by Richard Fox
She turned and walked back to the open bay doors where stalks grew out of her back and lifted her off the deck.
“Wait—is there anything else I should know?” Lettow asked.
Torni turned back, the surface of her shell fading to gray, and said, “Stacey…she’s not well. If you come across Marc Ibarra, he may be more reasonable. Good luck.” She morphed into her drone form and flew out of the cargo bay.
****
Roland and Aignar, both in armor, ascended through the Ardennes in a maintenance lift. Blast doors unlocked and recessed into the walls as they went along, then banged shut as they cleared each deck. The whir of gears and clang of metal marked each new level, a harsh industrial replacement for the pleasant ding of a civilian elevator.
“You never did this when you were a crunchy?” Roland asked.
“Didn’t find the Saint until after I got hit,” Aignar said. He lifted an armored hand and moved his fingers in a smooth wave.
“How does the armor feel compared to your prosthetics?” Roland asked.
“I am armor. I am…whole. If I could, I’d never leave the womb, but if I didn’t, then the little of what’s left of the broken part of me would wither away. Did I ever tell you that I could sing? I was good. Could do the classics from Sinatra, Broden, Bublé, Draiman. But this…” He beat his fists against his chest twice, the clash of metal on metal ringing through the lift shaft. “This is better.”
Roland’s helm nodded. Deep down, he wasn’t sure if Aignar was telling the truth to himself or to Roland.
They stopped and cargo-bay doors opened to a tall, wide room bereft of any cargo or machinery. To their left, ranks of sailors and Rangers stood in silent prayer. Opposite them were a half-dozen armor all bent to a knee. Red-armored Uhlans, all bearing the Crusader cross outlined in gold, had their helms bent to the hilt of massive swords, tips resting against the deck. Two armor soldiers from the Chasseurs lance formed a line with them, one with the cross and sword, the other with his sword-less arm resting on his bent knee.
“Fall in to my left and kneel.” Sobieski sent to the two Iron Dragoons over infrared coms, keeping their conversation private from the rest of the bay. “The ceremony will begin soon.”
Roland noted open bay doors behind the armor and across the bay behind the sailors and others. The un-armored only entered through the door opposite the Templar. Roland did as instructed, keeping his left forearm across his knee, right fist to the deck.
“Speak the prayer with the chaplain,” Sobieski said. “They taught you the rest on Mars?”
“Yes, sir,” Aignar said.
“Good…chaplain’s on his way.” Sobieski closed the channel.
Roland angled one of the cameras in his helm up to look at the throng of the faithful. The crowd filled the back half of the bay and had bunched up through the bay doors.
“I didn’t know so many even knew of the Saint,” Roland said to Aignar on a private channel.
“There’s a shrine on every ship now,” Aignar said. “They’re here to ask for protection, for her to witness them in the fight so they may be judged worthy if they die. That armor is here makes a difference. Only armor is ever allowed into her tomb. To them, we are Saint Kallen made manifest, her sword and her shield.”
“How do you know all this?”
“While Tongea was teaching you the way of the sword, I studied the catechism.”
The ship’s chaplain walked out from between the armor, a censer and chain in his hands. He held the gunmetal censer aloft and red incense billowed out.
Roland raised his fist and slammed it against the deck, in time with the rap of sword points and fists from the other armor. He waited for a five count, then hit the deck two more times.
The chaplain let the censer run out through his hands, stopping it a few inches above his foot. He swung it from side to side and walked across the front rank of the faithful, most of them Rangers in full battle armor, their visors painted with skulls.
Roland increased the sensitivity on his armor’s olfactory sensors and smelled the iron tang of Mars carried on the incense.
“May the Saint protect us,” the chaplain said loudly. Roland activated his armor’s speakers.
“Sancti spiritus adsit nobis gratia,” the armor intoned.
“May the Saint witness us.” The chaplain said, continuing his march up the front row.
“Kallen, ferrum corde,” the armor continued the prayer.
