by Richard Fox
“At least they’re too big to join us in here,” he said.
“Isn’t there some ancient human hero you can pray to?” Cha’ril asked. “What was his name? Sea Man? He could talk to fish.”
Roland slowed to a stop at a round, heavily reinforced door. It was half-open, rolled into the scorched metal bulkhead for the ship’s outer hull. He got his helm and shoulders into the turret. The dark void of the ocean pressed through the transparent turret walls. The two gauss cannons extending from weapon housings through the turret on either side of the gunner’s seat bore green ribbons of Nimbus sea life.
“You’ve enough space?” Aignar asked.
“Almost.” Roland tried to inch forward, but his ascension kit on his back kept him from going any farther. “The manual controls still hooked up?”
There was a squeal of metal and the hatch widened enough for him to enter the cramped confines of the turret.
A body lay strapped in the gunner’s seat. Another sailor in his shipboard utilities. Roland ran his scanner over the dead man, searching for his identity implant. The man’s chest was a ruined mess. Broken ribs poked through his uniform, and a leg was bent and broken, a crater of black flesh in the thigh.
“Sir…he’s been shot,” Roland said. “Close-range gauss fire…got his ID chip.”
“Ambushed then boarded. Pull the buffer so we can get the hell out of here. Should be under the gunner’s seat,” Gideon said.
Roland hooked a finger beneath a handle at the base of the seat and tugged. The seat rocked back and forth as the hydraulics beneath the turret failed to activate.
The rumble of whale song sounded so loudly that he felt his womb quiver in resonance. He looked up and a deep shadow blocked the view from the turret. He activated his floodlight and stared into the massive eye of a Nimbus whale. A yellow iris contracted around a blood-red pupil and the whale reeled back, emanating clicks that sounded like bones breaking in the jaws of a wolf.
“You think you scared it away or just pissed it off?” Aignar asked.
The Cairo rocked from side to side as the pod of whales hit it with their tails.
“You pissed them all off. Bravo,” Aignar said.
Roland cut off his floodlight, then gently touched the dead sailor’s shoulder.
“Forgive me.” Roland grabbed the base of the gunner’s chair, ripping it away from the deck. He dug his fingertips into the seam of the hydraulic housing and pulled the machinery that maneuvered the cannons up into the turret. He ripped away pipes and found a bright yellow box.
The Cairo lurched to one side, then an unceasing grinding sound—the hull scraping against the shelf—filled the ship.
“We’re loose!” Gideon shouted.
Roland stuck the yellow box into a housing on his forearm as the grinding stopped and the ship tipped over into the trench. The hull bashed against the canyon wall and slid lower. Roland braced himself against the turret walls as the ship came to a sudden stop.
“Did the engines get hooked on something?” Cha’ril said.
Roland looked down and into the crushing depths.
“We’ll climb back up,” Gideon said. “I can see—”
The forward hull of the Cairo ripped free with a screech of metal and plunged down.
Pressure warnings flashed amber on Roland’s HUD. A rock outcropping loomed out of the darkness and struck the side of the ship, knocking it into a slow spin.
Roland lifted his right leg and jammed the heel against the glass. The anchor spike meant to keep him grounded when he fired his rail cannons broke through the turret shell and sent cracks through the entire surface. The cracks deepened as the outer water pressure grew stronger by the second.
He swore his womb was tighter as he kicked the glass and shattered it into a million pieces.
“Got a way out!” Roland knocked away the turret frame and sent the gunner seat and cannons spinning into the abyss. He reached down and grabbed Aignar’s hand as he reached through the half-open door and flung his lance mate up.
Aignar activated the ascension pack on his armor and hydro-jets unfolded from their housings, shooting him straight up. The back blast hit Roland hard enough that it staggered him against the side of the turret.
Roland pulled Cha’ril free and sent her after Aignar.
His HUD flashed red as the water pressure neared his armor’s survival threshold.
“Get out of here,” Gideon said as he struggled through the meager opening between the hull and the turret.
“We all go home or nobody goes home, sir,” Roland grabbed his lance commander by the armpits and hurled him toward the surface.
He tried to touch the ascension kit’s activation switch, but his shoulder actuators ground to a snail’s pace as the pressure squeezed against him like a vise.
“Sancti spiritus adsit nobis gratia.” His fingers brushed the activation button and the hydro-jets sent him hurtling away from the Cairo.
The pressure warnings vanished as he ascended. The dull crump of the Cairo succumbing to the depths trailed him like distant thunder.
“I sent the recall buoy to the Scipio,” Cha’ril said, her voice tinny and weak through the interference of the saltwater. “I’m first to go feet dry. I’ll relay telemetry data for the static line pickup.”
Whale song pulsed around Roland and his HUD flashed as the creature’s sonar bounced off his armor.
“Anyone else getting sick of these things?” Roland asked.
“Keep your speed up,” Gideon said. “You miss your burn height and it’s a long wait for the Scipio to come back.”
“You screw up one time…” Aignar said.
Light from the ocean surface grew as Roland ascended, his hydro-jets still churning away. The twinkle of distant bioluminescent creatures appeared in the distance.
