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

  Hale jumped from the pod and into the heat of a Phoenix summer. He felt his armpits and forehead slicken with sweat as he fished his cap from a pocket and slid it onto his head. Hot wind sent grains of sand skittering down the roadway. The tick tick tick of the sand mingled with the almost silent hum of idling vehicles.

  The burr of a warning buzzer came from the abandoned pod as Cortaro climbed out.

  “Sir, somebody’s going to be pissed you broke that pod,” Cortaro said.

  “What’re they going to do? Dock my pay? Our Mule back to the ship is supposed to be wheels up in forty-five minutes,” Hale said. “Can you run on that new leg?”

  “Might as well find out,” Cortaro said with a grin.

  Hale took off at a jog. Cortaro kept up, but he hadn’t run since Steuben blew the leg off to save the Marine from the Toth claws impaled through his shin. Hale kept the pace slow and deliberate as they made for the off-ramp.

  “Hey, L-T!” Hale glanced over his shoulder and saw Sergeant Orozco, his strike team’s heavy gunner, waving to him from the tiny open window of a cargo truck. Hale skidded to a stop.

  “Orozco? What’re you still doing down here?” Hale asked.

  “I’m about to put down roots, that’s what,” Orozco said. “Me and big guy went to pick up a part as a specialist fabricator. Caught a ride back in this truck, but we’ve been sitting here for an hour waiting for this show to get back on the road.”

  “Get out. Follow me,” Hale said.

  “The damn door’s bolted shut,” Orozco said. The Spaniard cocked his head back to whoever he shared the cab with and nodded. Orozco ducked back into the cab and a moment later the door distended outward with a whump. A second blow sent the door flying off the hinges and clattering to the ground.

  Steuben’s clawed hands grabbed the doorframe and swung him out of the truck. The Karigole picked up the battered door and tossed it into the cab once Orozco was clear.

  “Steuben, you’re finally learning how to be a Marine,” Cortaro said.

  “One does not accept obstacles when given an order,” Steuben said. The alien’s yellow eyes ran up and down Cortaro’s new leg. “You are whole?”

  “Whole enough to get back in the fight. Don’t think I’m not pissed about you blowing a chunk off me.” Cortaro pointed the tip of his peg at Steuben’s chest. “I’m also grateful you saved my life.”

  “These emotions are in contradiction,” Steuben said.

  “I’m a complex man,” Cortaro said.

  “Girls,” Hale said, “you can hug it out once we’re back on the ship. Let’s go, double time.”

  ****

  The four jogged down the off-ramp, and then Hale ran to the side of the other column. His eyes darted along the road as it curved beneath the highway, over decrepit buildings that looked even worse for wear than he’d remembered.

  The suburb of Chandler, just outside the spaceport, used to be the industrial section of the city, and the long decades of neglect during humanity’s absence weren’t kind. Caved-in roofs and collapsed walls made the once seedy section of town look like a felled tree rotting in the forest.

  New double walls of fences topped with razor wire surrounded the spaceport, their smooth chrome finish glittering in the sunlight.

  A giant mass of people clustered around the main entrance, and rows of them blocked the road leading through a four-lane gate as they swayed to a chant that Hale could barely hear. Travel pods and cargo trucks were backed up bumper-to-bumper from the crowd on either side of the gate.

  “So that’s the hold up,” Orozco huffed.

  “Lieutenant Hale, can you explain this behavior?” Steuben asked.

  Hale slowed to a walk and the rest followed suit.

  “It looks…like a protest,” Hale said. More and more people filtered through the ramshackle buildings beyond the spaceport and joined the protest.

  “Humans will gather in large numbers to air grievances?” Steuben asked.

  “That’s our custom. What do the Karigole do when a group is upset like this?” Hale asked.

  “Ritual duels between champions,” Steuben said.

  “That does not surprise me. At all,” Orozco said.

  Steuben cocked his head to the side. “Why are they chanting ‘True born for Earth’ and ‘Proccies out’?” The Karigole’s senses were a good deal more sensitive than his human allies, a trait that had saved lives on more than one occasion.