“May we find the iron in our hearts to prove worthy of her.”
“Perducat nos ad portam salutis. Amen.”
The forward line of Rangers rose to their feet and crossed the bay. The chaplain turned around and walked to the other end of the bay, the censer still swinging, still sending red smoke into the air.
The Templars began chanting the pre-battle hymn in Latin.
A Ranger walked to Roland, lifted his visor, and beat a fist against his heart, then rapped twice against Roland’s leg. He slammed his visor down and continued through the doors behind the armor. The next Ranger did the same thing, as did the procession of sailors coming from behind them.
“What’re they doing?” Roland asked Aignar over their IR.
“We are armor. We are the Saint. One last prayer from them before battle,” Aignar said.
Roland turned his helm slightly, watching as the crew passed by the armor.
“It’s like…Memorial Square,” Roland said. “You’ve been there? The armor that died at the last battle with the Xaros, all in a circle around the platform. You could walk between the statues up to a platform inside. Look out over their shoulders and…I always felt protected when I was there. We’re recreating that moment, aren’t we?”
“That’s right. I thought you skipped all the catechism lessons?”
Roland took in the faces of those passing by, tapping against his armor. The throng through the back of the bay hadn’t stopped.
“I’m staying here…” Roland said, “until the last moment before the battle if needed.”
“For them,” a voice said.
“What?” Roland asked.
“I didn’t say anything.” Aignar turned his helm to his lance mate.
Roland lifted his fist off the deck and opened his hand, feeling the touch of the men and women as they passed by.
Chapter 6
Lettow blinked away the jump gate’s afterglow and slapped his palm against the buckle on his chest. Straps unlocked and zipped back into his seat as he sprang up and went to his round holo tank the size of a dinner table for twelve.
His staff arrived at their positions within seconds, all of them too slow to beat the admiral to battle stations.
“Ops, what’s our situation?” Lettow asked.
“Data’s coming in garbled,” a captain said from the admiral’s right. “Keeper warned this might happen—quantum fluctuations in the wormholes playing hell with our systems.”
The Ardennes appeared in the center of the tank, then the massive Crucible gate they’d arrived through. Icons for the 14th Fleet’s ships came up, some bouncing from spot to spot as corrupted telemetry data came in.
“We are out of formation.” Lettow spread out his hands on the tank edge and prayed that the Ibarras weren’t waiting just beyond effective sensor range to spring an ambush and crush his scattered ships one by one.
“We’ve eyes on Oricon,” the ops captain said. The moon appeared in the tank, orbiting the tan gas giant, Oricon Prime. “Telescopes pulling images now…Auburn City’s on the other side of the moon, but we’ve got eyes on one settlement.”
“Show me,” Lettow said.
Grainy images came through of a town nestled in a mountain valley where hyperloop tubes converged into a dome at the town center. Smoke rose from several buildings. Lettow zoomed in along the edge of the settlement and saw hasty barricades ringing the town. He zoomed in on two shadows, both of which looked human.
“Have we been able to raise them?” Lettow asked.
<
br /> “All we’re getting from the moon is static,” his XO said from his left. “There’s some sort of ionization in the atmosphere blocking our hails. Not something that’s ever happened to Oricon, according to the colony logs.”
“Stranger and stranger…” Lettow clasped his hands behind his back. “Launch recon probes. Any sign of—”
Threat icons appeared next to another of Oricon Prime’s moons, Satsunan, far from the colony world.
“Got an EM hit off a Gibraltar-class battlecruiser,” his Operations captain said. “Fleet sensor’s going to work now. Looks like the Matterhorn, one of the 13th.”
Lettow reached out and touched the moon to bring it to the center of the tank, crowding out the rest of the system.
The white-and-red-colored hull of a battlecruiser orbited Satsunan. More ships materialized as the sensors collected more and more data. The battlecruiser’s hull was blackened in parts, bleeding atmosphere from rents in her armor. Her rail cannon batteries fired and Lettow glanced to one side to check the range between his fleet and the Matterhorn. More and more Ibarran ships came around the moon.
