The Battle of the Void (The Ember War Saga Book 6) Read online

  “Dragon Slayers,” Makarov said, not fighting a smile as the bridge crew pounded fists against their workstations. “We stand on the precipice of a great task. The Xaros are coming to finish what they started. We, the Eighth Fleet, Earth’s mightiest defenders, will travel to deep space and seed the void with mines. Task Force Scorpion’s graviton mines will slow those metal bastards to a snail’s pace and when the Xaros do finally reach Earth, we will be waiting for them. We will be waiting for them with a star fleet the likes of which humanity have never dreamed of. Then, we will teach them the same lesson we rammed down the Toth’s throat: Earth is ours.

  “Now, we weigh anchor to carry out this great task. We’re not looking for a fight, but if we find the Xaros, not one of them will get past us while we still live. Makarov, out.”

  She closed the channel and pointed two fingers at the conn officer. The Midway shuddered as her engines roared to life. The carrier was the first through the Crucible as the rest of the fleet followed close behind.

  ****

  Makarov pressed the back of her hand against her helmet, but the white light invading her eyes didn’t relent. A whine roared in her ears like a thousand mosquitoes.

  “Conn! What is going on!?” Makarov shouted.

  “This is supposed to be completely normal, ma’am,” Lieutenant Santiago said. “The space-time fissure hasn’t resolved because we’ve got so many ships coming through—”

  “How much longer?”

  The whine and blinding light faded away together. Makarov’s command crew touched their helmets, eager to rub eyes and ears after the assault.

  “That was damn miserable,” she grumbled. “I feel bad for Valdar.”

  Makarov pulled up a screen from her armrest. A list of her ships with unlit red and green lights popped up. Green lights filled the board as her fleet came through the wormhole.

  “I want status reports from every ship. Keep to the IR. The fleet is on silent running until I say otherwise,” Makarov said. The vid screens surrounding the bridge showed the void beyond the hull, stars stretched to infinity. “Conn, are we where we’re supposed to be?”

  “Looks that way…pulsar triangulation puts us just outside Barnard’s Star. You can see it on screen two, deep red star to the bottom left of the screen,” Calum pointed.

  Barnard’s Star, a mere six light-years from Earth, was invisible to the naked eye from the Earth’s surface. This close, the star looked like a ruddy dot with a fuzzy halo of light around it.

  “What’s wrong with it? The halo?” Makarov asked.

  “Wait one…” Santiago turned his attention to the screens around his workstation. “The team in astrometrics thinks the distortion’s from a comet swarm passing the star or an ice giant broke up somewhere in the solar system.”

  “Barnard’s Star wasn’t like this before we left…the time dilation.” Makarov felt a ribbon of fear unfold in her chest. The light from the star was several years old by the time it reached Earth. Jumping close to it closed the delay from what they saw and what was actually happening to it. She tapped her fingers against her armrest in frustration.

  “Roger, Admiral. On Earth, the Barnard’s Star we saw was years old. We’re a hundred light-hours from the star now, almost real time by astrophysics standards,” Santiago said.

  “Let’s not pretend this is some sort of coincidence,” Calum said. “The Xaros own that star. They must have done something.”

  “I want a full scan on all mathematically possible routes from that star to ours,” Makarov said. “Pull the fleet into a lens formation, front to Barnard’s Star. We stay on combat alert until we’ve got the lay of the land.” She unbuckled her restraints and went to the engineering pod.

  “Status on the jump engines?” she asked.

  “Fully charged, but we can’t jump back to Earth for another twenty-eight hours, ma’am. Our arrival sent a wave of quantum flux through local space-time and the engines can’t—”

  “Twenty-eight hours, thank you,” Makarov said.

  “Ma’am.” Captain Randall, standing next to the conn station, tapped two fingers against his thigh once Makarov turned and looked at him, a signal that something needed her attention immediately.

  “We’ve got a mass shadow on the scope,” he said. Information had a way of leaking off a command bridge and morphing into a rumor. Her staff knew better than to make offhand comments that could metastasize into something that would worry or otherwise distract the crew.

