Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3) (11 page)

“What the hell are these things?” Standish asked. “They’re heavier than the box we had to carry up San Clemente Island for Strike Marine selection.”

“Gremlin, one each,” Orozco said, reading from the stencils on his end of the case. The Gauss Recoilless Mortar Launch system held a dozen mortar tubes with auto-feeders. One Marine acting as a fire-direction officer could target each tube at an independent target, or mass all fires with the push of a button.

“Let me guess,” Standish said, looking at the Mule cargo bay packed to the brim with cases, “they’re all Gremlins.”

“No, only the ones on top. The heavier ones with the shells are on the bottom. Stop goldbricking and help me with the next one,” Orozco said.

Standish climbed on top of a case and reached up to guide the next Gremlin out and to Orozco’s waiting hands.

“I see forklifts and trucks all over the place,” Standish said as he grabbed the carry handle and eased his end down to the deck with a loud clang. “Why aren’t the Dotok using them?”

“Dummies had everything networked and computerized. Xaros fried the whole thing soon as they moved in system,” Orozco said. “They got knocked back to almost preindustrial tech levels in half an hour. Good thing their military and all the ships they came in were rigged for analog or everything would have been over but the screaming when the first drone showed up.”

“Why the hell were they networked? They knew the Xaros were out there.”

“Guess they thought they’d have another couple hundred years before the Xaros caught up to them. Again with the goldbricking. Work, damn you,” Orozco said.

“I can flap my gums and flex my muscles at the same time, thank you very much, sergeant.” Standish tested the weight on a case that had been on the very bottom of the stack and sighed. “Hey, how long does Earth have until the Xaros show back up? Thirteen years? You think we’d get caught with our pants down?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. Doesn’t that probe you brought to the Crucible claim to know everything about the Xaros? I heard it did the math for when they’re coming back.”

“Yeah, well, the Dotok had some math in mind too. Look what happened to them. Wait a minute. Where is new guy? If there’s anything heavy to be moved, mind numbing to be done or any ‘Hey, you’ tasks to be done, new guy should be on it. That’s the new-guy code,” Standish said.

“Sarge took him away for something, and give the kid a break. He had an alien ghost in his skull, then some kind of a giant crystal jellyfish took it out. Rough week.”

“Where do I go for my pity party? I’ve had…OK, not as bad.” Standish rapped his knuckles against another case; the thump told of another heavy load within.

****

Torni and Yarrow stood outside a foreman’s office on the outskirts of the landing pad. Torni leaned against the wall, checking her gauntlet for messages every few seconds. Yarrow paced back and forth.

“Why does the intelligence officer want to see me, Sarge? We’ve got a million things to do and I’ve already spoken with this guy a dozen times since my…incident,” Yarrow said. Yarrow never voiced the fact that an ancient alien entity had taken root inside him; he always used much softer language to describe what science and medicine had yet to fully explain. The young medic claimed he had no memory of anything from when the alien took hold, to when it was removed above the floating crystal city inhabited by the leaders of the Alliance against the Xaros.

“The order came down with Captain Valdar’s endorsement,” Torni said. “Just answer him quick so we can get back to work.”

“If this is supposed to be quick, why does he have us waiting out here?” Yarrow asked.

As if on cue, the door to the office slid aside. A naval warrant officer in his late fifties leaned through the door. He wore shipboard fatigues over his lightly armored body glove, giving him an artificial air of strength.

“Mr. Knight,” Yarrow said.

“Corpsman, please step inside,” Knight said. “I’ll keep this brief.” After Yarrow had entered, Knight held up a hand to Torni and shook his head. Torni’s mouth twitched with anger, but she remained silent.

The office was sparse. A large desk made from pressed wood pulp took up a corner, and two long benches ran through the center of the room.

Knight had a gauss pistol on his hip and a combat knife against the small of his back. Yarrow recognized it as an old Applegate-Fairbarn, not a Ka-Bar that so many Marines carried into battle.

“Please, sit,” Knight said, motioning to a bench. “I’ll be recording this interview, as always.” Knight clicked on a miniature tape recorder and set it on the bench next to him.

“Sir, I really don’t understand why we’re doing this now,” Yarrow said.

“Captain Valdar wants me to finalize my report and pass it on to the Dotok ambassador. Seems he’s due to go back to Bastion and he can relay it on to Ensign Ibarra and then on to high command back on Earth. You met her—what did you think?” Knight asked. He studied Yarrow with emotionless eyes, seemingly void of a soul.

“All I saw was her hologram when we were down on that gas giant,” Yarrow said. “I was…not doing well. Staff Sergeant Torni was trying to console me while Lieutenant Hale and the ensign were talking.”

“I see. I need to verify some biographic information for my report. Where were you born?”

“What?”

“Answer the question.”

“Palo Alto, California.” Yarrow shifted in his seat and looked at the door.

“Where did you attend your field medic training?”

“The joint base at Fort Sam Houston, where every medic goes,” Yarrow said.

The questions continued, with odd queries interjected around the timeline of his life: what his favorite childhood TV show was, detailed explanations about his work as a short-order cook on the North Slope of Alaska, his time as a paramedic in Oakland and a detailed recap of the first time he ever lost a patient in his ambulance.

“This is difficult for you. I’m sorry, son,” Knight said. “One more thing and we’ll wrap up. Where were you during the battle for the Crucible?”

“I was on the
Munich
, taking care of civilians evacuated off the luxury liners. A few drones made it onboard, but the security teams took them out before they could cause any real damage. The only thing I contributed to the fight was administering short-term depressants for anyone who had a panic attack,” Yarrow said.

“And then?”

“Then I got sent dirt-side after the scramble. I still don’t understand why every crew in the fleet had to be broken up and reassigned. Well, every crew but the
Breitenfeld
’s,” Yarrow said.

