The Ibarra Sanction (Terran Armor Corps Book 2)

by Richard Fox

  “Our plugs make us armor,” Cha’ril said. “Our implants form a biological computer joined to the armor’s systems. That’s why the Xaros could never affect armor during the war. These Sanheel augmentations seem drastically different.”

  “Brain structure is largely similar for mammalian species, especially ones that developed upright, two legs or not. The implants this one has are mostly in the speech and hearing centers. What I’m assuming are the speech and hearing parts. There’s a lot of hardware in there.”

  “The Rakka do not seem sophisticated enough to perform this level of augmentation,” Cha’ril said. “Perhaps there is a higher order of the Rakka.”

  “Now that is unusual.” Johannsen rubbed an eye. “There’s a 3% match between the two species. It would have to come from interbreeding—which my entire understanding of xeno biology says is impossible—or a common ancestor. A very distant ancestor.”

  “They’re from the same planet?” Roland asked. “Earth had several kinds of hominids at one time.”

  “We’re a lot closer to Cro-Magnon man than this guy is to whoever wired him,” Johansson said. “If only the Rakka didn’t melt after we killed them.”

  “How much of a sample do you need?” Roland offered his forearm to Johannsen, where black blood stained the armor up to the elbow.

  Johannsen balked for a moment, then rubbed another wand along the dried viscera.

  “I’m really…glad you guys are on our side,” he said. “Never thought I’d get back in the swing of biology again.”

  “Why’d you leave the Path Finders?” Roland asked.

  “Dodging mega fauna and carnivorous plants for years on end gets a bit old,” he said. “My term was up, had the chance to settle a garden world like this one and watch my kids grow up…” He looked aside for a moment, his eyes unfocused. He shook his head quickly and went back to his gauntlet.

  “You have a missing child?” Cha’ril asked.

  “Jessica. I need to focus,” Johannsen said.

  “You’re helping us to find her,” Roland said. “Until we know more about these Kesaht, we’re in the dark trying to tell what an elephant looks like just by touching a leg.”

  “What is an elephant?” Cha’ril asked.

  Johansson shook his head at the screen. “This can’t be right. DNA has zero percent match with the other two strands. I’d say this came from a completely different star system.”

  “There’s an alien race we haven’t encountered yet,” Cha’ril said.

  “And they’re the ones wiring up the Sanheel and the Rakka,” Roland said.

  Dinkins walked out of the gate and gave the Sanheel head a wide berth. He held a ruggedized data slate in one hand, antennae as long as his forearm stuck from the top.

  “We’re picking up some weak transmissions from space,” the foreman said. “Your fleet, I take it. If the scrambling’s fading away, then the tracker unit might start working. But…” He slapped the side.

  “The colonists have trackers? Now you tell us?” Cha’ril asked.

  “Doesn’t matter when they’re not working. Things have been crazy the last few days. Give me a break, okay?” Dinkins said. “I thought your armor might have a signal booster. The units are offline until they get a ping. Privacy laws still apply out here. They’re meant to find people after avalanches, cave-ins, little kids lost in the woods…”

  Roland scanned through his open frequencies. There was a faint signal that washed in and out, like trying to eavesdrop on a conversation during a windy day.

  “The interference is still too strong,” he said. “But keep trying.”

  A faint echo of gauss cannons rumbled down the valley.

  Cha’ril raised her forearm weapon and chambered rounds from her ammo line.

  “Gideon and Aignar,” she said.

  “Get your militia on the walls,” Roland said. “We’re going to help them.”

  “Can’t you stay here and help us?” Dinkins asked.

  “We let them get within range and you’ll take casualties,” Roland said. “We are armor. We attack.” He pointed a finger at the sniper that nearly killed him earlier.

  “I said I was sorry. Get over it.” Johannsson shrugged. “And it won’t happen again. Path Finder’s honor.”

  Treads unfolded from the armors’ legs and they rolled out.

  ****

  Gideon banged a fist against the side of his forearm cannons. A Rakka bullet had hit the feeder line where it joined the weapon and the shells weren’t loading properly. He stood up from behind a boulder and let off a quick burst from his rotary gun into a copse of trees at the base of the mountainside where he took cover.

