The Ibarra Sanction (Terran Armor Corps Book 2)

by Richard Fox

  She took her data slate out of her uniform and slammed it against the recharging pad built into her desk. A holo screen popped up and a high-priority video message pulsed for her attention. It was from her father, not sent by his military account and with a heavy Dotari encryption that stopped her from listening to it in public.

  Cha’ril kicked off the human tanker boots and let her feet splay out. She gripped a stool with overly long, claw-tipped toes and dragged it in front of her desk. She stood on top of it and squatted down, sitting like a proper Dotari and not pressing her hindquarters against things, like the humans always preferred.

  She pulled out a small shrink-wrapped bunch of red fruit still attached to a cut branch, hesitated for a moment, then tore open the packaging and popped a raw coffee berry into her mouth. She chewed it quickly and a gentle wave of euphoria passed through her body. Her anger subsided and a dull buzz filled her ears.

  The Dotari had first encountered the coffee plant on Hawaii. A few enterprising individuals discovered a recreational effect for the raw fruit, a secret not shared with their human hosts.

  Cha’ril pinched another coffee berry between her fingers, then wrapped it up in the plastic and gently returned it to the desk.

  “Play message seven-seven-eight,” she said.

  The holo screen snapped to her father in his office, the skyscrapers of Phoenix in the background.

  “My sweet nestling,” Un’qu said, “I’m sorry I cannot give you this news in person, but your deployments are difficult to track. I cancelled your trip to Dotari, not out of anger, but to protect you.” His forehead deepened in color, a sure sign he was upset.

  “The phage has become worse. We thought returning to our home world after the war, after our long exile in the void and on Takeni, would be our salvation. We were no longer the itinerant Dotok, but rightful Dotari, proud of our homes and our nation. But the disease has proven too tough, too resilient to our science.

  “Children are dying,” he rubbed a tear away from the corner of an eye. “We thought they would be the most resilient to the phage, but their immune system collapses faster than an adult’s. The Council of Firsts is on the verge of declaring a quarantine, forbidding any healthy Dotari from setting foot on our world.

  “The Terrans are most helpful. They’ve sent their best doctors and scientists to aid us, but they’ve had just as much success as we have in developing a treatment. There is a joint…effort underway with the humans. One I can’t discuss on this channel. It is a long shot, but as the humans say, ‘Cod mittens…Goof missives.’ No…”

  “Gott mit uns,” Cha’ril said. Older Dotari were notoriously bad at speaking any human language but English. The younger generation had developed their tongues to embrace more of their allies’ esoteric sayings. But why her father would invoke a human battle cry, even one that famous, didn’t make any sense to her.

  “Your mother and brothers are still there, still healthy, but I cannot risk letting you go back. If Dotari is lost, along with ninety percent of our population, it could doom our species. As such, the Council of Firsts has ordered the removal of hormone blockers from all Dotari Expedition ships and food processors.”

  Cha’ril almost choked on her coffee berry.

  “Any eggs will be cared for in crèches on Hawaii or Dotari vessels as per our treaty with Phoenix. That’s the official position. As your father…it never occurred to me that you’d ever have children until you transferred back to the Dotari armor brigade and married, yet this is the world we live in. Given your age…the urge will be quite strong. I wish I could do more for you, but at least your mother can still send you videos from home to help you through this. Do come see me when you can.”

  He signed off with their family trill.

  Cha’ril stared at the blank holo screen for a moment, then took the whole pack of coffee berries back out of the desk.

  Chapter 4

  The mess hall servicing the main armor barracks beneath Olympus was a bit of an anachronism; it had a kitchen. The bang of pots and pans against stoves, the sizzle of cooking meat, and a complete omelet station always made Roland think of Earth and his last job as a waiter in a restaurant that went to the great expense of hiring human chefs.

  When modern robots could cook food perfectly and a single food printer could deliver tailored nutrition quickly and easily, the nuances that came from others preparing one’s food almost felt like a luxury.

