Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3) (9 page)

Of all the parts on his ship, Valdar liked the
Breitenfeld’s
sick bay the least. There was never good news waiting for him there as his visits were always to check on those wounded from battle or injured in shipboard mishaps. This trip was no different.

Valdar was in his chief physician’s office, watching the medics and doctors do their rounds on the two dozen Marines and sailors who’d been wounded when the banshees boarded his ship. Emergency surgeries had been completed hours before—Valdar never came to sick bay when his presence could be a distraction from saving lives.

He watched as crewmen washed away pools of blood from a surgical theater, performing the grim task with practiced ease.  

A doctor with a patrician nose and a bald pate barged into the office and slammed the door behind him. He flopped into an office chair and rubbed his temples.

“Dr. Accorso,” Valdar said, “how is my crew?”

“The four with the flash burns need some minor skin grafts. They’ll be fit for duty in a few hours. The gunner’s mate who lost an arm, I’ve got her in an induced coma until the trauma splicing sets in. Maybe we can regrow her arm when we get back to Earth, if she’s lucky.” Accorso pulled a vape-stick from his desk and took a deep drag, holding the pseudo-smoke in his lungs before exhaling away from Valdar.

“I can’t believe you, a doctor, smoke,” Valdar said.

“I also drink too much, but not when we’re underway,” Accorso said with a wink. “Chaplain Krohe is making the rounds. Seeing friends ripped apart by those banshees was more than most could handle, even this crew. I can treat their bodies, but someone else has to mend their souls.”

“Can I make my own rounds? I want to see them,” Valdar said.

“Before you do, there’s something I want to show you.” Accorso spun his chair around and grabbed a bound sheaf of papers from a basket on his wall. “The medic, Yarrow, the one who had that alien…thing inside him?”

Valdar crossed his arms and nodded.

“I’ve run every test I could from the samples we took when he was possessed, I suppose …and afterwards. First direct contact with that sort of being—this paper would be published in a heartbeat across the medical community—if we still had a medical community that cared about papers, but I digress.” Accorso flipped the papers open to a sheet with a tiny flag attached to it and then spun the papers around and tapped his finger against a data table.

“I’m a ship driver, not a doctor,” Valdar said.

“Yarrow’s telomeres, the little end caps on our DNA that protect our chromosomes, they’re too long.” Accorso waited for some sort of recognition to register on Valdar’s face, to no avail. “As we get older, the telomeres shorten every time a cell divides. That’s why things start to droop as we get older, why we get wrinkles.” Accorso rubbed the top of his bald head. “Yarrow, he has telomeres like an infant.”

“The thing that possessed him made his cells younger?” Valdar asked.

“No.” Accorso tapped his fingertip against the data table. “I had baseline data on him from when we boosted his green blood cell count before we went to Anthalas. His telomeres were just as long
before
he ever saw that alien.” Accorso watched as Valdar’s face went pale. “Yarrow’s body is only a few months old, at best.”

“False minds in weed bodies,” Valdar said, running his hand over his moustache. “That’s what the Toth demanded from us. Is there anyone else on my ship with the same genetic markers?”

“I don’t know. Yarrow is the only one I’ve had the time to examine so closely. It wouldn’t be too difficult to go through the crew’s blood samples, once the computers are back up and running.”

“No, I need to know now. I can’t have my crew compromised like Yarrow,” Valdar said.

Accorso frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. “There’s a way. Back in the fifties, a team from Harvard found that—”

“Do it. Now. Keep the results between us.”

“It will be slow, and it’ll delay my autopsy on the banshees,” Accorso said.

“Why are you bothering with the banshees?”

“For science, of course. Do you realize what medical knowledge this ship will bring back to Earth? I’ll have my own research wing at the new hospital in Phoenix. The Antonio Accorso Center, sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?”

“Mission first, ego later,” Valdar said.

****

Torni adjusted the headphones on Ar’ri to cover his ears, but the boy kept trying to take them off, which was detrimental to his hearing while in the noisy bay of a Destrier drop ship. As with all things military, comfort was never a design factor.

“Caas,” Torni said, “watch your brother. Don’t let him take those off.”

Caas swatted her brother on the back of his head, which brought out a pout. Torni wrapped an arm around him and brandished a finger at Caas.

“Torni, what’s your planet like? Does it have Xaros on it like Dotari?” Caas asked.

“Dotari?”

“That’s where we’re all from. Mommy and Daddy said we’ll go back there someday when the Xaros are all gone.”

“Earth had Xaros, until we beat them,” Torni said. “My home is a very beautiful place, but there aren’t many people left on it.”

“Ancient Pa’lon says no one lives on Dotari anymore. All the Dotok are on spaceships between the stars or here on Takeni. If you can beat the Xaros on your planet, will you do that for us on Dotari? I heard there are seasons, lots of good food to eat and you can see the whole night sky from anywhere, not like living in our canyon,” Caas said.

“I don’t know about that, little one. Let’s get you and your brother someplace safe first, OK?” Red warning lights flashed through the cargo hold. The ship was coming in for a landing. Ar’ri whimpered and snuggled against Torni.

“Almost done, we’ll be in New Abhaile soon,” Torni said.

****

Hale marched down the Destrier’s ramp, his hand up to block the harsh light that greeted him on the landing pad. New Abhaile was set in the middle of the widest canyon on the planet. The towering ramparts of the surrounding cliffs were far enough apart that direct sunlight was a possibility, unlike the perpetual shadow of Galogesvi.

Hale saw the city just beyond the limits of the star port and almost couldn’t believe what he saw. Most of the city was made up of starships, docked on the surface and set into massive frames. Wide stone boulevards connected the ships to each other and formed a lattice of roads throughout the city. Steam crept up around the high roadways, and the slight smell of sulphur tinged the air.