  The bullets felled trees and the return fire that sprang off the boulder assured him that the Kesaht were still hot on his heels.

  “Aignar?” Gideon sent over IR.

  “I’ve got one,” Aignar said. “Working the base with my anchor now.”

  Gideon dashed to another tall rock. Bullets from the Rakka sprang off his legs and bit into the dirt around him. He kept running past the next chance for cover. The boulder exploded as a Sanheel spike tore through.

  He thrust his cannon arm towards the enemy and got off two shots before the line jammed again. He slid down an embankment as enemy fire spat through the dirt over his head. The bullets careened off stones in a creek bed.

  “You have your exfil set?” Gideon asked.

  “You know how close they are to you, sir? Pushing in five…”

  Gideon hurried up the steep slope and offered a decent target to the Rakka and Sanheel charging at him into a draw buffeted by two mountain slopes. One of the three Sanheel spotted him and charged forward, trampling more than one Rakka that was too slow to get out of the way. As the other Sanheel galloped after the leader, they raised long rifles over their heads and bellowed a war cry.

  “Rook rook! Rook rook!” echoed off the mountainsides.

  The Sanheel broke ahead of the Rakka, closing on Gideon, where he had his back against a wall.

  There was a crack of thunder. A boulder broke loose from the steep cliffs against the forest where the aliens were. The Mule-sized rock crashed against the slope and knocked loose another rock, and another. A landslide barreled down, shaking the ground hard enough that Gideon felt the vibration through his womb.

  On the mountainside, where the initial rock had been, Aignar hurried away from the gaping wound.

  The Rakka saw their doom coming right for them. They panicked, pushing against each other and trying to run in every direction.

  The three Sanheel, however, galloped faster, straight toward Gideon.

  The rock slide hit the forest and obliterated it, crushing the Rakka into paste. The Sanheel outpaced the destruction, keeping just ahead like they were running from an incoming tide at the beach.

  One of the Sanheel aimed his rifle at Gideon, who threw himself to the side as the heavy bolt struck the side of the draw and blew soil and shards of rock around him. Gideon heard another long rifle boom, but the shot wasn’t for him.

  He charged out of the ravine. Aignar was still struggling along the mountainside, an easy and obvious target for the Sanheel. One took careful aim at the armor.

  “You’re not done with me!” Gideon shouted. He ripped his damaged ammo line out of his gauss cannons and pulled an ammo box out from beneath his back armor. His HUD flashed a warning as he ran forward, processed target information on the three aliens, and manually loaded his gauss cannons. The neural load on his brain was dangerously close to crossing the redline and destroying his mind.

  He tasted blood in his mouth and fumbled with the ammo box. He spun the rotary gun on his shoulder and set it to fire blind. Bullets peppered the Sanheel, all bouncing off their shields. One of the aliens slapped another on the shoulder and pointed at him. The alien slid a pilum-sized bullet into his rifle’s breach. Gideon slid to a stop as the Sanheel aiming at Aignar adjusted his aim.

  Gideon swept his rotary gun toward t
he long rifle, his bullets shattered the forward third. The centaur flung the rifle away in surprise. Gideon stitched bullets across the shield of the Sanheel about to shoot him, and struck it on the wrist where it reached through the shield to steady the weapon.

  Gideon’s rotary gun kept spinning, the ammo supply exhausted. He finally slammed the gauss magazine home and racked the manual slide.

  He shot the Sanheel nursing a bleeding and broken wrist in the chest. The impact against the shield pushed it back and into its fellow, the last one with a functional long rifle. The one with the rifle shoved his way into the open and leveled his weapon at Gideon from the hip.

  The armor shot at the Sanheel’s face, the flash of the shields blocking the alien’s sight. The alien fired anyway and the ground erupted just in front of Gideon. A cloud of dust washed over the three aliens.

  The one with the broken wrist picked up its rifle, pointed ears tipped with acoustic sensors perking up as a shadow emerged from the dust.