  “‘Proccies’? That’s the second time I’ve heard that today,” Hale said, “and I still don’t know what it means.” He put his hands on his hips and peered into the crowd. “That gate’s the only way in or out. Anyone see service uniforms in that mess?”

  The other Marines and Steuben shook their heads.

  “We might not be real welcome down there,” Cortaro said.

  “You think Steuben’s the proccie they’re talking about?” Orozco jabbed a thumb at the Karigole.

  “The last four of us are in this solar system. Our presence and involvement has been overt from the beginning. I even gave an interview to a journalist,” Steuben said. “There is a group of humans cutting into the fence.”

  Hale scanned along the fence line until he found a small knot of protestors huddled around the chain-linked wall. Another group, all carrying signs, stood between those cutting their way in and the guards posted at the main gate.

  They set up a screen, Hale thought. There’s more to this than some mass of angry people.

  “Your security is lax for such an important facility,” Steuben said.

  “The fence is supposed to keep coyotes and other wild animals out, not determined people,” Hale said. “But we can use this to our advantage. We’ll piggyback and get in that way. If security shows up, they should let us in.” He found a street without much of a presence leading to the saboteurs.

  “I’ve got a route. Not too many people on it,” said Hale, looking at Steuben, “but we bring you down there and I doubt anyone’ll be happy to see you.”

  Steuben pulled on a necklace chain of spun wire and fished out a crystal, set into an intricate mesh of gold and platinum. He pressed the medallion to his chest and light curved around his body. Steuben vanished with a slight pop.

  “My refractor field will hold,” Steuben’s disembodied voice said, “so long as I do not move too quickly or come into contact with anyone.”

  “I saw you use that in Tucson,” Cortaro said. “Why’ve you kept that hidden until now?”

  “The field gives off an enormous energy signature,” Steuben said, his voice moving down the ramp. “Any advanced civilization, like the Xaros and Toth, can detect it easily. The human eye is easily fooled.”

  The saboteurs cut through the first row of fencing and moved on to the next.

  “Let’s hurry,” Hale said.

  ****

  Hale scrambled over a crumbling wall and rushed across the remains of a convenience store in a low crouch. His hands twitched, aching for the familiar heft of a weapon. Trying to infiltrate through the ruined neighborhood without his usual panoply of graphene-reinforced ceramic armor, strength-boosting pseudo muscles and IR communications made him feel like he was missing a part of himself.

  Marines didn’t need all those bells and whistles in Korea or Vietnam, he thought. Neither do I.

  A pack of protestors ran past the convenience store, whistling and shouting, “True born for Earth!”

  “Sir.” Cortaro knelt against the wall beside Hale. “What’re our rules of engagement?”

  “I don’t know if these guys are a bunch of shitheads who’ll give us trouble or not, but we’ve got the right to self-defense. We’re here to get back to the Breitenfeld, not pick a fight with the people we’re supposed to protect,” Hale said. “So don’t pick a fight.”

  Pulverized concrete puffed around Steuben’s large footprints. The air shimmered slightly as the cloaked alien approached.

  “They’re through the second gate,” Steuben said. “A small
group ran into a nearby building, but the rest are just standing outside the perimeter waving their arms.”

  Hale took a slow breath, trying to cover his indecisiveness with a mask of calm. Trying to stop a mob armed with nothing but his fists and a few good Marines wouldn’t end well for any of them, but if the infiltrators had bombs or firearms, they could do immeasurable damage in the spaceport.

  He glanced at his forearm screen—still no contact with the local network and that meant no contact with the spaceport’s security forces.

  “What kind of building was it?” Hale asked.

  “Barracks,” Steuben said.

  “They’re going to kidnap someone?” Orozco asked.

  Hale stood up and crammed his cap into a pocket. He unzipped his fatigue top and shrugged it off his shoulders. “Turn your uniform tops inside out. That could buy us a couple seconds before they realize we might be what they’re after. Steuben, can you clear us a path?”

  “My cloak could fail,” he said.

  “Get us through the second fence line. After that, we’re gravy,” Hale said.

  “Gravy?”

  “Just go. I’ll explain later,” Hale said.