“What’re they shooting at?” the admiral asked. “No main gun’s going to have a chance of scoring a hit on us from that distance.”
“Think I’ve got it,” the XO said. He traced a line along the rail cannon munition’s path and frowned when a brief fireball erupted in the middle of empty space. “That’s funny.”
“‘Funny,’” Lettow deadpanned.
“I mean sensor suites are being re-tasked and…” The tank changed view. In the void between moons, a fleet made up of dozens of angular ships appeared. The onyx and dusky red hulls melded against the backdrop of space, occasionally occulting the stars beyond. Smaller ships resembled a grasping hand with six fingers, all somewhat irregular and none identical to the others. Larger vessels bore outcroppings, like burnt willow branches.
“Almost nothing from the fleet on a full-spectrum sweep,” the XO said. “We can barely read them on radar.” Blue-white bolts of energy snapped from the ships and sped toward the Ibarrans.
“Who are they?” Lettow asked. “They’re not Vishrakath.”
“Ships match nothing in the target database,” the ops captain said.
“Ibarra fleet changing course,” the XO said. A dashed line traced away from the rebel ships and wrapped around the gas giant.
“Same with the unidentified ships,” the ops captain said. “They’re maneuvering out of weapons range.”
“Now they know we’re here.” Lettow drummed his fingers against the holo tank. “Seems to me that neither of them knows what side we’re on. If either one thought we were with them, they’d press the attack. They broke off the fight because we might help the other side and they need to run. Hail them, standard first-contact protocol for both fleets. Let’s see how they answer.”
“Aye aye,” the XO said.
Lettow traced a circle on a screen and a contact node came up. He jammed a fingertip onto Captain Sobieski’s name.
****
Roland felt the power leads from his suit connect to an external battery and a new display came up on his HUD. Technicians scrambled up and down his supine armor fit into a torpedo housing, like he was Gulliver in the land of Lilliput.
“Sir, you okay in there?” Henrique tapped a wrench against Roland’s breastplate.
“I am armor,” Roland said, “inside a torpedo. Soon to be inside a torpedo tube. It will get more interesting after that.”
“Fique tranquilo, sir,” the Brazilian said, “but better you than me, right?”
“And I thought dropping through a hellhole on the Scipio was a novel way to make planetfall,” Aignar said over the lance frequency. He was two torpedoes away, his tech team working just as frantically as Roland’s to get him installed.
“I can understand the genesis of the concept,” Cha’ril said from her tube. “One can assume armor won’t get claustrophobic and can withstand the acceleration.”
“Do you think it was someone in the Armor Corps that woke up one morning and said, ‘Why don’t we just shoot our armor at things,’ or was it some navy engineer that got a visit from the good-idea fairy and wanted to impress her boss with a crazy idea that would work on paper?” Aignar asked.
“I think Gideon tested the prototypes,” Cha’ril said. “Maybe that’s why we got tasked with this mission. Once he’s off the line with Sobieski, you can ask him.”
Roland looked at the lance leader’s icon in his HUD. It was ringed with a pulsating blue line indicating a private conversation.
“So it’s definitely the Ibarra fleet,” Roland said, “and some unknown species. Nice and complicated, just like I like my wars.”
“You think the Ibarras—the actual Ibarras—are in system?” Aignar asked.
“Tough one. When was the last time anyone even saw them? They dropped off the face of the Earth after the Ember War ended,” Roland said.
“My father saw Stacey Ibarra on Dotari,” Cha’ril said. She transmitted a slideshow to Roland and Aignar of an elderly Dotari lying in an upright glass coffin. Dotari in white togas took up the right half of the images; humans and several other species were on the left.
“Ambassador Pa’lon’s funeral,” she said. “Quite the event. Surviving members of the old embassies on Bastion came to pay their respects. Having so many species together undoubtedly led to the decision to jointly develop New Bastion and—”
“Did he see her or not?” Aignar asked.
