The Battle of the Void (The Ember War Saga Book 6) by Richard Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

jiggle as the landing gear retracted. The hull wavered and faded into nothing as its cloak activated. Hale glanced from side to side. The seemingly absent Mule made him feel like he was almost floating in midair inside the turret ball. 
    “Cloak looks good,” Hale said.
    “—Never wear a corporal’s stripes if you don’t—”
    “Cloak good!” Standish said over Cortaro before he switched back to the other channel.
    “Here we go,” Egan said as the Mule accelerated forward. The shuttle passed through the Breitenfeld’s open bay doors moments later. Hale scanned the sky until he found the Crucible; tiny gold flecks imbedded in the thorns twinkled against the wall of stars of the distant galactic arm. He looked back to the ship, but it was gone. Hidden behind its own cloak.
    There, seemingly floating in the vast depths of the void, Hale got a sense of his own importance in the grand scheme of the galaxy, and it felt utterly irrelevant.
    “Cut your forward velocity to zero in eighty-seven seconds,” Malal said.
    “What happens at eighty-eight?” Egan asked.
    “You will smash into the outer hull and not survive the experience. That would complicate my task,” Malal said.
    “Reducing speed,” Egan said.
    Hale felt a slight tug against his restraints as the Mule slowed.
    “Stacey. I don’t see a damned thing out here other than the Crucible,” Hale said. “Are you sure—”
    The vault appeared right in front of the Mule. The outer sphere was enormous, easily a dozen miles wide and far larger than any spaceborne object humanity had ever constructed. Titan Station could have fit in the gaps on the outermost sphere with room to spare. Geometric shapes and swirls played out across the surface.
    “See it?” Stacey asked.
    “Yeah, it’s here all right. How do we get in?” Hale asked.
    “Stop close to the surface, but do not land on it,” Malal said.
    “Roger,” Egan said and the Mule closed on the vault slowly. “I can see it…but it’s not anywhere on my screens. There’s not even a hint of gravity from that thing. I did a flyby on Deimos. Even something that small played hell with navigation.”
    The Mule came to a stop almost fifty yards above the surface. The outer sphere raced past with enough velocity that it reminded Hale of the time he and his brother played too close to the train tracks as children. Jared had come precariously close to getting hit by a speeding locomotive and both had received a licking from their mother’s wooden spoon when their parents learned of the incident.
    “How are we going to get inside?” Hale asked. He caught a few glimpses of the fourth layer of spheres, but the gaps never stayed open for more than a few seconds.
    “Open the hatch,” Malal said. A few seconds later, the unsuited Malal floated past Hale and stopped feet from the vault’s surface.
    “I’m not getting used to him,” Standish said. “Just so everyone knows.”
    Malal reached for the surface and tendrils of coherent light stretched from his fingertips to the spinning metal. A plane of blue-white light stretched across the surface, and the spheres continued moving without any apparent effects. The plane grew until it was wider and taller than the Mule, and then stopped.
    Malal lowered his hands. The plane faded away, revealing a long tunnel with a bright light in the far distance. The tunnel looked like it went on for miles and should have cut through the moving spheres. Yet the tunnel and spheres didn’t interact, even though everything from Hale’s point of view told him the tunnel should have been ripped apart or jammed the spheres into motionlessness.
    “I think I’m going to be sick,” Egan said.
    Malal floated to the side of the tunnel, bent at the waist slightly, and motioned for the Mule to go inside like he was a doorman welcoming them to a hotel.
    “Get us inside, Egan. I don’t like it out here anymore than you do,” Hale said.
     
    ****
     
    Hale grabbed a lever on the