  Roland set a tray of food next to Aignar, then inhaled the aroma of his pasta dish. Aignar looked down at his meal inside an enclosed cup and straw, then back at Roland.

  “The Andouille sausage smells incredible.” Roland jabbed a fork into his meal. “I actually saw them making the pasta back there. I can’t believe it.”

  Aignar stuck a fingertip against his jawline and pressed twice. His prosthetic jaw snapped open slightly, then he maneuvered the straw between his lips and pinched them shut around the straw. He took a long sip of nutrient paste, then set the cup down just hard enough to make a statement.

  “Oh,” Roland blushed. “I’m an asshole. Aren’t I?”

  “Not at all. This is my favorite flavor of gloop and I’m not sharing it with you,” Aignar said.

  Roland took a bite of his dinner. His face contorted in pain a moment later.

  “Bit myself again,” he said. “Damnedest thing about being in the armor for so long. You forget how to eat. Crap. I did it again.”

  “You keep making it weird and I’ll stop eating with you,” Aignar said. “How was your sparring session with old man Tongea?”

  “One-sided.” Roland took a quick glance around the mess hall. “You ever notice that the Templar, the ones that have stood the Vigil and can wear the cross, never sit with anyone but each other?”

  “Probably because they don’t waste time speaking while at meals,” Aignar said. “They train and they fight. Any time not in armor is time you’re losing your synch rating.”

  “Not like we have much time for socializing,” Roland said. “This is our third time back on Mars since the dustup on Barrada almost eight months ago…You know any lances that have Templar and non-Templar armor in them? Seems like every lance is either all Templar or not at all.”

  “Don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

  “Lieutenant Gideon. He’s never said a word about the Templar. Hasn’t shown a speck of interest in them, which strikes me as odd since I heard he must have seen Saint Kallen on Hawaii during the Toth attack. He’s got that same fire as the Templar. Why hasn’t he ever joined? What’s going to happen when we’re fully inducted?”

  “You think we’ll be transferred?” Aignar asked.

  “I don’t want that. Gideon’s taught me so much—I can’t imagine following anyone else. And Cha’ril…sure, she’s a—oh hi, Cha’ril.” Roland scooted over on his bench to make room for her.

  The Dotari set a steaming bowl of gar’udda nuts down, then sat with her hands balled in her lap. She looked up at Aignar sitting across from her, then leaned to one side. She snuck a peek at a table with three male Dotari armor. One of them nodded to her, and she ducked her head back, using Aignar to block her line of sight.

  “Everything okay?” Roland asked.

  “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” Cha’ril popped a gar’udda into her mouth and cracked it loudly.

  Roland cringed.

  “Everything okay?” Aignar asked, his tone almost petulant through his throat speaker.

  “I cannot enjoy my meal if I have to abide by all your rude table manners.” Cha’ril shifted over and sat shoulder to shoulder with Roland. She ate her next nut more gently.

  “Cha’ril, what will you do if Roland and I become Templar?” Aignar asked.

  “I don’t know if anything would change,” she said. “Given the passion with which the Templar fight to protect humanity, I thought there would be some open hostility to my alien nature, yet I have never experienced any sort of ill treatment or aggression. Nor has any ot
her Dotari armor voiced a complaint.”

  “There are two Dotari at Memorial Square,” Roland said. “According to High Chaplain Krohe, they had their weapons blessed before the final battle with the Xaros.”

  “An unusual act for a Dotari,” Cha’ril said. “I believe it had more to do with the connection between fallen Caas and Ar’ri and the Iron Hearts than any sort of religious notion. Our spirituality comes through community and our link to our parents and…hatchlings.” She dipped her head slightly and focused her attention on her bowl.

  Roland glanced at Aignar, who shrugged.

  “Special dessert,” a low voice rumbled. A hulking figure in chef’s whites pushed a trolley with several tiers of small plates between the tables. He had a shock of white hair and skin colored shades of deep green and black in segments almost like a turtle’s shell.