  Makarov tapped a button on her gauntlet and put up a cone of silence around her, just large enough for her, Randall and Santiago. With the bridge at zero-atmo, the three could speak through IR without eavesdroppers.

  “What?” she asked.

  Santiago, his face pale, motioned to a screen with trembling hands. A smooth sphere punctuated by dark circles the size of cities filled the screen, great brass-colored rings around the equator. The pale white surface looked like a black net of thin filaments covered it. The perimeter wall of a great crater surrounded silver doors marred by swirling patterns.

  “That…is not what we’re expecting,” Makarov said. “Ibarra’s probe said the Xaros travel from star to star in a maniple, like a school of fish made up of individual drones. This is…”

  “It’s on course for Earth,” Santiago said. “Mass and circumference are about equal to Luna, accelerating at almost one gravity. Should reach the outer solar system in…four years, maybe add a month for deceleration.”

  “That’s too soon. Way too soon,” Calum said.

  “That’s why we’re out here,” Makarov said. “To slow them down. We could launch every last round of ordnance into that moon and it would make absolutely no difference. But these…” Makarov zoomed in on the brass rings around the moon. “Are they active?”

  “There’s an Alcubierre field around the planetoid, same as we saw on Ceres before the battle,” Santiago said.

  “The graviton mines should rip it away,” Calum said, “in theory. They weren’t designed to counteract something of this magnitude.”

  Communications requests from captains across her fleet popped up on her visor. They saw the same thing she did.

  “Tactical,” Makarov went to her holo table, “any reaction from the Xaros?”

  “Negative, ma’am,” said a commander at the gunner’s station. “At best-known speed, we’re eight hours from contact with the Xaros.”

  “Set fleet to atmo condition amber,” Makarov said. The fleet would re-pressurize, but the crews would remain in their vac suits, ready for an immediate return to combat conditions at a moment’s notice.

  “I want all ship captains on holo conference in ten minutes. We’ll figure this out.”

  Makarov gave a series of commands to the warrant officer manning the holo table. The fleet and the distant Xaros moon floated before her a few seconds later. Her brow knit as a bad thought came to mind. She reached into the tank and zoomed in on the moon until the dark filaments of the net came up, heavily pixelated.

  “Get me a better picture of this,” she said over her shoulder, “now.”

  It took another minute before one of the Midway’s spotters sent up an image from their high-powered telescopes. The pixels smoothed out, revealing the oblong body of a drone, stalks joined to another drone. The net encompassing the moon was nothing but drones. Millions and millions of drones.

  ****

  Holograms of Makarov’s captains joined her around the operations table. All bore serious, stoic expressions, exactly the same mask of command Makarov wore. She didn’t care if each of them were full of doubt and fear, so long as they didn’t show or act like they were influenced by those emotions.

  “Eighth.” Makarov ran a hand through her short hair. “This isn’t what we planned on. This isn’t what we trained for. The Xaros moon, hereby designated Abaddon, is on course for our solar system. We can’t destroy it, but we’re going to figure out how to slow it down or knock it off course so it spends the rest of tim
e plowing through empty space.”

  “Ma’am.” The holo of the captain directly across from Makarov changed into a rail-thin man with a weak chin. Captain Delacroix, the commander of the minelayer task force. “My engineers ran the numbers. It will take almost a full complement of mines from just one of my ships to have any effect on Abaddon’s Alcubierre field.”

  “And will that do any good?” Randall asked from Makarov’s side. “I can cycle the Midway’s Alcubierre drive on and off in hours. I’d bet money the Xaros can do it faster.”

  “The graviton mines are designed to disrupt the warp fields…” Delacroix rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time for the PhD version. Watch.” His holo tapped a screen invisible to Makarov.

  The holo above Makarov’s table distorted into Abaddon, surrounded by a grid shell, a single Abdiel-class vessel in front of it.

