by Richard Fox
Roland fished the box out of his pocket and handed it over to Tagawa.
“Ma’am, don’t you have sailors that can do this for you?” Roland asked.
“Better to keep this close hold…just in case.” Gideon rubbed a knuckle up and down the scars on one side of his face.
“Damn scuttlebutt.” Tagawa picked up an omni-tool. The point reshaped itself into a screwdriver head. “My crew’s small enough to know what to keep inside the family, but just large enough that I won’t know who to keelhaul if something gets out.” She looked at Cha’ril, then to Gideon.
“I am armor,” the Dotari said. “I am sworn to obey all lawful orders while assigned to Terran armed forces. If this is a sensitive human matter, I can excuse myself.”
“She stays,” Gideon said. “She saw enough down there to put the pieces together.”
A heavy bang of boots on stairs preceded Aignar’s arrival. His face, with the exception of his lower jaw, was flush from the climb. He looked at Gideon, then his brow furrowed with confusion. He flicked the small speaker embedded in the front of his neck.
“—thing doesn’t want to…there we go,” Aignar said through the speaker.
“Button us up,” Gideon said and shifted over. Aignar touched the control panel and the round door rolled shut.
Roland’s ears fluttered as the air pressure adjusted. He looked at the empty gunner’s seat; the image of the dead sailor made his stomach ball up.
“I scanned his tags. His name was Martins,” Roland said. “I hope that box can tell us who killed him.”
Tagawa glanced around the hydraulics at the turret dome and the storm-ravaged skies of Nimbus IV where the Scipio was in low orbit. She turned the omni-tool around in her hand and hit the base against the buffer housing.
The dome glass flickered and changed to a star field.
“Turret Bravo-two-eight, manned and active.” Martins’ voice came through the cramped room’s speakers. The star field shifted around, showing the camera footage captured in the buffer box. “What the hell just hit us?” Martins asked.
A HUD came up on the screens along with a blinking error message.
“Gunnery? I don’t have a target feed from the bridge or the fore turrets,” Martins said. Seconds ticked by before the active channel on the screens changed as Martins tried to reach someone else. “Chief Senova, you there? Where the hell is everyone?”
The screens shook and fizzled. The star field lolled to one side, then began spinning. A gray sliver of Nimbus IV appeared at the edge of the image.
“She lost engines,” Tagawa said.
“There were a number of precision hits to the Cairo,” Cha’ril said.
“Tell me they weren’t from rail cannons,” Tagawa said.
Cha’ril’s beak worked from side to side, a Dotari body language cue Roland had learned meant indecision.
A new object, white and red in color, came into view. Roland kept his eyes on it as it traveled across the screen, moving with the Cairo’s out-of-control motion. His throat went dry as he made out the outline of the object. It was a ship…a Terran navy vessel.
The ship passed off the screen and the star field settled into place.
“Finally,” Martins said. He cursed several times. “Lost power to the turret. Switching to manual control…who the hell’s opening my door? We’re still running in atmo. You! Shut the blast door before—”
Roland’s shoulders hunched as the snap of gauss fire silenced Martins.
“Rewind the footage,” Gideon said, his tone low.
The screens shifted backwards until the Terran ship came up.
“Stop. Magnify,” Gideon said. The ship grew larger, remained pixilated for a moment, then resolved into sharp focus, a black “91” clearly outlined on the lower fore hull.
“A Leyte Gulf–class battle cruiser,” Cha’ril said. “The Terran navy doesn’t use a white-and-red hull coloration. The registration number—”
“It’s the Leyte Gulf,” Tagawa said. “I served on her after the second Xaros invasion.”
Roland raised his left arm and reached for the screen incorporated into his forearm sleeve. Aignar’s metal fingers wrapped over the screen and he shook his head at Roland.
“It was my understanding that all of that class of battle cruisers were sent to the breakers on Barnard’s Star,” Cha’ril said, “along with most of the Thirteenth Fleet. Part of the modernization efforts after the Hale Treaty went into effect.”