  Once his Marines had modified their uniforms, their tops now showing dull gray fabric instead of the desert-pattern camouflage, they followed Hale out of the building. Cortaro kept his peg-leg club held flush against his arm.

  The crowd’s attention focused on the main gate, where lights atop security vehicles flashed in the midday heat.

  Hale made a beeline for the breach in the fence. Protestors, men and women in Ibarra Corp overalls and a few in civilian mufti, murmured as he slipped past them. He was ten yards from the gate when the first cry went out behind him.

  Two large men in spacer overalls stood flush with the hole in the fence. One held his hand out to Hale.

  “Hey!” The guard’s challenge sent a hush through the nearby protestors. “What do you think you’re—” The guard jerked to the side as unseen hands tossed him through the air. He slammed to the ground and rolled like a log dropped from a moving truck.

  The other guard stared on, dumbfounded. The air in front of him shivered and a shove sent him into the dirt.

  Hale ducked into the hole and continued on through the other fence. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw Orozco and Cortaro right behind him. None of the protestors chose to follow them into the spaceport.

  “Sir, look at that,” Orozco said, pointing to the barracks.

  Three men hustled a soldier out of the building, shoving and kicking him toward the breach in the fence. Hale changed direction and ran toward the soldier, who wore black and gray urban camouflage fatigues and stood head and shoulders over his captors.

  “How’d they take that guy without a fight?” Cortaro asked.

  “Let’s go ask them,” Hale said. He stepped up his pace into a full run.

  The captors came to a stop. One with a thick black beard that reached down to the middle of his chest punched the soldier in the kidneys and stomped the soldier’s feet until he came to a stop. The soldier, who didn’t show any sign that the strikes hurt him, held his head low.

  “That’s close enough,” the bearded man said to Hale. He reached a hand behind his back and kept it there.

  Hale slowed to a stop and raised his hands.

  “What’s going on here?” Hale asked.

  “We’re taking this freak to trial, that’s what,” said a lanky captor with pitted skin. “You true born or you proccie?”

  “He’s military, got to be a proccie,” the third said.

  “I don’t know what the hell you guys are talking about,” Hale said. “But I know you’re not taking that soldier anywhere.”

  The soldier raised his head. His face was thick boned, a countenance so atavistic it was almost Neanderthal. His skin was a mottle of copper and green hues. Dull eyes sparkled to life as he recognized Hale’s uniform.

  Hale took a step back. “What’d you do to him?”

  “‘Do to him?’ They make them like this,” the bearded captor said. “You know what? I don’t have time for this.” He pulled his hand from behind his back and brandished a pistol. The weapon wasn’t a military-grade gauss pistol, but a crude lump of 3-D printed polymers, a ghost gun popular with revolutionaries and criminals ever since that particular technological genie had been loosed from its bottle and spread over the Internet. Homemade guns weren’t accurate or reliable, but they could kill just the same.

  “Now you jarhead proccies get out of our way before I get antsy.” The bearded man held the gun up in the air. When Hale and the other Marines didn’t move, he lowered the weapon toward Hale.

  The man’s arm halted in the air, then shook as the gunman strained to move.

  “What the—” The bearded man’s forearm snapped in half with a sickening crunch. He howled in agony as broken bones tore through his skin and blood spurted from the compound fracture. Red droplets sprayed into the air, sticking against Steuben’s shimmering outline.

  Steuben’s cloak collapsed. The Karigole held the screaming man’s broken arm in his grasp. Steuben bared double rows of pointed teeth at the bearded man, whose cries of pain shifted to terror as he tried to yank his arm away from Steuben.

  The gun fell to the ground, and Steuben released his grip.

  “No hurt!” the soldier roared. He lowered a shoulder and plowed into Steuben. The sudden impact sent Steuben stumbling backwards. A left cross from the soldier’s meaty fists snapped Steuben’s head back. The Karigole fell into a roll and back onto his feet.

  The soldier wailed at Steuben with a haymaker. Steuben ducked under the blow and slammed a fist into the soldier’s stomach. The punch earned a grunt from the soldier, who hammered a fist against the top of Steuben’s head.