  Gideon punched his cannon arm against the thick armor plates of the Sanheel’s stomach. He fired both barrels and blew the alien’s back out. He shoved the falling corpse against the second as it swung its rifle like a club. The rifle hit Gideon’s arm and knocked the magazine off and sent it spinning through the air.

  Gideon hooked a punch with his right arm and the Sanheel caught his fist with both hands. The alien pushed against the fist and was barely able to match the armor’s strength. Gideon angled his gauss cannons at the Sanheel’s face.

  “Still have two in the chamber,” he said and blew the alien’s head into an expanding cloud of hair, teeth, and eyeballs.

  The last reared up and struck Gideon with his front hooves. The twin blows hit with a whack, leaving dents in Gideon’s breast plate. He stumbled back, nearly tripping over one of the bodies.

  The Sanheel jammed its forelegs against the ground, then spun its back haunches around to buck Gideon.

  The armor ducked beneath the metal-shod hooves, then reached up and grabbed the Sanheel by the ankles. He twisted around and slammed the alien against the ground like a sack of flour. He grabbed his stunned opponent by the neck and pulled a fist back. Locking two fingers forward, he stabbed them through its eyes. He crushed its front skull, clenching his hand into a fist and ripped backwards. Gray matter and sparking cyborg parts oozed from between his fingers.

  Gideon tossed the mess aside and went to find his gauss magazine.

  “Sir?” Aignar slid down the mountainside, leaving a trail of dust behind him.

  “What made you think you could exfiltrate along the side of a mountain?” Gideon tapped the magazine against the side of his helm to knock dust out of it, then slammed it into his cannon. “In the open.”

  “They were right on top of you,” Aignar said. “It was either find a perfect solution two minutes too late or do something constructive right away.” Aignar motioned back to the jumble of rocks, trees, and Rakka. A yellow haze from the rapidly decaying bodies rose from the rubble.

  “I’ve been through worse ambushes,” Gideon said.

  He kicked a Sanheel corpse as the flesh melted away. The ivory white of bare skull flaked into dust within seconds of contact with the air.

  “Roland and Cha’ril.” Aignar raised an arm and waved to the other pair on the far end of the landslide.

  “Lieutenant, we…found…—opah,” Roland’s tortured IR transmission barely came through.

  “We’ll never get anything at this rate.” Gideon stretched his arms out to the side, then clapped them over his head in long and short beats, sending the Morse code for R-T-B. Return to base.

  The other pair of armor transformed to their travel mode and rolled away.

  “As the frog hops,” Aignar nodded at the field of rubble, then looked to the mountains between them and Tonopah, “or as the crow flies?”

  “The mountains. No more avalanches.”

  “Fine by me,” Aignar said.

  ****

  Gideon held the Templar sword and ran fingers down the blood groove. The rest of his lance stood in a circle with him. The Tonopah workers and family members clustered around two hauler trucks, helping former prisoners out of the dusty ore beds.

  “Impressive construction,” he said. “A graphenium lattice inside the blade. Should be as hard to destroy as our armor.”

  “Do you know the name—‘Morrigan’?” Roland asked.

  “I don’t.” Gideon clicked the button on the hilt and the blade collapsed into it. He gripped it tightly for a moment, then handed it back to Roland.

  “Then the Ibarras are making their own armor,” Cha’ril said.

  “I doubt that,” Gideon said. “The Corps and Dr. Eeks tried long and hard to find a way to create a proccie that could take the plugs. The results were…tragic. Proccie neural pathways are too weak to take the plugs—which is to be expected when you create a mind in a computer while the body grows over the course of nine days. This Morrigan, she’s either a new recruit from Ibarra’s traitors or…”

  “She was armor that defected with them,” Roland said.

  “Armor Corps isn’t that big,” Aignar said. “The lieutenant should know that name, right, sir?”

  “We had a spy active in the Ibarra camp until a few months ago,” Gideon said. “The spy said there were some…changes to the armor that went with her. We didn’t get much more than that, but it fit with what else the spy sent back. The Ibarras didn’t keep the Terran military and social structure after they left. They reformed with Marc and Stacey Ibarra as their supreme leaders, unquestioned loyalty, all of it borderline fanaticism.”

