The Gardens of Nibiru (The Ember War Saga Book 5) (4 page)

“Shut up and watch the giant robots fight, boys. You ever see them on the battlefield, that means you’re in the middle of one hell of a fight.”

****

A sea-green world with thick bands of white clouds filled the bridge’s holo table. Valdar, a cup of steaming coffee in hand, and the rest of the
Breitenfeld
’s senior officers watched as the planet rotated before them.

“Now that we’ve cleared the system’s primary,” Ensign Geller said, “we’ve got our first good look at Nibiru. The place is almost ninety-eight percent ocean. No polar ice caps. Given the high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere, I’m certain we’re looking at a planet much like Earth that’s been flooded in the recent past, probably from volcanic activity in the polar regions.” Geller moved his finger over a touch screen and a yellow dot appeared at the top of the planet. “As you can see—”

Valdar set his coffee cup against the table’s railing with a loud snap.

“Skipping ahead…” Geller tapped his screen. The holo zoomed in on a small land mass, ribbons of deep green islands spreading out from a massive, gray dome-shaped object. “This is the only inhabited area we’ve detected with our passive sensors.”

“What is that dome? The picture looks distorted,” Lieutenant Hale asked.

“It’s a shield,” said Commander Utrecht, the ship’s gunnery officer. “Same energy signature as we saw on the
Naga
. If it’s as strong as what we’ve encountered before, there’s no way our rail guns can get through.”

“So much for an orbital bombardment,” Ericson said.

“I could drop nukes into the ocean,” Utrecht said. “If we space out the bursts just right, it would generate a tsunami. Wash the Toth away.”

“Nukes aren’t going to work,” Geller said. “There’s a neutron inhibitor field coming from the dome. We can’t get a fission or fusion device to function anywhere in the atmosphere.”

“Paranoia is a hallmark of the Toth leadership,” Steuben said. “They believe their fellows are constantly planning to usurp them, which they are.”

Geller zoomed the holo in to the tip of an island close to the dome, bringing into focus blocky structures separated by a grid of dirt roads.

“Even if we could use nukes, there are civilian factors to consider. There are at least five settlements on different islands surrounding the dome,” Geller said, “all within a few dozen miles of the shields.”

“Is that a Toth city?” Ericson asked.

“No.” Lafayette reached into the holo and zoomed in further with a gesture. “Toth architecture is more organic. Their layouts center on the residence of whatever overlord or corporation rules the local area. The Toth, and Mentiq, are beneath the shield dome. I’m certain of it.”

“Then who’s living there?” Valdar asked.

“I don’t know, sir. The architecture on each island we can see is unique, but this one…” Geller swiped his fingers across the touch screen and the holo whirled across Nibiru’s surface and stopped over a village with several dozen buildings.

The imagery was grainy, but Valdar made out a perimeter wall, paved roads, houses several stories in height and a large central square with some sort of statue in the middle. At the corner of the square, two large and one small humanoid figure in white clothing stood out from the earth-toned buildings.

“Is this a human settlement?” Lafayette asked.

“It—yes, that’s my guess,” Geller said.

Whispers broke out from the assembled officers. Valdar rapped his knuckles against the railing to quiet everyone.

“How is this possible? Where did those people come from?” Ericson asked.

“We had some suspicions,” Valdar said. “The ancient-era coins the Toth ambassador gave to Lieutenant Hale on Europa, the base-10 coding found in the Toth’s computers, even in our own history. Ibarra’s probe suspects that the Toth visited the Earth several thousand years ago and encountered the civilization in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. Many cultures from that time period had lizard-like god figures as part of their mythology. At the risk of sounding like some crazy-haired weirdo from an old TV show, the Toth could be the inspiration for those legends.”

“So, the Toth took some humans with them when they left Earth way back when?” Hale asked.

Valdar pointed to the settlement in answer.

“There’s more,” Geller said. The display shifted to a square landing zone cut out of a dense forest not far from the village, a worn path connecting the two. A Toth drop ship, similar to the ones that delivered Toth warriors to the Hawaiian shores during the aliens’ assault on Earth but missing any armament, sat on the landing zone.

“So that’s how they get to and from Mentiq’s city,” Valdar said. “Looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way. Hale, you and your team will make planet fall just outside this village. Figure out if the people in there can help you get into the city, or if they know some way we can get those shields down. I don’t care if you smother Mentiq with a pillow or I pound him into dust from orbit. He is our objective.”

“What if the humans are collaborators?” Hale asked.

“Hard to believe, but if they’re on Mentiq’s side, then they’re hostiles. Treat them accordingly,” Valdar said. “Find a way into that city. You’ll have two days. Lowenn and the probe put an Akkadian language pack together for your communicators. Let’s hope they still speak that language.” Valdar double-tapped a screen and the holo zoomed out to show the entire planet. “What’s in orbit?”

“Nothing to be happy about,” Utrecht said. The image dissolved and rematerialized. Two gigantic
Naga
-class starships, the color of dried blood with irregularly placed crystalline cannons across their hulls, circled around a cluster of smaller spacecraft.

Hale recognized several Toth cruisers with the spiral shell design he’d seen up close and personal on Anthalas and Earth. A handful of ships were unlike anything he’d ever seen before—a sleek teardrop ship with stretched reflections of neighboring vessels across its hull and a pillar-like ship with segmented portions rotating around its long axis. More Toth and ships of unknown origin were packed close together like a herd of sheep by the circling
Naga
battleships.

