The Crucible (The Ember War Saga Book 8) Read online

  The fleet that survived the battle against the Xaros. The sneak attack from the Ruhaald and Naroosha when they seized the Crucible was a confused mess until Valdar took the reins, but he wasn’t sure he should be the one in charge. During the chaos of battle, the navy had a simple tradition of linking authority in the chain of command to the largest surviving ship, and her captain. The many carriers and battleships larger than Valdar’s ship had been lost early against the Xaros, and the Breitenfeld’s arrival through the Crucible with the Manticore frigates had shifted the mantle of leadership to him.

  Even the greenest ensign knew the mantra of “when in charge, take charge,” and Valdar had stepped up to the challenge. Fighting the Xaros had been simpler: destroy them and the construct ripping Japan apart. Trying to stop the world killer made up of all the remaining drones had been nearly impossible, but the planet had been saved when every Xaros drone in the system suddenly self-destructed.

  Valdar didn’t understand exactly why that happened, although he had his suspicions.

  But once the Xaros threat was gone, and their allies betrayed them, the leadership equation changed. Valdar now faced a problem he didn’t have an answer for: how to save Earth before the Ruhaald and Naroosha could destroy it.

  Valdar swiped his fingers through the holo and brought Earth to him. Every human city built into the mountains had at least one Ruhaald ship hanging over it like a guillotine. The alien ships had thick Toth shields that could withstand the few surviving rail guns the cities had for defense. The ships were vulnerable from above…but the no-fly zone the Ruhaald had imposed on the Earth meant any fighter/bomber attack from the ground would be spotted quickly.

  He’d seen the Ruhaald fighters in action and knew the aliens were a match for human pilots in ship-to-ship combat…and each Ruhaald ship carried hundreds of fighters.

  No…an attack from the ground had little chance of success.

  He double-tapped the enemy ship over Bern. Basic information collected by the defenders below came up, and a nuclear-radiation report blinked at Valdar. The ship had lowered a portion of their shields an hour ago and let Bern see the bank of nuclear-tipped missiles aimed right at them. The Ruhaald had missiles that could burrow into the mountains and set off a seismic event that would wreck the subterranean city. Neutron bombs that would poison the soil for hundreds of miles. Fusion weapons that could flatten mountains. It wouldn’t take many warheads to send the planet into a nuclear winter that would make the weather effects from the final Indo-Pak conflict look like a chilly afternoon.

  Every alien ship looming over Earth’s cities could rain down destruction within minutes of receiving their orders to do just that.

  The Ruhaald fleet over Earth was double the size in hulls than Valdar’s assemblage around the moon, but it was spread thin over the planet. If Valdar brought his fleet to bear, he could defeat the Ruhaald in detail…but they’d wreck the entire planet before he could even get his guns within range. If the Naroosha ships came out of hiding from around the Crucible, then his chances of beating the Ruhaald were almost zero.

  If he left the moon, he’d lose the Earth to nuclear fire and the battle to a numerically superior foe. If he stayed in place…the Earth remained under alien domination. The Mars fleet could tip the scales, but they were days away and if they left orbit, the nukes came down.

  He hadn’t heard from Fleet Admiral Garret since Valdar and the Breitenfeld returned to Earth with the Manticores in tow. Part of Valdar worried that the admiral would resolve this situation immediately, no matter the cost.

  Valdar did some calculations in his head. He didn’t want to risk the chance his bridge crew would see his thoughts played out in the holo tank and let them know he’d even considered the possibility. The Mars fleet weighed anchor, making best speed to Earth as Valdar launched a desperate attack on the ships over the cities. Some Ruhaald ships would be destroyed, but Breitenfeld and her fleet would be lost. The aliens would complete their nuclear destruction and undoubtedly poison the atmosphere with enough fallout to render the surface inhospitable to any form of life.

  By the time the Mars fleet reached the Earth, the enemy would have left through the Crucible and scuttled the jump gate with left-behind explosives set on a timer. Humanity would be nothing but the surviving Mars fleet and whatever else was scattered through the solar system.

