The Gardens of Nibiru (The Ember War Saga Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

Durand said. “You might catch Kallen or Bodel in the mess hall, but they spend all the time they can in their suits.”
    “What about the third?” Lothar asked.
    “He got hurt during the fight for the Crucible. Rumor is he’s fused to the tank inside the suit,” Durand said.
    “He’s trapped in there? Why hasn’t someone tried to get him out?” Manfred asked.
    Kallen stepped off the sidelines and faced off against Elias. Her hands withdrew into the forearm housings, replaced by a long spike in one arm, a burning torch in the other. Elias slammed his fists against his chest and held his arms out wide. Kallen crouched, then sprang off the deck and tackled Elias.
    The two hit the deck so hard Durand almost dropped her tray.
    “You want to go ask him?” Durand ran her fingers against her shoulder pouch and found a beat-up pack of tobacco cigarettes. She looked up at the ventilation shaft where she knew she could smoke in peace, but that wasn’t going to happen while she was on ready alert.
    Manfred and Lothar spoke to each other in Dotok, then they looked at Durand and shook their heads.
    “What are they doing?” Glue asked. “Why bother training in hand-to-hand combat?”
    “You remember when Elias returned from that unfinished Crucible over Takeni? He had that red mask with him,” Durand said.
    “I thought that was just a rumor,” Glue said.
    “Interesting how something that’s supposed to be classified information becomes rumor, isn’t it?” Durand asked.
    “So it’s true? The Iron Hearts and that metal Karigole fought some sort of Xaros leadership?” Glue asked.
    “I’m not saying that.” Durand gave a very Gallic shrug.
    “Is this an example of doublespeak or a double entendre?” Lothar asked. “We’ve had some difficulty with English nuance.”
    “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