  “Hello, Cookee,” Roland said to the doughboy. “We missed you.”

  “Portuguese egg tarts.” Cookee set down a plate with four bite-sized custard treats with small scorch marks across their yellow tops. He waited for Roland to take a bite and give him a thumbs-up, then reached to a lower tier and brought out a pair of gar’udda nuts covered in cinnamon and sugar.

  “Churro gar nuts for Dotty friends.” The doughboy set the plate in front of Cha’ril, who recoiled slightly.

  Roland kicked her under the table.

  Cha’ril took a slow, excruciating bite, then nodded at Cookee.

  “Thumb. Give him the thumb,” Roland muttered.

  Cha’ril stuck a thumb out parallel to the table, then rotated it up.

  The doughboy grunted and moved on.

  “I don’t understand why you tolerate that…thing.” Cha’ril spat her churro-flavored nut into a napkin.

  “What? The egg tarts aren’t half-bad. Cookee’s getting better.” Roland ate another one.

  “I still wonder if its underlying programming to kill nonhumans is still at work. What did he do to those poor gar’udda? Fry them in some sort of oil then toss them in poison?” Cha’ril asked.

  “Let me try.” Roland sniffed the fusion of Dotari and Earth cooking and took a small bite. “Not half-bad.”

  “Barbarism,” Cha’ril said.

  “He’s one of the very last doughboys,” Aignar said to Cha’ril. “It won’t hurt you to be kind to him.”

  “It is an it, not a he,” she said. “It is a biological computer in human form designed to fight. I don’t understand your affection for them.”

  “They filled the gaps during the Ember War,” Aignar said. “Served as infantry on the ground and counter-borders in the navy, and they died in droves fighting the Xaros. Most reached the end of their service life after the war, but a couple were abnormal, kept ticking. We couldn’t just…put them down.”

  “Something of a human tradition,” Roland said. “Prewar militaries used dogs, horses. Their handlers took care of them when their service ended. Cookee found a niche in the kitchen. I heard there’s even a doughboy in the Strike Marines.”

  “That doughboy a genius or the jarheads getting that stupid?” Aignar, the former Ranger who had no love for a sister service, asked. He laughed, the monotone sounds from the speaker in his neck always came through with a mocking tone, no matter the intention behind his laughter.

  “Doughboys—another Ibarra Industries innovation,” Roland said. “I think there are only a few dozen left. Most were retired from service after the war.”

  The data slate in his pocket vibrated three times. He let out a sigh.

  “Just when I sit down to eat.” He removed the device as all conversation in the mess hall died away.

  “Deployment orders,” Aignar said, reading from his slate.

  “Back to the Scipio?” Cha’ril asked as she scrolled through her screen.

  “No, the Ardennes, one of the new battleships,” Aignar said. “Wheels up in two hours.”

  “Roland, you got the same orders?” Cha’ril’s brow knit in confusion.

  “I do,” Roland said. He looked around the room as; tables with human armor soldiers quickly policed up their trays and made for the exits. The Dotari soldiers watched them go. More than one had their slate out, shaking their heads.

  “Here it is,” Cha’ril said. “The Ardennes, but my orders have amendments from Colonel Martel and Lieutenant Gideon.”

  “Mission objective and location is restricted,” Roland said. “I’m looking at the roster and I don’t see any Dotari lances. Why not?”

  “You don’t bring friends to a family feud,” Aignar said. “Time for the Ibarras to answer for what they did to the Cairo.”

  ****

  “Roland…wake up.”

  He opened his eyes and dim light grew within his womb. He kept his HUD off but sent an impulse through the umbilical connecting him to his armor. The synch rating between him and the war machine was just over eighty percent efficiency, barely optimal for combat operations.

  His armor stood inside a storage pod, a lidless coffin within the expansive armor ready bay within the Ardennes, the cemetery. All the ship’s armor idled in the cemetery, the soldiers resting within the suits to increase their bond with the war machine they brought to battle.

  “Roland?” Cha’ril asked.