“Roland, check your three o’clock,” Gideon said. “Think I saw—” His transmission washed out in static as a pulse of sonar hit Roland’s armor.
He twisted around…and saw a whale swimming right for him. A dazzling light rippled down the creature’s skin, meant to confuse prey just before the creature struck. Inky black tentacles tipped with hooked teeth the length of daggers reached for Roland.
Roland pulsed his hydro-jets and the tentacles swiped just over his head. The whale kept coming, its jaws open like petals of a flower, alabaster teeth glinting in the light. Roland raised a fist behind his head and punched the whale square in the nose.
There was a crack of bone as the whale compressed against his fist, its forward momentum canceled by the blow. The whale hung in the water, blood seeping from its blowhole, then sank away.
Roland looked up at the sunlight playing across the surface, Roland tilted his helm back, then locked his legs together and arms against his flanks. He burst out of the water and jettisoned the hydro-jets. His jetpack flared to life, sending him skyward on a gout of flame and steam from boiled ocean water.
Telemetry data from the Scipio and his lance mates flooded his HUD, and he activated his recovery line. A balloon inflated from a housing on his armor’s waist and pulled a reinforced graphenium line skyward as his jetpack slowed his ascent.
Within seconds, the Scipio emerged from the clouds and roared overhead. Catch arms along the bottom of the corvette’s hull trapped his recovery line and jerked him aside with enough force that it would have killed an unarmored human instantly.
Roland and the rest of the Iron Dragoons trailed from the ship like pennants as it angled to the void and reeled them into the ship’s open cargo bay.
“This is Lieutenant Commander Tagawa,” the Scipio’s captain said. “What news?”
“Cairo found. Total loss,” Gideon said.
“God damn it,” Tagawa said. “At least we found them.”
“We are armor,” Gideon said. “We do not fail.”
Chapter 2
Roland scrubbed a towel against his head before trading it to a technician for a set of overalls and a pair of boots. He stood on a raised pl
atform connected to the maintenance bay for his armor, its torso open to the Scipio’s bay.
“Roland,” Gideon called out from the hatch to a turret along the upper levels of the bay. The lieutenant locked eyes with Roland, then ducked into the turret.
“You think any of the Cairo’s crew made it out?” asked the tech, a Brazilian man in his mid-fifties named Henrique.
“Looks that way. Where they are now is the hard question.” Roland lifted his right arm up and looked at his forearm, then back to his unresponsive armor. “Damn it. Should’ve got the buffer box before I dismounted.”
“I’ll get it.” Henrique took a data slate from a hip pocket and began tapping.
Roland stepped into his coveralls, the feel of the fabric almost odd against his skin. Being plugged into the armor for days and weeks on end conditioned his nervous system to be nothing but the armor, to be one with the war machine’s systems and the fifteen feet of metal. Every time he left the womb, he felt…lesser.
He stepped into his boots, which he tightened against his legs with leather straps instead of laces. The “tanker boots” were an old tradition, carried down from the American military’s original armor corps created by the legendary George S. Patton in the early twentieth century. Roland shifted his weight against the stiff leather, wishing he’d had some more time to break them in.
General Laran, head of the Terran Armor Corps, insisted her soldiers wear the tanker boots to “set us apart from the rest of the military,” as if the plugs in the base of their skulls weren’t enough to mark them in a crowd.
He looked over at Aignar’s armor. Roland’s lance mate sat on a stool while technicians attached cybernetic hands and forearms to where his arms ended just beneath the elbow. A pair of boots with the rest of his legs sat waiting next to him. Aignar had a towel wrapped around the bottom half of his face, masking his missing jaw.
Aignar was once a Ranger and had been badly injured fighting the Vishrakath on Cygnus II. A rare genetic condition kept him from receiving replacement organs, leaving the Armor Corps as his last avenue for service.
Roland looked away as Aignar picked up a black box that held the rest of his face. Despite their time serving together, fighting side by side, watching Aignar put himself back together still made Roland uncomfortable.
“Here you are, sir.” Henrique handed Roland the yellow buffer box he’d recovered from the Cairo. It was moist to the touch and smelled of brine. Roland took it, the sudden weight catching him by surprise and he nearly dropped it.
“You want one of us crunchies to help you?” the tech said with a wink.
“Just need my sea legs back.” Roland stuffed the box into a thigh pocket and took the ladder down to the deck. He ran around a cart bearing his armor’s rail gun and gauss ammunition, then hurried up a set of stairs leading to the turret where Gideon waited for him.
By the time he got to the top, his chest burned and his legs were aching. Moving in armor was effortless and he was trained to operate the armor without the limitations of something so mundane as muscle strength and oxygen.
He was a bit lightheaded and sweating by the time he reached the turret. Inside, Commander Tagawa squatted next to the gunner’s seat, already raised up and its buffer box sitting in a neat pile of fiber-optic cables. Cha’ril and Gideon stood against the bulkhead. Cha’ril’s head quills were loose, hanging around her head like strands of hair the thickness of a pencil. She held a water bottle to her beak and bit down on the nozzle before taking a long sip.
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.”
“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.”