“That’s what the public was told.” Gideon’s face was set as he glared at the ghost ship on the screens. “A key part of the Hale Treaty between Earth and a sizable bloc of the Ember War alliance was that we would give up our procedural-generation technology, that we would retire the technology to create a fully trained, adult human being in a matter of weeks…There were some in the military and government opposed to that aspect of the treaty. Specifically, Marc and Stacey Ibarra.”
“But the Ibarras have been away on some science mission…” Roland said, frowning as the pieces fell into place, “…for years. And didn’t Phoenix nationalize Ibarra Industries right after the treaty was signed? I was a kid when that happened—had other things to worry about in the orphanage.”
“Once the treaty was signed,” Gideon said, “the Ibarras stole a number of navy ships and vanished into the Crucible jump-gate network.”
“It wasn’t just the two of them, was it, sir?” Aignar asked.
“There were some traitors that escaped with them.” Gideon stepped away from the wall and leveled a finger at Roland and the others. “This is all top-secret information. You breathe a word of it to anyone not cleared—and everyone on the Scipio that needs to know this information is in this room—and you will lose your armor. General Laran’s orders. Write your after-action reports with pen and paper and get them to me in the next two hours.”
The lance commander hurried out of the turret.
“Hadn’t been a peep from the Ibarras since they escaped.” Tagawa pulled the buffer box out from under the gunner’s seat and picked up the original part. “Hope was that they’d settled some little corner of the galaxy and would leave well enough alone.”
“You didn’t know anything about this?” Roland asked Cha’ril, who shook her head. “What will the Dotari do if—no, when—they find out?”
“The Dotari have an alliance with Earth, not the Ibarras,” she said.
“The Dotari aren’t the problem,” Aignar said. “What about the rest of the galaxy? The Vishrakath? The Naroosha? We’ve had a few spats over territory since the treaty. If they think Earth’s cheating, it might mean full-scale war.”
“What’s one rogue fleet got to do with the treaty?” Roland asked.
“Who do you think came up with the proccie tech, Mr. Shaw?” Tagawa screwed the end of a fiber-optic cable into the hydraulic controls, then scooted away from the under-seat housing. “It was the Ibarras. They ran the entire program. Helped usher in three billion people over the course of two decades. You think they skipped the Sol System without it?”
“If the Vishrakath figure out that the Ibarras still have their proccie tubes at work, they—and most everyone else in the galaxy—will hold Earth responsible,” Aignar said.
“What? That’s not fair,” Roland said. “The Ibarras are renegades, traitors. How are we responsible?”
“Humanity was the last member to join the Alliance against the Xaros,” Cha’ril said. “To be part of the Alliance, a species had to be unified, purposeful. This was the way of things for thousands of years. There are no Vishrakath nation-states. The Naroosha do not have factions. The galaxy won’t distinguish between the Ibarras and Earth. I did not think this would happen to humans. You passed through a great filter when the Xaros wiped out the Earth. Ibarra saved a fleet made up of a single culture, ‘—the West,’ I think you call it.”
“If you think the West never fought itself, I have some reading to suggest to you,” Aignar said. “But what now? Earth de
clares war on the Ibarras for the Cairo?”
“First, we get this evidence back home.” Tagawa closed up the hydraulics and tucked the buffer box beneath an arm. “I’m heading to the bridge.”
Cha’ril waited for her to leave before saying, “My father told me serving with humans would be interesting. I don’t think this is what he meant.”
“Gideon knows more than he’s telling us,” Aignar said. “I’ve never seen him so worked up before—not even when we were dealing with the Vishrakath.”
“Who wants to ask him?” Roland raised an eyebrow.
Silence.
“Yeah. Neither do I,” Roland said.
Chapter 3
Roland hefted a duffle bag onto his shoulder and marched down the gangplank extending out of one side of the Scipio and to the floor of the hangar beneath Olympus Mons. He looked up to the roof, almost a half mile above his head. Force fields separated the hangar’s atmosphere from the thin air and pink skies of Mars beyond the largest mountain in the Solar System.