  “I’m up,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. If something was wrong, I would have spoken to you before your synch rating crossed the combat threshold,” she said quickly.

  “You’ve been acting weird.”

  “No! I just want to…ask you about babies,” she said.

  Roland stretched his legs out to make sure he wasn’t somehow dreaming.

  “Not weird at all. You know Aignar has a son. You should probably ask him,” Roland said.

  “His synch is still amber and he is most agitated when I’ve woken him up in the past. But since you’re awake, I’ll ask you. The Ibarras created the procedural-generation technology shortly after the initial Xaros occupation of Earth was defeated. They could create a new human being with tailored skills in days, all unique and with their own set of false memories of a full life up to the moment they were created. Nothing like this had ever existed on Earth. Why did humans incorporate the procedurals so easily into society?”

  “If I’d known there would be a quiz, I would have studied,” Roland said. “I’m true born, have to be because proccies can’t be armor. I was surrounded by true born my entire life until my parents died in the war and then it was off to the orphanage, where the adults taking care of me were probably proccies. Almost everyone over the age of thirty in the Solar System is a proccie. Thing is, I could never tell the difference between true born and proccies.”

  “But what if you could? If they all had the doughboys’ mottled skin, for instance.”

  “The root of most human conflict is being able to distinguish someone else as an ‘other.’ Maybe that’s why we didn’t keep the doughboys in production; they’re just too different. Ibarra was smart. He made the proccies so there’s no discernable difference between them and a regular human. They have children, who’re no different than any other true born. They ‘remember’ a life that makes up their history. Not everyone was happy to hear about this, but no one seems to care anymore.”

  “So why give up the proccie tech?” she asked. “It seems to be a major advantage for Earth.”

  “Ask Ken Hale and the rest of the negotiators,” Roland said. “All I remember was some big announcement on the networks and then we had a day off from school to celebrate the treaty every year after that.”

  “So you don’t care if a prospective mate is a proccie? No concern for long-term genetic effects on your descendants?”

  “Back to being weird again.”

  “I can rationalize why Earth embraced proccies. The Xaros returned with tens of billions of attack drones, years before they were expected, and Earth was nearly lost a second time. That Earth had procedural defenders made the difference between victory and extinction. But
for the Dotari…it would have been impossible to accept. Parents form their bond with hatchlings, not while they’re gestating in their eggs. That is why adoption is almost unknown within Dotari history. I could get into the hormonal changes…but just know that is the way we are. The idea of a Dotari conjured out of thin air evokes an almost primal hatred from me.”

  “I don’t think there will ever be a procedural Dotari for you to worry about,” Roland said. “If they really did rebel over it, I doubt the Ibarras would share the tech with you anyway.”

  “Likely not. Are you aware of how Dotari mate with each other?”

  “Cha’ril, please don’t. We’ve been over this.”

  “You remain very sensitive to this topic. Humans are not averse to learning how their own species copulates. My survey of your Internet archives—”

  “I told you not to open that link Aignar sent you.”

  “—shows a great interest in the topic of copulation. Along with videos of cats, for some reason. I fail to understand your reticence. Don’t human children engage in a ritual entitled ‘you show me yours, I’ll show you mine’? If you examining my cloaca will enhance our dialogue, then—”

  “I do not want to see your cloaca and while we’re on this topic—again—stay out of the men’s locker room.” Roland squirmed inside his womb. “What is really bothering you? You have a bad habit of beating around the bush when we’re discussing anything not related to our armor or fighting.”

  “Humanity came to a decision point during the Ember War. You chose a massive disruption in your culture, to your species, for the sake of survival. If the Dotari had to do the same thing…I’m not sure we could.”

  “It’s not like there was much of a choice. Ibarra snuck proccies into the fleet, into Phoenix…he even made his own fleet, the Lost 8th that turned the tide when the Toth came knocking. He didn’t give the survivors of the first battle with the Xaros an opportunity to even consider the implications. One day we woke up, and the proccies were everywhere and were vital to winning the war.”