by Richard Fox
“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 other 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 Syst
em 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.”
“Do you hate him for that?”
“How can I? We won the war. The Xaros killed off every sentient species in three-fourths of the galaxy before they got to Earth. I’d rather be alive and have a few moral questions than dead with a pristine conscience. But the Cairo…” A shiver went down his back as he remembered the bodies floating deep beneath the sea. “I can hate him. We can find him and Stacey Ibarra and drag them back to Earth for a trial.”
A door at the end of the cemetery opened and Gideon walked in. The lieutenant put an earpiece on and joined Roland and Cha’ril on the lance network.
“Iron Dragoons, wake up,” Gideon said.
“Huh? Pork chop sandwiches,” Aignar spat as his armor roused him from slumber.
“Always ready, sir,” Roland said.
“Admiral Lettow wants all armor at the next operations briefing. One hour. Decant and meet me there. Uniform is shipboard utilities,” Gideon said.
“Can’t we just remote in like we did on the Scipio?” Aignar asked. “We’ll lose synch and—”
“Did I stutter?” Gideon asked.
“No, sir,” Aignar said.
“Should I go to the admiral and tell him this briefing isn’t convenient for us?” Gideon asked.
“No, sir. Sorry, sir,” Aignar said.
“This isn’t the Scipio. Big-ship drivers like Admiral Lettow do things their own way and we are guests here. Fifty-eight minutes. Deck three. Do not be late.” Gideon pointed a finger at Aignar’s armor and stormed out.
“Damn it. I texted Henrique. All the techs are in the middle of a damage-control drill,” Aignar said. “Can you two help put Humpty Dumpty back together again?”
“We’ve got you.” Roland activated the dismount protocols for his armor. Expelling the hyper-oxygenated amniosis fluid from his lungs was never pleasant but had become easier with time.
“You don’t have to ask,” Cha’ril added.
****
The Ardennes’ briefing room was a small auditorium with dozens of rows rising slightly from a stage with the ship’s colors and the Terran Union flag next to a single lectern. The auditorium could have seated well over a hundred but was packed to standing room only.
Roland pushed through a throng of sailors, all with different ship patches from the Ardennes, attempting to reach the rows where Gideon’s last message told them to meet him. He reached a pair of Rangers in matte-black combat armor blocking the lower rows; each had a gold cord on their shoulders, marking them as the admiral’s personal security detachment. The aisle behind the captain was full of more Rangers, their uniforms in stark contrast to the light gray of naval personnel.
“Pardon me,” Roland said to a Ranger with captain’s bars.
The captain glanced at the warrant officer pip on Roland’s uniform and pointed back the way Roland came.
“Primary staff and 14th Fleet captains only, chief,” he said. “Beat it.”
“Why are you still standing here?” Cha’ril pushed through the press of bodies and looked at Roland. “We have four minutes to be seated.”
Roland turned around to face her. “I think the lieutenant might have—”
“Chief, my apologies,” said the Ranger captain as he tapped Roland on the shoulder. The Ranger tapped the base of his own skull, where Roland had his plugs. “I didn’t recognize you as armor. The admiral has you in the front row.”
“Make a hole,” the other Ranger said. “Armor coming through.”
To Roland’s surprise, the Rangers blocking the aisle snapped to the side.
The captain beat his fist against his heart and lowered his head slightly. Roland nodded quickly and hurried down the stairs. The cordon of Rangers, all with the air of hardened killers and service stripes on their forearms, gave him and the rest of his lance plenty of room as they passed. Most repeated the captain’s salute.
Roland spied a row of men and women with plugs. Gideon turned around and waved them toward three empty seats, glancing at the clock on his forearm screen as Roland took the seat next to him.
“Two minutes to spare,” Gideon said. “Did you get lost?”
“That is correct, sir. This ship is a lot bigger than the Scipio,” Roland said. Gideon grunted, then turned his head to speak to the lance leader for the Uhlans.
Aignar slipped into the seat next to Roland. He looked down at his metal hands, touching the thumbs to the other fingertips one at a time.
“Aignar, you were a Ranger. What was that salute?” Roland asked.
“I keep forgetting you’ve never
been around anything but armor and the Skippy,” Aignar said. “Those Rangers keep to Saint Kallen.”
Roland glanced at the Uhlans. Each, as full members of the order, bore the Templar cross as a patch on their uniforms.
“But we’re just armor, not Templar,” Roland said.
“Doesn’t matter to them.” Aignar’s eyes darted toward Gideon. “I’ll explain later.”
Curtains across the back of the stage opened, revealing a carved emblem of the Ardennes: a boar’s head with a single text-bearing ribbon beneath it.
“What does ‘Resiste et Mords’ mean?” Cha’ril asked.
“‘Resist and bite,’” Roland said.
“Your mouths are like a Dotari baby’s—useless in a fight. I don’t think I will ever understand you humans,” she said.
The room fell silent as Command Master Chief Petty Officer walked onto the stage and stomped his foot into the position of attention.
“Admiral Lettow!” he shouted.
Roland went to attention, eyes locked forward, as the admiral marched onto the stage. Lettow had salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He would have had vid-star good looks, were it not for a nose that looked like it had been broken many times and a patch of scar tissue over his left ear.
“Be seated,” Lettow said as he stepped behind the lectern. The lights dimmed and a holo field formed next to him, taking up the rest of the stage. The whole of the 14th Fleet, nearly eighty vessels in formation around the Ardennes, appeared in the holo. The image zoomed out, showing their course from Mars to the Crucible gate near Ceres, now Earth’s second moon after the Xaros relocated the dwarf planet during their occupation of the solar system.
“The 14th is on course for a wormhole jump to the Oricon system,” Lettow said. “Eight hours ago, the Crucible detected unauthorized activity at the Oricon gate. The colony managed to get this image through before all contact was lost.”
The image changed to a Crucible gate, the massive basalt-colored segments joined together like a crown of thorns, a fleet of Terran vessels emerging from the active wormhole.