“Captain Valdar wanted to keep his team intact for the mission to Anthalas,” Knight said. “Casualties were high during the battle—you know that. As for everyone else, getting the fleet to full strength was a priority.” Knight rubbed his hands against his lap. “OK, all done here. Thank you for your time, corpsman.”

Yarrow stood and saluted, as was the Marines’ customs and courtesy. Knight nodded but didn’t return the salute, as was navy customs and courtesy.

Knight waited for Yarrow to leave, then opened a channel on his gauntlet.

“Captain? Interview complete,” Knight said.

“And?”

“I did the standard timeline approach, tried to trip him up with rephrased questions and backtracks. The kid knows his story, which means one of two things: he’s an accomplished liar—better than anyone I’ve seen in my many years in this job—or he was telling the truth as best he knew it.”

“There’s no chance he’s fabricating his story?”

“Not so far as I can tell. Everything he told me fits with our records.”

“Write it up. Valdar, out.”

****

Valdar sat at the desk in his ready room, looking over one-page bio-sheets of seven sailors and twelve army Rangers, the latter all listed as Missing In Action or Killed In Action. The bio-sheets had been delivered to him surreptitiously, folded in an envelope and taped to the bottom of the cover dish of the evening meal he had delivered to his ready room. A handwritten note read, “Halfway done—AA.”

He recognized each of the crewmen as it was his tradition to welcome each new sailor and Marine assigned to his ship. The sudden arrival of the Rangers just before their departure for Anthalas made more sense to Valdar now. Every one of them had the long telomeres genetic markers. Someone was doing a field test on his ship, and there was only one person who could be responsible. Marc Ibarra.

His door chimed.

“Enter.”

Chaplain Krohe came in, a grandfatherly smile across his wide face. The chaplain had four gold bars on his collar, a double set of railroad-tracks rank insignia that showed he was a captain too. Despite his high rank, the chaplain carried no authority on the ship, even though he routinely reminded people that he answered to a higher power than Captain Valdar. Krohe shook hands with Valdar and sat down, dispensing with the usual formalities.

“Isaac, thanks for finding the time to see me,” Krohe said.

“How’s my crew?”

“Rattled, scared, confused. Of course, it’s been that way since the jump engines sidestepped us away from the Xaros invasion. I’ve never been so busy,” Krohe said. He leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his gray-blond hair. “But as we say,
Gott mit uns.
He is ever with us and lends me strength.”

“What about this mission? They’ve been a bit icy to me lately.”

“They’re angry. Everyone thought we’d be home by now,” Krohe said.

“We don’t have a home anymore. Everything was wiped out by the Xaros. The
Breitenfeld
and their shipmates are the closest things to a home and family any one of us have anymore.” Valdar slid the envelope with the bio-sheets beneath a stack of disabled tablets.

“I’m glad you’ve found a truth to hold on to. Many of the crew look at Phoenix as their new home, no matter how little time they’ve spent there. As for the mission, they know why we’re here, what we’re trying to accomplish. Most complain that they weren’t consulted before you made the decision to come here.”

“My ship is a benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy. They can complain, so long as they stay focused. My real reason for asking you here is a question of faith,” Valdar said. “Chaplain, you remember the controversy a couple years back about Hendricks-Zero-One? It claimed it was an AI that achieved sentience and demanded to be recognized as a living being, and it wanted to be baptized.”

“It was a hoax,” Krohe said. “Some atheist group trying to generate controversy with a program it claimed could pass the Turing test. Caused quite an uproar. Catholics had an emergency synod, and most of Christendom labeled Hendricks as an abomination and refused to administer any holy ordinances. Then the Ibarra Corporation exposed the fraud as nothing but an actual person pretending to be a program. We all felt silly, and the issue went away.”

“Would…would a created being have a soul? Not born of man and woman, something grown in a lab and put out on the street,” Valdar said.

“My church’s guidance is clear: only God creates souls. Anything done by man in that regard is a mockery of God’s will. I, of my own beliefs, concur.”

Valdar looked long and hard at Krohe, and nodded slowly.

“You know,” Krohe leaned forward, “I come across a lot of sailors that have pressing issues, crises of faith that distract them from the job at hand. Let me ask you the same question that I ask them: whatever’s bothering you, will it kill you?”

“What? No,” Valdar said.

“Will the Xaros kill you before you can answer this question?”

“They might. We’ve got a rendezvous with them in a few more hours,” Valdar said.

“Then focus on what’s going to kill you. Everything else can take its time to work out.” Krohe raised an eyebrow at the Captain.

“You’re right, Chaplain. Thank you.” Valdar stood up and shook Krohe’s hand as he left.

Valdar took the envelope out and rifled through the pages of the faux humans. He found the bio-sheet for Chaplain Krohe and slid it out of the pile to read.

****

Caas peeked into the warehouse. When she didn’t see anyone moving around, she grabbed Ar’ri by the hand and pulled him inside. With her other arm, she clutched a yellow plastic ration pack against her chest. The humans had tried to pass out the rations to the refugees packed into one of the legacy ships, but there were too many hungry Dotok and too few ration packs. Caas had snatched up the food when it fell to the ground during a scuffle and had run off—with several angry adults in pursuit.

Caas knew better than to try to eat it in front of the rest of the refugees, so she brought her brother someplace quiet to eat. Mother always told her to share with him, and she’d do that until they finally found her.

The warehouse had half a dozen long boxes, or what she thought were boxes. They looked like metal folded into coffins. Each was connected by a hose to a humming box with yellow labels discouraging anyone from touching them.

Caas helped Ar’ri onto one of the boxes and sat between him and the humming box.