  “That grid is the moon’s Alcubierre field. Now watch.” Delacroix hit a button and a mine shot off the rails and exploded. Motes of light hit the shell, to no effect. “One mine is about as good as pissing on a forest fire, excuse my language. But if we…” All the mines exploded and showered the grid. It wavered and fell away.

  “Now,” Delacroix lifted a finger like a college professor, “knocking it down is one thing. Keeping it down is another. A certain graviton density can retard the formation of a new field.” A line of minelayers stretched out from the Xaros moon. Mines shot away from the Abdiel-class ships and filled the space along the moon’s route with graviton particles. “We do this and it will slow their advance by up to fifteen years, even send them off course if we can maintain the effects long enough. I make the assumption that the Xaros can’t make a sharp turn when steering a moon.”

  “What’s the catch?” Makarov asked.

  Delacroix cleared his throat. “I need to set off no fewer than twenty graviton mines within three thousand kilometers of Abaddon’s surface.” The assembled captains shook their heads and mumbled curses under their breath.

  “That’s practically knife-fighting range with the drones wrapped around the surface. You understand that?” Makarov asked.

  “I do, ma’am.” Delacroix raised his chin slightly. “You asked me how to slow it down. This is the only way the math works.”

  “Thank you, Captain. I only ever want the unvarnished truth from any of you.” Makarov swiped a screen and the tactical overlay with the entire fleet returned. “Our next course of action is to destroy the rings—which will take down the field, correct?” she asked Delacroix, who gave her a thumbs-up.

  “The rings around Ceres are of a composite metal that’s a good deal stronger than even our new aegis armor,” Kidson, her chief gunnery officer said. “Ibarra and his probe weren’t real forthcoming about how to wreck the rings—or even the Crucible—should the need arise. Now we’ve got to figure this out on our own.”

  “I don’t know how much damage we have to inflict on the rings,” Delacroix said. “Maybe a single solid hit, maybe we have to break it into a thousand pieces.”

  “So we’re in for some discovery learning,” Makarov said.

  “Ma’am.” Delacroix’s holo shifted to that of a woman with a long braid of red hair, Commander Brantley from the destroyer Halifax. “I’ll take the hit and play devil’s advocate. If we’re in a bad tactical situation, why don’t we return to Earth? Come back with a better solution.”

  “The short answer is ‘we can’t,’” Delacroix said. “That moon creates enough of a dip in space-time that our single jump engine doesn’t have the power to get us all back to Earth. We could all jump away, but then we’d sit in deep space for years waiting for the engines to recharge with dark energy.”

  “I can get the Midway back,” Makarov said, “but I will be goddamned before I leave anyone behind. We knock this thing on its ass and it’ll take us a few months at full burn to get clear of the mass shadow. We’re sending everything we learn back to Earth at light speed. That’ll give them months of warning about what’s coming their way. Succeed or fail.”

  Makarov swiped her touch screen and a new tactical overlay appeared. Her captains leaned in to study. Some crossed their arms in frustration; others nodded slowly.

  “We need information,” Makarov said. “And for that, we’re going to give the hive a good kick.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Hale buckled himself into the turret ball and grabbed the control sticks. He swung the turret through its full range of motion, spinning the Breitenfeld’s flight deck around him.

  “Standish, how’s the dorsal turret?” he said into the IR.

  “Little sticky going past the aft, nothing to worry about, sir,” Standish said. “Can barely move my arms after my hundredth squat thrust into a pull-up but who’s complaneing? Certainly not me. Learned my lesson, I tell you.”

  “We’ve got the armor bolted down,” Cortaro said through Hale’s comms. “Bit tight in here. Let’s hope whatever we’re bringing back isn’t too big.”

  “I’ve got clearance to lift off,” Egan said. “I thought I’d have more time to break in my new co-pilot, but beggars and choosers, right?”

  “Lafayette assured me that my piloting skills are thoroughly adequate,” Orozco said.

  “You hear that everybody?” Standish asked. “He’s adequate.”

  Standish and Cortaro’s icons blinked and entered a private channel.