An entire quarter of the city was destroyed, a jumbled mess of stone blocks and wreckage of a once great starship. Smoke rose from a half-dozen small fires in the rubble.

A trio of Dotok, all wearing combat fatigues and body armor around their torsos and shoulders, waited for Hale at the end of the landing pad.

“What a garden spot,” Standish said. He and the rest of Hale’s team had their helmets off; the combination of ambient heat and humidity made it feel like a Bangkok summer to Hale.

“Standish, I don’t know what offends our hosts, so the best course of action for you would be to keep your mouth shut,” Hale said. “Torni, get these civilians tucked away and find the shore party. Get a fresh combat load and hot chow if they’ve got it. Whoever’s in charge of this city is expecting me.”

“Roger, sir,” Torni said.

“Steuben, come with me, please,” Hale said to the Karigole.

Hale broke away from his team as Steuben kept pace beside him.

“Steuben, how much do you know about static defense in an urban environment?” Hale asked.

“Theoretical or practical?”

“Both.”

“I studied the great works of the Karigole battle masters, all two hundred and nine field marshals from the last eighteen thousand years of our recorded history, and I participated in the siege of—” Steuben emitted a series of whistles and clicks that sent Hale’s ears ringing “—beside Kosciusko. I must admit that his knowledge base is far greater than mine.”

“Did you win that siege?”

“I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“Don’t be afraid to pipe up with any good ideas while we’re planning the defense of this city,” Hale said.

“It remains to be seen just how well the Dotok can defend themselves, let alone accept tactical advice,” Steuben said.

Hale raised a hand in greeting to the three Dotok, and they copied the gesture.

“I am Un’qu, head of New Abhaile security,” the lead Dotok said. “Follow me. The Ancient awaits you.” Un’qu ignored Hale as he extended a hand, then turned and walked away.

“I’m Lieutenant Ken Hale, Atlantic Union Marine Corps. What can you tell me about your defenses, about what happened here?” Hale and Steuben followed their escorts down a flight of stone stairs and onto an elevated boulevard almost twenty yards across. Disabled ground cars and trucks had been pushed to the side. Every Dotok on the boulevard with them traveled by foot or by bicycle, many doing a double take as they saw the un-helmeted human and Karigole walking amongst them.

“Of relevance,” Un’qu said, “an enemy force landed on a small city in a separate canyon. They massacred the city and came through the gravity-train tunnel without warning. The
noorla
fought through the Apex Station’s defenders and were about to overwhelm the entire city when my predecessor sabotaged the arms depot beneath Apex Station. The explosion…” Un’qu pointed to the smoking remnants. Broken rail lines ran to tunnels in the surrounding canyons and into the earth outside the city like ribs of a picked-over carcass lying in the desert. “Our leadership council was lost in the explosion, along with most of our military’s senior officers. The decision to collapse all other tunnels leading to New Abhaile was made soon afterwards.”

“Trapping all the outlying settlements,” Hale said. “I was just in Galogesvi picking up survivors.”

“The decision wasn’t easy,” Un’qu said, looking away from Hale. “Our air force has been evacuating everyone we can, but we have only so many airframes … and there have been losses since. But it is better to lose a finger than one’s arm.”

“I know a guy named Ibarra back on Earth that you’d get along with,” Hale said.

Un’qu gave him a sideways look.

Hale looked across the city. Armed Dotok built fighting positions along the outer walls or manned flak cannons atop the converted spaceships. Children and elder Dotok hurried from ship to ship, carrying boxes or hauling sand in three-wheeled barrows.

“How many people are in this city?” Steuben asked.

“Maybe fifty thousand,” Un’qu said.

“And how many spacecraft?” Steuben asked.

“Just the
Burning Blade
, the rest were destroyed.”

The
Breitenfeld
had a crew complement of seven hundred. It could carry—at most—an additional thousand civilians before its life-support systems overloaded. The
Burning Blade
was half the size of the
Breitenfeld
from stem to stern. There was no way they could evacuate every Dotok off the planet.

As they walked into a tunnel running through a ship the size of a destroyer, Hale came to a stop to marvel at what was on the other side. A ship over a mile long and almost a half mile across lay nestled in a frame of enormous struts and braces forming a cradle for the ship. The smooth curve of the upper hull gleamed in the waning sunlight. The landed ship was at the very center of the city; raised stone roads emanated out from vestigial docking bays and expanded into the wider boulevards.

“That’s…something else,” Hale said.

“The
Canticle of Reason
, she was the heart of the colonization fleet,” Un’qu said. “Most of her systems were failing by the time we reached Takeni. Ancient Pa’lon decided to beach the ship instead of waiting for shelters to be built on the surface. At the time, the decision saved thousands of lives. Given our current situation, it was a poor choice.”

“What about the rest of the ships? Why were they brought to the surface?” Steuben asked.

“Our star emits rather powerful, and irregular, solar storms. Once the
Canticle
was beached, a storm of particular strength would have caused significant damage to the remaining fleet, so he had them all brought down.” Un’qu looked at his wristwatch. “The four hundred and ninth Landing Day celebration is ten days from now.”

“Wait, is the Ancient Pa’lon we’re going to meet the same one from the story you just told us?” Hale asked.

“The same,” Un’qu said.

“It is rare that I meet another species so similar to mine that is also so long-lived,” Steuben, age four hundred and seven, said.

“Our elderly normally pass on in their nineties.”

“Then how is Ancient Pa’lon so…ancient?” Hale asked.

“It would be best for you to ask him yourself. Dotok consider gossip to be unbecoming of cultured individuals.” Un’qu gestured to an opening on the prow of the
Canticle of Reason
. “We are expected shortly.”