The sheer scale of the corvette hangar always left him in awe at the engineering prowess that went into the Terran Armor Corps’ home base. The entire complex stretched out beneath Olympus—: training areas, underground cities, manufacturing plants…all for the armor and the Martian defenses.
On the Scipio’s main ramp, the Iron Dragoons’ armor slid down on anti-grav generators within their sealed maintenance pods, their “coffins.” With the weight of the bag and the exhaustion of arriving at Mars during the middle of their normal sleep cycle, Roland longed to be back inside his armor.
“Home sweet home,” Aignar said from behind Roland.
“You prefer this to Earth?” Cha’ril asked.
“I prefer anywhere I’m not stuffed into a navy can with a bunch of squids that haven’t showered in days,” Aignar said.
“Serve on a Dotari ship for a few months,” Cha’ril said. “You’ll find the Scipio has plenty of room in comparison.”
Gideon waited for them at the base of the ramp. He scrolled through a data slate as the three huddled around him. Drone carts rolled through the hangar. A trio of armor soldiers in red-painted armor emerged from a sally port and strode to another corvette at the opposite end of the hangar.
The iron tang of Martian air hit Roland’s nose. Growing up in Phoenix, he was used to a dry heat; the cool, moist air of Olympus tinged with red dust gave the place its own distinct scent.
Roland and the others waited as his lieutenant scrolled down a data slate, then looked up at them.
“Our lance remains on deployment cycle,” Gideon said. “Armor’s going to tech bay seven for quarterly services. Be there at 1700 local.”
Roland’s heart sank. He understood the value of being a part of his armor’s regular maintenance—his user insight often caught problems the diagnostics did not—but the more he tried to help, the more annoyed the technicians became with his presence.
“The brass want to see me in the Castrum,” Gideon said, citing the headquarters structure for all of Olympus. “What we encountered on Nimbus remains quiet, understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Roland tapped a data slate in a pocket. “Speaking of, seems all our accounts are locked. If you need to reach us before 1700…”
“Forgot about that—one second.” Gideon tapped on his screen and the data slate in Roland’s pocket vibrated with new notifications.
“Stay out of trouble.” Gideon said, holding up a hand, and an empty cargo sled pulled up next to him.
Roland pulled his data slate out and looked through a month’s worth of messages. He scanned down the senders’ names, hoping for a note from Jerry, his old friend from the orphanage that joined the Rangers the same time Roland volunteered for the Armor Corps…but all he had were administrative notices from the battalion’s adjutant. He didn’t bother looking for anything from Masako. He’d given up on her months ago.
“Only three months until we’re off deployment cycle,” Aignar said. “You still going back to Dotari for leave, Cha’ril?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes fixed on her screen. Her skin went almost pale blue as the tip of a quill quivered next to the base of her beak.
“Cha’ril?” Aignar asked. “You okay?”
“My leave has been cancelled,” she said. “Seems I won’t be going home anytime soon.”
“That’s bullcrap,” Aignar said. “Thought the Corps couldn’t stop a Dotari from going home at least once or twice a year.”
“It was not the Corps…my. My father did it.” She adjusted her pack, then slid her slate into a thigh pocket. “I must…excuse me.” She summoned a sled and was gone seconds later.
“Nothing’s ever easy, is it, kid?” Aignar asked Roland.
“I got nothing special.” Roland shook his slate gently. “Just that Dr. Eeks is on planet and needs to do a checkup on my plugs. There’s a Templar fellowship on Stack C-31 in half an hour. Want to come?”
“You want to go do that instead of sleep, eat, or take a shower that doesn’t have a thirty-second ration time?” Aignar asked.
“The Templar won’t let us stand the Vigil unless two inducted members vouch for us. No one will do that unless we go to fellowship and practice.” Roland looked down at his bare left chest pocket, where a Templar cross would go once the order accepted him.
“I’ve been a bit…lacking in my service to Saint Kallen,” Aignar said.
“Then let’s go.” Roland said, holding up a hand. “It’ll be fun!”
