Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3) by Richard Fox Read Free Book Online Page B

sunken stadium of the Crucible’s control center came into view as the white field subsided. She floated to the ground, her armored boots scuffing along the floor as she regained her balance.
    Stacey looked down at her arms, still covered in the battle armor from the day humanity took the star gate from the Xaros and she began her career as an ambassador to the alliance against the invaders. Drops of blood, black spots surrounded by streaks of red, ran up and down her gauntlets. A Marine named Franklin had sacrificed himself to save her from a drone, and she’d done nothing for him but abandon him in a passageway.
    Each time she left and returned to the Crucible, she was in her armor. Yet, on Bastion she came and went in a body glove and tunic. This discrepancy hadn’t been cleared up by either the AI on Bastion or the man that got her into this predicament.
    She shook her head and pushed sweat-soaked hair away from her face.
    “Ibarra? Granddad?” she asked to an empty room.
    A hologram of Marc Ibarra materialized in front of her, looking like the middle-aged industrialist she remembered from her childhood.
    “The Breitenfeld is overdue,” he said. “I hope you’ve got good news.”
    Stacey unsnapped the clasps on her right forearm gauntlet and let it fall to the floor. She stripped off a glove and pressed her hand against the plinth in the center of the room. A panel lit up under her palm.
    “DNA data transfer commencing. Thank you, Stacey,” the probe at the heart of the Crucible said, its voice artificial but pleasant.
    Stacey glared at Ibarra and shook her head in disgust.
    “You put procedurals on the Breitenfeld ? Without telling me?”
    “How do you know that? Where is the ship, Stacey? We’ve got a lot riding on it,” Ibarra said, crossing his arms.
    “The ship took a detour on the way back to Earth. The mission to Anthalas was a success—better than we’d hoped. They found an intact omnium reactor the Shanishol used, control protocols and an ancient…intelligence that’s been most informative about how to control omnium,” Stacey said.
    The panel beneath her palm blinked, signaling the end of the data transfer encoded within her DNA. The human mind could remember only so much data and was subject to the vagaries of memory and damage. Bastion fused data within her DNA for a lossless transfer, but the ability wasn’t without cost. The circumstances of her birth had been manipulated; synthetic material had been incorporated during her gestation to produce a baby somewhat more than human. Ibarra had subjected his many daughters to the procedure, but Stacey was the only viable child from many failed pregnancies Ibarra’s daughters endured.
    “There was something else on Anthalas…the Toth,” Stacey said. “They came in on the same gravity window we used to get in and out.”
    “The who?”
    “Read the report. Everything I know is there,” she said.
    Ibarra used the tremendous processing ability of the probe to digest the video statements, ship’s logs and the Alliance’s entire data file on the Toth within thousandths of a second. Having his intelligence subsumed within the probe came with a few advantages.
    “They sampled the procedurals. They know…” Ibarra said.
    “That’s right. A hostile race addicted to neural energy knows that Earth has the key to an unlimited source of their fix. They know this because you thought it would be a good idea to send untested vat babies with the Breitenfeld !” Stacey picked up her gauntlet and threw it at Ibarra. The armor passed through the hologram without incident.
    “Science requires experimentation, my girl. If I’d known the Toth would be there, things would have played out differently.” Ibarra tugged at his lip. “Valdar suspects, but he doesn’t know?”
    “I played coy, and it killed me to lie to a man I respect,” Stacey said. “You know, not everyone can lie as easy as breathing.”
    “Deception is a skill just like any