Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3) (17 page)

“Captain, you need to see this,” Ensign Geller said.

Perhaps not.

“According to the Dotok, their Glorious Fleet had five
Canticle
-class generation ships, right?” Valdar glared at the ensign. “So, I thought, ‘Where are they?’ The entire rest of the fleet was blown up by the Dotok or us. That many ships would—”

Valdar slammed a fist against the plot table. His cup and saucer fell to the deck and shattered.

“I found them!” Geller squeaked. “And I found out why our jump in to the system went sideways.” He held out photographs of a rocky toroid, a gigantic doughnut-shaped asteroid. Long spikes punctured the surface, like someone had dropped a crown of thorns into wet concrete.

“This is a Crucible. A jump gate,” Valdar said.

“One under construction, at least,” Geller said with some pride, “and look around it.” The other pictures showed four
Canticle
-sized ships around the proto-Crucible. “That’s what messed up our jump. And that’s how I found it! I thought that something out there must have the mass to generate a deep enough gravity well to offset the quantum field variance by at least—”

“Good work, son. How far away is it?” 

The ensign picked up a red icon and set it on the tactical plot. Valdar made a few quick calculations in his head then turned to the XO.

“Get all the department heads up here immediately, and get Lafayette on the holo.”

****

The operations table held a small globe, a miniature of the
Breitenfeld
and five red enemy ship icons on short pegs. The senior members of the ship stood around the table, along with a hologram of Lafayette.

“The new Crucible is here on approach to Takeni,” Valdar said. “If the Xaros hold true to form, they mean for it to take up orbit. It’ll remain a work in progress until then, which means no drone reinforcements coming through. It does present a problem though.” Valdar pointed the stick in his hands at Ensign Geller.

“Sirs and ma’ams, the gravity well from something this large skews the quantum—”

Valdar snapped the stick against the table.

“We can’t leave,” Geller said. “Or at least we can’t jump to Earth. The greater the distance, the more precise the jump has to be. The mass of the Crucible flaws the jump equation. If we try to jump out of here now, we’ll be ripped apart.”

“So we break anchor,” the chief engineer said. “Get clear of its influence and jump from there.”

“That would work, but we’ll have the
Canticle
with us soon,” Valdar said. “And it’ll be adrift in space with no engines.”

Ensign Geller cleared his throat. “The solution is for us to jump, with the
Canticle
, to the brown dwarf star located two point nine light-years from here. We recharge the jump engines there and jump back to Earth.”

“What if there’s a Xaros presence?” Utrecht asked.

“There are no habitable worlds. If the Xaros have been through, there shouldn’t be anything but a monitoring force. We can handle one or two drones,” Valdar said.

“It’ll be a skip and a jump back to Earth, no hop involved,” Geller said. He smiled, waiting for the laugher that never came.

“It won’t work,” Lafayette said. “Your theory is sound, but at the rate the Crucible is approaching … any jump would either tear us to pieces or drop us into deep space.”

“Is deep space that bad?” Ericcson asked. “Anywhere but here seems like an improvement.”

“The jump engines absorb dark matter to charge,” Levin said. “We jump into the middle of nowhere and we’re in trouble. We need to jump within the Nye-Sandburg dark-energy corona around a star or we’ll be sitting out there for years waiting to jump again.”

“Lafayette,” Valdar said, “how do we change the math?”

The Karigole tapped his metal fingertips together. “How much quadrium do we still have?”

“Five rail cannon shells, twenty shells for the point defense guns, nine gauss rifle shots,” Utrecht said. “I don’t know if the armor still have their one round each.”

“That will be more than enough. I’ll need every shell brought to my lab. It will take me three hours to build the bomb. Captain, I’ll need you to figure out a way to get myself and a small package onto the approaching Crucible…at this location, the command nodule. I’ll return immediately.” Lafayette’s hologram switched off.

“Did he say ‘bomb’?” Ericcson asked.