  Steuben went down to a knee and swayed out of the way of the soldier’s next blow. Steuben reached an arm behind his back and launched an uppercut that should have knocked a man’s head right off his shoulders. Steuben’s knuckles hit the soldier in the armpit, dislocating the shoulder with a sickening pop.

  The soldier roared and swung his good arm at Steuben. Steuben leaned back just enough to feel the whiff of the soldier’s mottled fist across his face. Steuben snapped a kick into the soldier’s crotch hard enough to knock the soldier’s hips back and his head jutting forward.

  Steuben hooked a punch into the soldier’s jaw. The soldier’s head bobbled on his neck as he looked at Steuben, the lower half of his mouth askew from the rest of his face. The soldier growled, eyes filled with rage as bloody spit bubbled over split lips.

  Steuben hit the soldier in the temple, knocking him to the ground.

  The soldier slammed a hand into the dirt and tried to push himself back up.

  “Indigo! Stand down!” someone shouted. The soldier seemed to relax, but he kept his eyes fixed on Steuben.

  Steuben kept his guard up and turned his claws away from the soldier. Steuben caught a glimpse of Hale with the makeshift weapon, pointing it at the would-be captors. An open-top truck had arrived, carrying a team of armed security robots.

  A Marine in combat armor ran between the two fighters, the name “Hale” stenciled on his breastplate, palms raised to them both.

  “Indigo, are you OK, buddy?” Jared Hale asked the soldier.

  The soldier tried to answer, but his dislocated mouth mangled his words.

  “Fix yourself,” Jared said. Indigo grabbed his jaw and snapped it back into place.

  “Enemy hurt little one,” Indigo said, his words slow and deliberate.

  “Not enemy, Indigo,” Jared said. “Karigole, remember? Karigole are our friends.”

  “Ugly friends,” Indigo said with a nod. The soldier’s face grimaced and he pawed at his dislocated shoulder. “Hurts…”

  Jared grabbed Indigo’s bear paw of a hand and kept it away from the injury.

  “I’m sorry,” Jared said over his shoulder to Steuben. “They’re not conditioned to you yet. H
e saw an alien threat to a human and reacted to his training.”

  “Why didn’t he defend himself from the others?” Steuben asked, still not lowering his guard.

  “They’re loyal. Completely loyal to human beings, incapable of intentionally harming one of us. You…sorry,” Jared said.

  “Indigo bad?” the soldier asked, panic in his voice.

  “No. Indigo you’re a good soldier,” Jared said.

  Hale ran toward them.

  “Steuben, are you OK?” Hale skidded to a halt when he recognized his brother.

  “Jared?”

  “Ken?”

  “What’re you doing here?” they asked in unison.

  “Hold on.” Hale shook his head and pointed at Indigo. “What happened to him?”

  “He’s a doughboy,” Jared said. “Where have you been?” he asked with derision. “Wait, where have you been?”

  “Hale,” Steuben said and both brothers looked at him. “My Hale.”

  “Steuben,” Ken Hale said, “we’ve got a Mule waiting for us on pad ninety-four. Go with Orozco and Cortaro. I’ll catch up.”

  The Karigole backed away from Indigo, not turning from the doughboy until he was a dozen yards away.

  Hale looked over Indigo, who was breathing heavily. Blood dripped from his mouth.

  “The last couple months have been pretty crazy,” Ken said.

  “You don’t say. We need to compare notes later,” Hale said. He wasn’t sure what he’d share with his brother first: the mission to Anthalas, coming face-to-face with the Qa’Resh aliens behind the Alliance against the Xaros drones, or the nightmare on Takeni trying to evacuate civilians in the middle of an invasion.

  “He’s a doughboy, Ken,” Jared said. “Ibarra makes them by the bushel. Command’s trying to figure out how to use them best, so I got assigned a platoon of these meatheads for evaluation. They’re dumber than a sack of hammers, but they can fight like demons. They’re defenseless against the true-born thugs running around Phoenix, which is why they’re all locked up on the spaceport.”

  “Ibarra…makes them?”

  “They’re bio machines, technically. Xaros can’t hack them…Wait, you don’t even know about the proccies, do you?” Jared asked.