“All the ships out mass the
Breitenfeld
,” Utrecht said. “The two
Naga
-class ships will make everything difficult once we lose our cloak. We’ve seen how much firepower those ships can put out.”

“Do they have the same energy shields?” Valdar asked.

“If they do, they’re lowered. We’re not picking up the same energy signatures that we did from the
Naga
,” Geller said. “And the rest of the ships are running on low power. Life support and little else.”

“Mentiq does not trust his guests,” Steuben said. “They are weak and defenseless before the battleships. A foe without a weapon cannot strike.”

“Any idea why there are so many ships in orbit?” Valdar asked. “I doubt the planet’s land mass has enough dirt for all the crews to stand on.”

“It looks like a convoy,” Ericson said. “Maybe all these ships are on their way somewhere and this is just a waystation.”

“From an operational standpoint, it’s an obstacle. The anchorage is directly above Mentiq’s city,” Utrecht said. “Our single Mule with a cloaking device doesn’t have the range to get around those ships.”

“So long as they’re powered down, the shuttle could pass within a few dozen yards of any of those ships without the risk of detection,” Lafayette said.

“Fly through that mess?” Hale said. “The ships are so close to each other that they’re swapping paint.”

“I can do it,” Lafayette said. “With Egan as my copilot, it should be fairly straightforward.”

“Fair enough.” Valdar chopped his hand through the display and it powered down. “Hale’s team will embark once we’re at maximum range for the shuttle. Lieutenant,” Valdar looked at Hale, “my ready room.”

****

Valdar picked up a stack of papers from a leather chair in front of his desk and tossed them onto a little-used bunk. He motioned to the now empty seat and flopped into his own chair, a leather upholstered high back with worn armrests.

“What’s up, Uncle Isaac?” Hale asked as he sat down. The godfather-son pair managed a few moments of private time while one commanded the
Breitenfeld
and the other the ship’s Marine complement.

“How do you feel about this mission?” Valdar asked.

“It’s…iffy,” Hale said. “I thought we’d find a planet with Mentiq and maybe some orbital defenses. Nothing we couldn’t handle from orbit. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. We’re prepped for a ground infiltration and if we can get line of sight on Mentiq, the snipers will take care of him. Now we’ve got a bunch of new variables—none that seem to help us.”

“Should we abort? I can park the ship behind one of the outer planets and wait for the jump engines to recharge,” Valdar said.

Hale leaned back and rubbed his palm against his face. Hale had the perpetual look of exhaustion and pent-up violence Valdar came to know during the last war against the Chinese. That war, not unlike the current conflict with the Xaros, were a few intense battles spaced out over weeks and months as the two sides waged campaigns across the Pacific Ocean.

Valdar looked at his godson and didn’t see the bright-eyed and athletic child he’d watched grow up. Hale’d become a bloodied warrior with the scars to prove it. The Marine’s eyes seemed locked on a distant vista, his body ever alert for the slightest provocation to join battle.

The captain knew this was what Hale wanted when he joined the Marine’s Strike Corps, but deep inside, Valdar wished Hale could go back to the innocent kid that won trophies for swimming competitions up and down California.

“Kren,” Hale said, “the Toth ambassador I dealt with on Europa, he mentioned something called ‘The Belt.’ I wasn’t sure what he was talking about until I saw the video files pulled out of the
Naga
’s wreck. The Toth home world has a space station that circles the equator. The Toth have more ships than humanity ever had at the peak of the cold war between the Chinese and the Atlantic Union. Even with Ibarra’s proccie tubes and our ship yards going at full speed, the Toth could crush us. We barely won the first time they showed up. They come back with another couple
Nagas
and what they’ve got in their home system…”

“We have some time. Kren’s expedition isn’t due back for a couple more weeks. They had to hop from system to system with their jump drives to get to Earth. The Crucible got us out here with one jump. I can take us back to Earth, try and come back with more firepower.”

Hale shook his head. “The only reason we took down the
Naga
was because the Toth got greedy and stupid when they let the
Lehi
and a bomb inside its shield. There are two Toth dreadnoughts in orbit and we don’t have a way through their shields yet. We try to bring what’s left of Eighth Fleet and the new Twelfth Fleet and we’ve got a slug fight on our hands. Think of the casualties.”

Proccie casualties,
Valdar thought.
You wouldn’t be at risk.

“What do you think your chances are if I send you to the surface? Think you can get a shot at Mentiq and take him out?” Valdar asked.

“I trained for this kind of mission before the war. Back when the target was some Chinese flag officer vacationing at a Thai cathouse. Dropping on a planet with a long-lost human population and infiltrating into a shielded compound…not the same, but close enough,” Hale shrugged. “Worst comes to worst and you extract my team. The
Breitenfeld
de-cloaks, tosses a few rail cannon rounds into that mass of ships as a parting gift and we head home. We show Mentiq we know where he lives and we can hurt him. Maybe he’ll take the hint to leave us alone.”

“That’s a lot of variables,” Valdar said. Absent from his briefings to the crew were Ibarra’s express orders to Valdar that didn’t come from the navy’s chain of command. Valdar had aided a movement of true-born humans attempting to get rid of the procedurals by handing them all over to the Toth, and Ibarra had all the evidence he needed to make sure Valdar was stripped of his command and charged with treason.