****
Roland caught a glimpse of the sword as it slashed at his face. He swung up the blade of his own wooden sword and managed a block that bounced the training weapon against the thin metal bars of his helmet.
He didn’t see the kick that struck his stomach, but he felt the sting and the whoosh of air out of his lungs. Roland doubled over, and his opponent chopped down on the pads protecting Roland’s neck.
Roland fell to one side, struggling to breathe as his diaphragm failed to function for a half second.
“You haven’t been practicing,” Lieutenant Tongea said as he removed his helmet and held it against his side. The Maori wiped sweat off his tattooed face and shook his head.
“We…were…” Roland coughed.
“Are you going to offer me an excuse?” Tongea set down his wooden sword and helmet and helped Roland sit up.
“No, sir.” Roland took in a deep breath and winced.
“You think this is foolish? Armor practicing with sticks when we carry rail weapons and gauss cannons?” Tongea slid Roland’s helmet off to look him square in the eye. “That this is somehow beneath you?”
“No, sir…Can we have another match?”
“You think it will go differently?” Tongea half-smiled at him.
“I’ll improve. Bruises are a decent teacher.” Roland reached for his weapon but Tongea knocked it away with a flick of his sword tip.
“You may not be ready for this. For the Templar,” Tongea said.
“What? I am. I need practice, but it will—” Roland struggled to get up, but Tongea poked him in the chest with his sword and kept him seated.
The Maori sat down next to him and crossed his legs, then rested the sword over his thighs. He tapped the red cross sewn onto his white tunic.
“Why the sword?” Tongea asked. “Why do we bother learning this when we fight with guns and cannons?”
“The first Templar, Colonel Carius, carried one when he fought the Xaros on their home world. Their leadership caste wasn’t flesh and blood. The swords were designed to kill the Xaros.”
“Not quite,” Tongea said. “The sword is a symbol. Carius—and all the Martyrs—took up the Excalibur swords because it was the only weapon that could win victory against the Xaros, to save Earth and the human race. The sword is our promise, our vow that the Templar will protect humanity at all costs. Not every Templar carries a sword. The Uhlans have their lances. Odinsons their hammers.”
“If it’s a symbol, why bo
ther practicing?” Roland asked.
“Vows are worthless unless deeds are wedded to them,” Tongea said. “If you can’t wield the blade, you won’t respect what it stands for.”
Roland nodded slowly.
“But that’s only one part of becoming a Templar.” Tongea got back onto his feet. “You want to become part of the order? Wear the cross on your armor and uniform? You must know the hymns, the prayers…then we’ll consider letting you stand the Vigil at Memorial Square. You won’t be a Templar until then.”
“I’m having trouble with the hymns. They’re so long. And in Latin,” Roland said.
“You are armor. You went through the most arduous training and selection process humanity has for its warriors, and you can’t memorize a few dozen pages of Latin?” Tongea grabbed Roland by the forearm and pulled him to his feet.
Around them, pairs of Templar and initiates sparred with wooden long swords on bamboo mats. Tongea pointed across the training area to rows of pews arrayed in front of a shrine to Saint Kallen. Aignar and several others were there, all reading from hymn books.
“Ask Brother Cordeswain to help you with memorization,” Tongea said. “The next time you step on the mat with me and you fight below my expectations, I’ll give you a good scar to remind you to practice.”
“Thank you, sir.” Roland winced as he felt the ache of accumulated bruises beneath his armor.
****
The door to Cha’ril’s barracks room slid open and she hurled her duffle bag against the far wall, breaking a wrought-iron sculpture of a nest. She stomped into the room and glared at the door as it slid shut, wishing she could have slammed it.
She paced back and forth, emanating a constant hiss punctuated with clicks from her beak. She tapped her fingertips together, then kicked a low stool into the bent nest sculpture on the floor.
Her barracks managed to make her angrier. The proper Dotari bed made of a bowl-shaped cushion hanging from the ceiling, a mist shower unit, her stash of salted gar’udda nuts in her closet—all vivid reminders of her home world that her father had forbidden her from visiting.