The images skipped forward and stopped on a human woman in a black dress, her hands covered by gloves, her face obscured with a heavy veil.
“That’s her,” Cha’ril said. “She didn’t speak at the funeral, which I’m told is a human custom. Given her relationship with Pa’lon and her history with the Dotari, it was something of a surprise that she remained silent through the ceremony. My father mentioned that she must have been miserable in that gown, as it was unseasonably chilly that day.”
“I just pinged the ship’s data banks,” Aignar said. “Not a single article or interview with her since the end of the war. I thought High Command might have scrubbed her from the records, given the mess, but do any of you remember her in the news?”
“Nope,” Roland said. “She was on the vids all the time during the war…I had a bit of a crush on her back then.”
“Me too. I always liked the demure types,” Aignar said. “Then I married and divorced a redneck type. Serves me right.”
“I never developed a prepubescent affinity for her,” Cha’ril said. “But what of Marc Ibarra? All recordings of him after the Earth was liberated from the Xaros are of a hologram.”
“Rumor mill says he died during the first invasion,” Roland said, “then that Qa’Resh probe he’d been working with stored his soul—or something like that—inside itself and kept him ‘alive.’ That’s why we always saw him as a hologram.”
“But he was on the Breitenfeld for the final assault on the Xaros Dyson sphere,” Aignar said. “Him in person. Plenty of crew saw him there.”
“Humans have the technology to transfer their minds from computers to new bodies?” Cha’ril asked.
“Maybe the Qa’Resh could do it,” Aignar said. “You’d think if that sort of quasi-immortality was available, people would be lining up for the chance. That must be what happened—the probe put Marc Ibarra into a proccie body—and then the most infamous man in human history decided to fade into obscurity.”
“Do you two hold any animosity toward him? Before the Cairo?” Cha’ril asked.
“He was in a tough spot,” Roland said. “What he did with the fleet that survived the first wave of Xaros…I don’t know if there was a perfect solution. Imagine you’re one of five children in a burning house. A fireman breaks down the door and has just enough time to save one kid. If you’re that kid, do you hate the fireman for not saving the others?”
“Jesus, little brutal with the metaphor, kid,” Aignar said.
“Marc Ibarra let 99.9-something percent of the human species die,” Roland said. “No warning. No chance to flee. He had his fleet sidestep the invasion, then return just in time—when the Xaros were weak and the Crucible was nearly complete. All part of his plan. Then—”
“Then we won the war and survived extinction,” Cha’ril said.
“It’s hard to judge,” Roland said. “In the grand scheme of things, I’m sure the consensus will go back and forth between hating him and praising him. It’s not up to us to judge him, just to bring him to justice for the Hiawatha, the Cairo, and all the other lives lost that he’s responsible for since the end of the war.”
“Dragoons.” Gideon returned to the lance channel. “We have our target. Small town at a hyperloop nexus called Tonopah. No contact with the residents, but the ship can see them moving around the town’s defenses.”
“Why not the main settlement, Auburn?” Roland asked.
“We can’t see it. Moon’s facing the wrong way,” Gideon said. “The admiral doesn’t want to risk sending anyone over there blind. That all the recon probes vanished soon as they crossed over the horizon leads me to agree with him. The fleet needs answers, and we can get them from Tonopah. We’ll be within Terrestrial Insertion Torpedo range in ten minutes.”
“That acronym—”
“Is not final,” Gideon cut Aignar off. “I told the engineers the name lacks…nuance. What is important is at what altitude you eject. Too soon and you’ll burn up on reentry. Too late and you’re a smear against a mountain and the designers assume there’s a design flaw. So listen carefully.”
Chapter 7
The amniosis fluid surrounding Roland sloshed against his body. The inner wall of the womb pressed in tighter, almost squeezing him.
He remained focused on the course projection on his HUD and watched the distance counter tick closer and closer to zero.
“—nd by,” Gideon said. The channel opened up and broadcast a squeal.