the day he could share this disturbing news with one of the few men he trusted, Admiral Garret.

  But the Admiral knew. He knew and he seemed to accept these abominations without a second thought. Valdar wanted to scream at the admiral, demand to know just why such a thing should be tolerated.

  “Ibarra’s probe detected their wormhole a few days ago,” Garret said. “They sat in space just beyond Neptune’s orbit, then set course for Earth. They didn’t say a word to us until you—and that damn big Dotok ship—came through the Crucible. We got lucky with your arrival. You made it look like we’ve got an entire fleet of reinforcements on the other side of that wormhole. Makes the Toth want to negotiate for what they want instead of just killing us for it.”

  “And what do they want?” Valdar asked, even though he knew the answer.

  “They want the tech,” Garret said. “They want to make their own procedurally generated humans and they want all our proccies as part of the bargain.”

  A hologram flared to life behind Garret’s desk. A middle-aged man with a full beard formed in the semiopaque light, rendered in shades of blue and white.

  “Sorry to intrude,” Marc Ibarra said. “I was just finalizing things with the Toth ambassador.”

  “You want to bring us both up to speed?” Garret asked.

  “We’re set for a summit on Europa. One vessel per side. We don’t move past Mars; they don’t move within the orbit of Jupiter,” Ibarra said. Ibarra clapped his holographic hands together, but no sound came. “Welcome back, Captain Valdar. You’ve been very busy since I saw you last. Making new friends on Anthalas, taking a detour on your way home to bring back Dotok like they were stray puppies. At least you brought back the omnium reactor—not in time to do any good against the Toth, mind you.”

  “What are you talking about? A summit?” Valdar asked.

  “The Toth want to negotiate a deal. Rather nice of them to be diplomatic instead of just trying to kill us all,” Ibarra said.

  “Those monsters,” Valdar said, rising to his feet, “they murdered my crew and ate their minds. They think we’re nothing but meat and you think they really want to treat us as equals? To talk?”

  “Not at all,” Garret said. “I’ve had several long talks with our Karigole advisors, Kosciusko and Rochambeau, about their experience with the Toth. You’re aware of what the Toth did to them, correct? The Toth, when they were still part of the Bastion Alliance, showed up to the Karigole home world under the guise of helping modernize the Karigole military. As soon as the Karigole began to trust them, the Toth wrecked the entire planet’s defenses in a move that made Pearl Harbor look like a low-budget fireworks show.”

  “Then the Toth consumed the entire Karigole population,” Valdar said. “Steuben, he’s on my ship. He told me.”

  “We’re not going to give the Toth the same chance,” Ibarra said.

  “Then why are we bothering to negotiate?” Valdar a
sked.

  Garret sniffed and put his hands on his desk. A fingertip touched the edge of a data slate and called up a picture from a void dry dock, a half-built human assault cruiser held within an encompassing framework. Garret shifted the photo side to side.

  “We need more time,” Garret said. “We’ve been on a shipbuilding spree since you left for Anthalas. Ibarra’s new and improved construction robots can turn out a new ship in record time. Even got the Midway back into service, but a ship without a crew is pretty useless.”

  “The clones,” Valdar said, “you’re growing more of them.”

  “The proccies are a procedurally generated consciousness inside a flash-grown body. They’re not ‘clones,’ my good captain,” Ibarra said. “Don’t insult my handiwork with such a pedestrian, and inaccurate, label.”

  “You two can split hairs later,” Garret said. “But, yes. We need more time. A few more days and we’ll have the manpower to fully crew Twelfth Fleet. If we have to take on the entire Toth fleet now…” He shook his head.

  Valdar remained silent. The hum of Ibarra’s hologram droned through the room.

  “Why don’t we just give them what they want?” Valdar asked. “Give them the proccies. The tech. We can find another way to beat the Xaros when they return. Diluting who we are as a species to almost nothing with the proccies is no different from being wiped away by the Xaros.”

  Ibarra’s hologram wavered with static as his face contorted in anger.

  “I’ve been playing the long game since the day that probe landed in the desert,” Ibarra said. “You think I’m going to put everything at risk over your…your ethical objections? The proccies are the plan, Valdar.”

  Ibarra crossed his arms and looked to Garret.

  “Why are we bothering with this?” Ibarra asked the admiral. “Promote his XO and send the Breitenfeld to Europa. Get the ball rolling.”

  Garret slammed a palm against his desk. He snapped to his feet and jabbed a finger into—and through—Ibarra’s holographic chest.