“He did,” Valdar said. “Ibarra turned his quadrium munition factory into a singularity bomb when we were running from the drones chasing us away from Earth. He must know how to make one too.”

“He’s going to make a black hole … on our ship?” Ericcson asked.

“Anyone have a better idea?” Valdar asked. None were offered. “Durand, let’s figure out how to get him where he needs to be.”

****

Hale stood on the Mule’s ramp, his boots and hand mag-locked to the ship. He scanned the ground below, looking for any sign of the civilians Torni had seen.

“You think they’re scared, sir?” Bailey asked from the upper turret.

“Makes sense. If they’re running from Usonvi, the last thing they heard from New Abhaile after they blew the rail lines was to stay put and wait for evac. They might think our Mule’s some sort of Xaros. Plus, they haven’t had the best of luck with aliens dropping out of the sky to say hello,” Hale said.

“Got ’em on thermals,” Orozco said. The cameras integrated into his bottom turret were far superior to Hale’s Mark One Eyeball. The gunner sent a feed to Hale, and he saw dozens of warm bodies hiding in a field of shrubs running up a hillside.

“Pilot, set us down at that clearing. Let’s see how many we’re dealing with,” Hale said. He heard the whine of landing gear descending and held on tight as the ship lowered to the ground.

It settled against a field of long grass, whipping from side to side in the ship’s exhaust.

“Cut it down to standby, don’t want to scare them off,” Hale said.

“A drone shows up and we’ll be sitting ducks for two minutes,” the pilot shot back.

“Then the sooner I get this over with, the better.” Hale locked his rifle against his back and stepped off the ramp with Torni, Yarrow and Standish right behind him. He kept his hands out and to his sides as he made his way to the underbrush where they’d seen the Dotok. The Mule’s engines died down to a low whine.

“Hello! I’m Lieutenant Hale!” he shouted. No response. “I’m from the
Breitenfeld
Ancient Pa’lon sent me to help!”

A Dotok stood up from the brush, a male in flowing robes and a turban made from silk.

“The
Breitenfeld
? It’s real?”

“You’re talking to a human.” Hale removed his helmet, and the Dotok recoiled with a sneer on his lips.

“Don’t take it personally, sir. They think I’m ugly too,” Torni said.

The turbaned Dotok came down the mountainside, a clipboard in one hand and a small book in the other.

“I am Chosen Nil’jo, leader of Usonvi and its inhabitants,” he said.

“What happened to Usonvi? Why’d you leave?”

“We saw the
noorla
pods coming through the atmosphere, and the scouts I sent out to investigate never came back. I left my lowers to defend the city and brought my higher ratings with me. We can make it to New Abhaile in another two days. The losses will be acceptable, so long as those lowers with me save their rations for their betters,” Nil’jo said.

“You…left people behind?” Hale asked.

“If they can delay the
noorla
for a bit to buy time for highers, a worthy exchange,” Nil’jo said. “How many can your ship carry? I have to prioritize.”

“All of them, just get them down here,” Hale said.

“My boy, there’s no way we can get three hundred and nine Dotok into that…thing,” Nil’jo said.

“Three hundred?”

Nil’jo pulled a whistle from his robes and blew three notes. Dotok arose from the scrub and came down the hill. More—many more—ran over the top of the hill.

“I’ll organize them for you. Twenty? Thirty, perhaps?” Nil’jo said.

“Hale, you got a second?” the pilot asked him.

Hale backed away, watching as the Dotok fell into ranks ten people wide. Each knew exactly what their assigned ranking was within Nil’jo’s hierarchy.

“You! Ti’ka! I saw you eat those preserves. Your parents lose ten rankings!” Nil’jo pointed a pen at a little boy and shooed him and his family back a row.

The pilot, a dark-skinned man with close-cropped hair, stood beside his Mule examining the landing struts.