  “How many went with the Ibarras?” Cha’ril asked.

  “All the survivors from 3rd Squadron’s fight against the Haesh and a few others,” Gideon said.

  “I thought 3rd Squadron was listed as missing in action along with…” Aignar touched a hand to his helm’s jawline. “…High Command lied to us. They don’t want the public knowing that armor can be anything but the heroic statues people think of in Memorial Square.”

  “They are the Armor Corps’ shame.” Gideon pointed at Roland. “If you encounter them, you will not make friends. Combat conditions be damned. You bring them back for General Laran to deal with. Dead or alive. Am I clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.” Roland brought the hilt down to his leg, where it mag-locked against his thigh.

  Over the horizon, a dozen Mule and Destrier transports, flanked by fighter escorts, flew toward Tonopah.

  “Fleet managed to get a few relay satellites into orbit. Captain Sobieski’s ordered the town evacuated,” Gideon said. “We’re going back to Auburn to link up with the rest of the company. Get to the air pad and box up. It’ll be cramped.”

  Chapter 11

  Petty Officer Juanita Ruiz plugged her gauntlet into a data core and opened a diagnostics program. The Ardennes’ master computer had detected an “anomaly” and her section leaders decided that she, of all people, had to climb down into the stacks and check the problem. This was part and parcel of her normal duties, but doing it while the ship was at battle stations—and on the verge of a potential fight—was not how she wanted to spend her evening.

  The stacks were cramped and sectioned off from the rest of the ship. If the Ardennes took damage while she was in here…she shivered. Trying and failing to forget stories about crew trapped inside stricken ships waiting for rescue while their air supply dwindled to nothing.

  A screen on the data stack blinked on and requested her personal access code.

  “That’s odd.” She ran the diagnostic again and got an error buzzer in her ear. “Did we get a firmware update?” She shrugged and tapped in her code.

  A word popped up on the screen: PRIPET. The letters seethed with color. Ruiz froze, her jaw went slack, and her eyes refused to blink. More words: CESTUS. SPARROW. BARON.

  Ruiz regained control of her faculties. She looked around for a moment, confused as to where she was. Text formed on the screen, outli
ning instructions and ending with a list of names. She committed it all to memory and wiped the data buffers.

  She knew what to do, and she knew it was right down to the core of her being.

  ****

  Aignar sat on a bundle of steel beams on the outer edge of Tonopah’s lone air pad. He had his right bottom leg in his lap. The armor slab that covered the limb’s tread and mechanical housing was open, and he held a too small tool in his massive hands, picking at flakes of rock and plant matter mashed into his gears. Two links of broken treads sat between him and Cha’ril, who was sitting next to him and doing the same repairs to his other lower leg.

  Across the tarmac, Gideon and Roland organized the townsfolk into lines for the evacuation that was on the way.

  “I hate breaking track,” Aignar said, “the bane of armor since the First World War.”

  “You know the treads are more likely to break under sheering forces,” she said. “Which is why that fact was pounded into us during training. I seem to recall us doing these exact same repairs after a field exercise in the Himalayas.”

  “We were fixing Roland’s treads, not mine.” Aignar leaned forward and moved his incomplete legs around. “Huh, I can still feel them. Phantom limb syndrome from an amputee while inside incomplete armor. Dr. Eeks would have a field day with this.”

  “Is there an error with your plugs?” Cha’ril yanked a branch dripping with sap from Aignar’s leg and tossed it aside.

  “System’s fine. Just a side effect of being incomplete in both bodies,” Aignar said.

  “It is unfortunate that your body rejects replacement organs,” she said. “Dotari medical science cannot replace our limbs with near perfect replicas. Most Dotari so injured opt for cybernetics that can almost pass for the real thing. But out of armor, you use prosthetics that are almost…”

  “Crude,” Aignar said. “The better stuff has to tap directly into my nerve endings. I do that and my synch rating in armor will suffer. Badly. But I can get around just fine. It’s not like I’m a pirate with peg legs and hooks for hands.”