  No one celebrates Pyrrhic victories, he thought.

  He wanted to return to his ready room, scream in frustration and break something out of frustration, but his mask of command had to remain. His ship, his fleet and his home needed him focused on a solution, not admitting defeat.

  A text message appeared on his screen. His guest was about to arrive.

  Valdar hoped a second set of eyes—very different eyes—might uncover some detail he’d missed.

  The door to the elevator opened, and Captain Gor’al of the Dotok battleship Vorpral entered the bridge. The alien’s head jerked from side to side, his blunted beak snapping at the air. Gor’al was tall for his kind, a hair under six feet, with white age splotches on his gray-toned skin. The roots of his head quills tended toward the color of old snow near his scalp. His escort, Commander Utrecht, gestured to Valdar with an open hand.

  Gor’al tapped the knuckles of his long fingers together and went over to Valdar, ignoring the human’s offered hand. Gor’al pressed the side of his shoulder against Valdar’s. Valdar took a half step aside, only to be joined by Gor’al again.

  Valdar remembered Durand complaining about the Dotok concept of “personal space” and decided to endure the discomfort.

  “Thank you for coming, Gor’al,” Valdar said.

  “The Vorpral has seven decks still open to the void and two of my three generators are off-line. Thank you for waiting. If I’d come sooner, my ship might have joined the Naga and plowed into your moon. A poor end to the Dotok’s last warship,” Gor’al said. “Some of the human ships asked me for instructions after the Europa was lost and before your arrival. This confused me. Guests do not instruct their hosts.”

  “That’s fleet standard operating procedure, but joint operations with allied species…isn’t standard operating procedure. We can work the details out later, but let’s go over the situation together.” Valdar zoomed the holo tank away from the Earth and laid out how he saw their situation, and how little they could do about it.

  Gor’al listened, asking a few minor questions as Valdar went along. When Valdar finished, the Dotok clicked his tongue several times.

  “There’s a crack in the hull and our rank is low,” Gor’al said.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The situation is poor. Very poor. Tell me, do you have nuclear weapons?” Gor’al asked.

  “No. The Xaros generate some sort of energy field that stops them from functioning. The only reason that one device worked on Takeni was because it exploded deep within a mountainside where the Xaros field was blocked. All my nuclear munitions and the mines were taken off the ship. One less thing that could go catastrophically wrong if the Breitenfeld was damaged. None of my other ships have nukes.”

  Valdar reached into the tank and called up a logistics report listing everything his fleet carried down to the number of food paste tubes by ship.

  Gor’al scrolled down the list with flicks of his fingers, too fast for any human to read.

  “No word from Ibarra? Garret?” Gor’al asked.

  “Nothing from the Crucible. I’m expecting a message from Mars any minute now.”

  “Do you know our enemies? Their culture? How they fight?”

  “I’d never even heard of them before they showed up and started shooting at the Xaros. There’s video somewhere of the ship-to-ship combat around the Crucible between the Naroosha and what I left to protect the facility. I have my gunnery team looking it over.”

  “We don’t know what they want. We don’t fully know how they fight. Poor. Very poor for us.” Gor’al ran a flight plot from lunar orbit to the Cru
cible orbiting Ceres. “We have the Breitenfeld’s jump engines, but I think the enemy will consider your sudden departure a hostile act.”

  “The time between jumps depends on how far we go and how much other mass we take with us. I looked at—”

  “Priority communication from Mars, sir,” the comms officer said through Valdar’s earbud.

  “Put it on the holo tank…no, on the tank’s control screen,” the captain said. If the message was dire, and it probably was, putting it in the holo where the crew could see would only invite panic. If only he and Gor’al saw the unvarnished message, the fear would spread no farther than them.

  A grainy video square appeared on the screen. It resolved to show an exhausted naval officer with the rank of rear admiral on her vac suit.

  “That is not Garret?” Gor’al asked.

  “It is not.” Valdar felt the icy touch of fear blossom in his chest. Where was Garret?