“I’m Jorgen,” the pilot said. “I didn’t want the civvies to hear this, but there’s two ways I can fly back. Go the straight route over the mesas, which is faster, but I’ll have to pressurize the ship, which means I can’t take as many passengers. I won’t have the air for it. Other option is I go nap-of-the-earth, low and fast. I can keep the cabin unpressurized. They’ll be colder than sin, but they’ll be able to breathe.”

“How many can you take, each option?”

“Ten if I go the high route. As many as you can fit for the low route. If they were Marines with their own air tanks and O2 scrubbers, it would be different,” Jorgen said.

“Nothing is ever easy in the Corps, is it?”

“That’s why I joined the navy.”

“How long until you can come back with enough carry for the rest, say two hundred and seventy, plus four Marines?”

“There’s one hell of a dust storm coming in, remember? I can get a load back now. After that we’ve got to wait until the storm passes,” Jorgen said. “And hurry up—there’s a nuke set to blow.”

“Mr. Hale-
Breitenfeld
,” Nil’jo waved to Hale from the base of the ramp. “I’ve got the highest twenty-five ready to depart.”

Nil’jo’s choice evacuees were middle-aged and elderly Dotok, carrying bound books and thick ledgers. They looked like scholars and accountants, all wearing robes that were once finery before a long trek through the wilderness.

The crowd of the less worthy were families. Women held squalling babies on their hips and tried to hold toddlers tight as they all looked at the Mule like it was their last chance for survival.

Which, Hale knew, it probably was.

He looked at the bureaucrats Nil’jo wanted to save and back at the less fortunate, who were somehow less worthy in their Chosen’s eyes. Anger welled up into his chest, and something snapped.

“No. We’re not taking any able-bodied adults who can keep walking,” Hale said.

“What?” Nil’jo looked at Hale like he’d sprouted a second head. “My list is complete and ranked accordingly. There’s no way I’ll let lowers get to safety so long as I—”

Hale’s hand shot out and wrapped around Nil’jo’s throat. The Chosen went silent with a gurgle.

“I don’t have time to give your culture its proper respect. We’re going off the human list. It goes something like this: Women and children first! Sergeant Torni, bring families up here, anyone that can’t keep walking. Wounded, elderly. Standish,” Hale continued, pointing to the bureaucrats with the hand that wasn’t strangling Nil’jo, “any of them decide they don’t like my plan and try to get on board, you have my permission to beat the hell out of them until they feel otherwise.”

“Sir, one thing,” Standish said.

“What!”

“He can’t breathe, sir. I don’t think purple is a good color for a Dotok,” Standish said.

Hale shoved the Chosen into the dirt, where he hacked and coughed, trying to find the breath to protest.

Torni took Yarrow and Bailey to the waiting Dotok and pulled mothers with children from the group and pushed them toward the Mule. The few husbands and fathers didn’t protest as their families got a lifeline to safety.

Almost sixty women with small children waited at the base of the ramp as Jorgen and Orozco helped get them inside.

“Orozco,” Hale said, “get in the dorsal turret. New Abhaile will need your Gustav more than I will out here.”

“Sir…no, I can—”

“Now, sergeant. That’s an order,” Hale said.

Orozco hesitated, then gave the lieutenant a quick salute. He pushed his way through the civilians and opened the turret hatch.

“I’m full.” Jorgen made a cutting motion across his neck.

“Get them back,” Hale said. His Marines raised their weapons across their chests and kept the civilians off the ramp as it rose. Wails rose from the crowd as it sealed shut. The Mule took to the air on anti-grav thrusters, sending a blast of air through the crowd.

The Dotok cried as they watched it soar away.

“Jorgen,” Hale said into the IR before the Mule could get out of range, “there’s a mesa to the northeast. Meet us there as soon as you can bring back enough lift for everyone.”

“Roger, Hale. You’ve got my word,”
Jorgen said.

“Listen to me,” Hale said to the Dotok. “We’re all getting out of here. Every single one of you. My Marines and I are here to protect you, to guide you to where more of those ships will return and bring you to the
Canticle of Reason
. Understand?”