  “Get us off the deck and engage the cloak, Egan,” Hale said.

  “Roger, sir.”

  The Mule shuddered and rose higher. Hale felt the shuttle jiggle as the landing gear retracted. The hull wavered and faded into nothing as its cloak activated. Hale glanced from side to side. The seemingly absent Mule made him feel like he was almost floating in midair inside the turret ball.

  “Cloak looks good,” Hale said.

  “—Never wear a corporal’s stripes if you don’t—”

  “Cloak good!” Standish said over Cortaro before he switched back to the other channel.

  “Here we go,” Egan said as the Mule accelerated forward. The shuttle passed through the Breitenfeld’s open bay doors moments later. Hale scanned the sky until he found the Crucible; tiny gold flecks imbedded in the thorns twinkled against the wall of stars of the distant galactic arm. He looked back to the ship, but it was gone. Hidden behind its own cloak.

  There, seemingly floating in the vast depths of the void, Hale got a sense of his own importance in the grand scheme of the galaxy, and it felt utterly irrelevant.

  “Cut your forward velocity to zero in eighty-seven seconds,” Malal said.

  “What happens at eighty-eight?” Egan asked.

  “You will smash into the outer hull and not survive the experience. That would complicate my task,” Malal said.

  “Reducing speed,” Egan said.

  Hale felt a slight tug against his restraints as the Mule slowed.

  “Stacey. I don’t see a damned thing out here other than the Crucible,” Hale said. “Are you sure—”

  The vault appeared right in front of the Mule. The outer sphere was enormous, easily a dozen miles wide and far larger than any spaceborne object humanity had ever constructed. Titan Station could have fit in the gaps on the outermost sphere with room to spare. Geometric shapes and swirls played out across the surface.

  “See it?” Stacey asked.

  “Yeah, it’s here all right. How do we get in?” Hale asked.

  “Stop close to the surface, but do not land on it,” Malal said.

  “Roger,” Egan said and the Mule closed on the vault slowly. “I can see it…but it’s not anywhere on my screens. There’s not even a hint of gravity from that thing. I did a flyby on Deimos. Even something that small played hell with navigation.”

  The Mule came to a stop almost fifty yards above the surface. The outer sphere raced past with enough velocity that it reminded Hale of the time he and his brother played too close to the train tracks as children. Jared had come precariously close to getting hit by a speeding locomotive and bo
th had received a licking from their mother’s wooden spoon when their parents learned of the incident.

  “How are we going to get inside?” Hale asked. He caught a few glimpses of the fourth layer of spheres, but the gaps never stayed open for more than a few seconds.

  “Open the hatch,” Malal said. A few seconds later, the unsuited Malal floated past Hale and stopped feet from the vault’s surface.

  “I’m not getting used to him,” Standish said. “Just so everyone knows.”

  Malal reached for the surface and tendrils of coherent light stretched from his fingertips to the spinning metal. A plane of blue-white light stretched across the surface, and the spheres continued moving without any apparent effects. The plane grew until it was wider and taller than the Mule, and then stopped.

  Malal lowered his hands. The plane faded away, revealing a long tunnel with a bright light in the far distance. The tunnel looked like it went on for miles and should have cut through the moving spheres. Yet the tunnel and spheres didn’t interact, even though everything from Hale’s point of view told him the tunnel should have been ripped apart or jammed the spheres into motionlessness.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Egan said.

  Malal floated to the side of the tunnel, bent at the waist slightly, and motioned for the Mule to go inside like he was a doorman welcoming them to a hotel.

  “Get us inside, Egan. I don’t like it out here anymore than you do,” Hale said.

  ****

  Hale grabbed a lever on the side of the turret and pulled. His seat came loose and he dropped down onto the Mule’s deck. Two of the Iron Hearts were still bolted to the deck in their compact travel forms; four of his Marines dragged the third down the ramp and onto the tunnel floor. Hale ran down the ramp and found Stacey and Malal near the Mule’s nose.