  “This is Admiral Michaud with Mars Command. There’s a twenty-light-minute delay on communications, but we monitored the Ruhaald demands…and we have no real choice but to comply, for now.

  “Admiral Garret is…indisposed. He suffered a psychological break after receiving news of the Ruhaald betrayal. The chief medical officer informed me that the admiral had a critical level of stimulants in his system, a level Garret apparently maintained for the last several weeks.” Michaud shook her head. “We expect him back on his feet soon, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be ready to take the helm again.

  “As of now, the macro-cannon batteries on Mars—and across the system—will stand down. We cannot risk the collateral damage to Earth or the Crucible from the cannons.” She ran a hand through her short hair, exhaustion writ across her face. “Valdar? I assume you’re still alive. I’m sorry to say this, but you’re on your own for now. The intelligence officers have high confidence the Ruhaald and Naroosha don’t have the combat power to take the cities and fully occupy Earth. They’re most likely waiting for reinforcements to come through before they launch an all-out assault. You’ve run the same simulations. Mars can’t get in this fight without losing Earth in the process, same with the rest of our forces through the rest of the solar system. So consider yourself on your own until we can get some actionable information. Make re-contact with Ibarra and the Crucible your top priority. Michaud out.”

  “That could have been worse,” Gor’al said.

  “Not by much,” Valdar said as he closed the video and leaned against the holo tank.

  Gor’al pulled out a field from the Breitenfeld’s readiness reports and pointed to a single line of text.

  “What is this here?” the Dotok asked.

  “That’s our Mule equipped with a Karigole cloak. I had it mothballed since the Xaros could…the Xaros could see right through the cloak.” Valdar ran his fingers through his beard as new ideas came to mind.

  “Seems we’ve found a new option,” Gor’al said. Valdar pointed a finger at Ericcson, the XO. “Get Durand up here.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The Phoenix cemetery held ten coffins for armor. A pair of flatbed trucks, each holding one wrecked suit, were parked next to repair cages in the center of the warehouse-sized room. Only two suits stood upright in the coffins, one with an unblemished new helm, the other boasting heat-warped armor plating and an exposed hip joint.

  A human and a Dotok in loose coveralls stood on a catwalk that ran waist-high across the mostly empty coffins, both huddled over a diagnostic station attached to a beam that ran parallel to the catwalk.

  “Elias.” Bodel lifted his head from the station and looked to the armor with the exposed hip. “There’s a cascading servo fault down your right leg. Check your plugs.”

  Elias said nothing. His armor remained stone still.

  “Elias?” Caas, one of the new Dotok armor soldiers, cocked her head to the side and clicked her beak.

  The armor raised a hand and banged it against his leg. Icons on the diagnostic screen went from red to green.

  “Is something wrong—” Bodel stopped Caas’ question with a press of his nerve-damaged arm against her side. The stroke he’d suffered after being cut from his armor on Takeni left him reliant on a cane to move about and half his face slack. In his armor, he was nigh unstoppable, but a cripple without it.

  Bodel tapped a mute button on the screen.

  “He’s…having trouble,” Bodel said. “It’s Kallen.” The third Iron Heart had died on Mars, her armor left in the red sand.

  “I don’t understand human grieving rituals,” Caas said. “Is there something I can do?”

  “And how do the Dotok handle the loss of one they…held dear?” Bodel twisted a knob and shook his head as the synch reading between Elias and his armor remained below normal.

  “We hold a shran. Those who were part of the deceased’s life witness the body being returned to nature. The spirit fills the world, remains with us. After we left Takeni, we carved the names of those we lost onto ganii nuts and planted them in Maui. They grow well in your soil, a good omen.”

  “I like it,” Bodel said, “simple, peaceful. Elias and I, we are soldiers. We are armor. Death in battle is expected. We bury our dead in their wombs, then hold a remembrance, a wake. After that…individuals grieve on their own. Some move on…others can’t.”

  “What about you? Elias?”

  “Kallen was a good Christian woman. I believe she will be judged worthy of heaven and find peace. As for Elias, he believes as she did, but…she was his anchor. He was badly wounded, red-lined, after we took back the Earth. It was her plan that brought him back. She called him out from the darkness, and now I don’t know if we can hold him back.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Elias’ voice boomed out of his armor.

  “Your organ function is below nominal,” Bodel said. “You need another round of dialysis and muscle rehabilitation.”

  “Get me green across the board. Then worry about getting your own armor back in the fight,” Elias said.

  Bodel looked at the wrecked suit in the back of the truck.

  “We can do rudimentary part replacements. We need our maintenance crew off the Breitenfeld to put my armor—and Ar’ri’s armor—back together,” Bodel said.

  “Is Ar’ri in any condition to wear his armor?” Elias asked.

  “Physically, he’s fine,” Caas said. “But fighting that…thing…rattled him. He’s resting right now.”

  “Colonel Carius sent another platoon, with their maintenance teams, from St. George.” Elias tapped an antenna on the side of his helm. “They’ll have you fully mission capable in no time.”

  “Until then we’ve got two suits to defend the city,” Bodel said.

  The door to the Cemetery slid open. Hale and Steuben walked in, both in their power armor. Caas ran her fingers through her head quills and cleaned a bit of dirt off her beak.

  “Elias, you all right in there?” Hale asked, looking up to the three armor soldiers.

  “Never better. You need us?”

  Hale and Steuben traded a glance.

  “There’s a firebase under attack by the Ruhaald. I’m taking—”

  “I’ll go!” Caas said. “I can be suited up in ten minutes. Whatever you need.” Caas’ hands clenched and her head lowered like a scolded child. She gave Elias a bashful look, her beak clicking rapidly.

  “I mean, if Elias says we can,” she said.

  “She and I are with you.” Elias hit his fist against his chest plate.

  “We step off in thirty minutes,” Hale said. “Subterranean tunnel nine.”

  “We’ll be there,” Elias said.

  Caas watched as the Marines turned away and looked at Elias with pleading eyes. Elias flicked his fingers at her. Caas vaulted over the catwalk and landed in a roll. She ran up to Hale and gave him a little pat on the shoulder.

  “Yes?” Hale half turned around.

  “Lieutenant—no, Captain—I’m Caas. Do you…do you remember me?”

  Hal
e’s lips pressed together. “You’re familiar…”

  “You and your Marines saved me and my brother from the noorla, the banshees. When I came of age, I joined our militia to repay what you did. Now I…is Mr. Standy OK? I’d like to see him again. He was so kind to me.”

  “I’m sorry, but the Ruhaald have Standish. Last we saw him, he was alive. We’ll get him back. Marines don’t leave anyone behind.” Hale’s eyes darted to the patches on her shoulder. “You have your plugs?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I didn’t make it through selection. You must be tough.” Hale gave her a nod. “Glad to have you with us.”

  ****

  The subterranean terminal was a wide cylinder with heavy doors over each of the mag-lev tracks leading to and from Phoenix. On Takeni, the Dotok survived within the deep canyons scarring the planet. The atmosphere over Takeni’s tall plateaus was thin and swept by massive storms. The Dotok opted to dig tunnels through the planet’s crust to connect the scattered settlements, rather than continuously risk flying over the hostile and deadly terrain.

  As the Dotok integrated into Earth and took an active interest in defending the planet from the next Xaros attack, Ibarra and Admiral Garret saw the tactical and strategic usefulness of using Dotok techniques and technology to link defenses beyond the reach and detection of the enemy. The tunnels, some running hundreds of miles below ground, were coated in quadrium, which thwarted Xaros sensors.

  If the Xaros ever did find their way into the tunnels, they were rigged with enough high explosives to collapse with the press of a button.

  Hale picked up a belt of gauss magazines from a supply cart and fixed them onto his armor. The plasma weapons he’d used on Pluto were experimental…and the power cores were manufactured by the omnium reactor on the Crucible. None of his Marines had complained about returning to the familiar gauss rifles and carbines.