by Richard Fox
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 the 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, outlining 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.”
“If there was some breakthrough that would make you whole, would you take it? Even if it cost you your armor?” she asked.
“There’s no such thing,” he snapped. “Wondering about some magic transformation is a waste of time. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle. But since you asked, no I wouldn’t give up my armor for anything. You know what happened to Saint Kallen? She was diagnosed with Batten’s Disease, could’ve left the Iron Hearts behind, gone into treatment and survived. She chose to keep fighting, knowing the decision was a death sentence. How could I punch out from you and the others just to walk around like some sort of…normal person?”
“The plugs in the base of our skulls mark us out as anything but normal,” she said. “We give up so much to be armor.”
“But in return…” He held up his lower leg and the ankle servo jerked from side to side. “Always a lot more glamorous in the movies.”
“Aignar, you have a child. How is being armor affecting you as a parent?”
“Damn, Cha’ril. I should be on a shrink’s couch for that kind of a question.”
“I don’t want you to become any smaller,” she said. “If the question bothers you, then—”
“Ask me the real question. You’re beating around the bush.” He dug his tool into the ankle housing and scraped thorn branches out onto the ground. “And speaking of bushes…”
“Human soldiers do not become pregnant while they’re on active duty. I am aware of the birth control measures your females go through. But what would happen if one does become pregnant?”
“Shipped off the front lines, that’s for sure,” Aignar said. “Can’t have a baby that close to danger. And it’s not like a woman with a bun in the oven is that effective on the front lines. My ex, when she was about to pop Joshua, could barely pick up anything. Then it was, ‘Rub my feet’ this, ‘I’m so uncomfortable’ that…I was in the field for most of the pregnancy. Pretty sure that was a contributing factor to the divorce. Among other things.”
“Such a conflict…I have trouble understanding it. Dotari lay a single egg after a brief gestation period. Traditionally, the grandparents will care for the egg until it hatches, then the mother will provide lactation. I’m surprised humans manage so well with only two nipples—”
“Skip ahead before you start talking about your cloaca.”
“A pregnant Dotari is not removed from combat,” she said. “All our ships carry crèches and eggs are transported back to our home world as soon as possible. The hatching can be delayed until the mother’s tour of duty is complete.”
“Interesting.”
“Did you feel any pressure to procreate after the Ember War? When there were so few humans left?”
“I was a kid when that happened. My procreation urge came after too many beers and being on my honeymoon. No one ever told me I had to have kids, not like there weren’t proccie tubes churning out new people every nine days. If the Hale Treaty hadn’t shut down the proccies, we’d have more people in the Solar System than right before the Xaros showed up.”
“In Dotari history, there was an accident aboard the Canticle of Reason, the colony fleet’s flag ship. Tens of thousands lost in a day. The Council of Firsts decided that every Dotari woman of laying age would have their birth control measures removed.”
“They forced women to have babies?”
“Hardly. Dotari females have a hormonal need for procreation—not as life-threatening as what the Karigole deal with—but the urge is so strong that it does not require alcohol and honey from Luna to consummate. The Council just lets nature take its course. It took two generations before the Canticle was fully crewed.”
“I never heard that story before. So what’re you getting at, Cha’ril? I’m still waiting on that question.”
“Aignar, am I pretty?”
He fumbled with his tool, dropping his leg to the ground, and turned his helm to her in stunned silence.
She picked his leg up and put it back on his lap.
“If the answer is no and you are too polite to say so, I can—”
“Wait. What? We’ve crossed into this whole weird area and I’m a lot more confused now than when we started talking.”
“You have a child. Clearly this ex of yours considered you acceptable for matrimony and procreation. Was it a combination of relative attractiveness and earning potential? Family arrangements? Purely a by-product of intoxication? I remember Roland and Masako after our night out in Australia.”
“Yeah, those two were stupid for each other.”
“I do not have a child. Having one while I am armor is not impossible. I was never one for dating, and now…” She touched the back of her helm, miming the plugs into her skull. “Naked augmentation is not at
tractive on a Dotari.”
“I never…never thought of you that way,” Aignar said. “What makes one human attracted to another is very personal.”
“I see,” she said, turning her attention back to his leg.
“But if I was a Dotari guy, I’d ask you out,” he said. “I’ve seen you getting looks in the mess hall. Don’t kid yourself—I bet they all think you’re a ten.”
“Ten what?”
“Out of ten. Do Dotari date like human teenagers? Is there someone you want me to talk to? Wow…here’s a conversation I never thought I’d have in the Armor Corps.”
“No. Never involve yourself in Dotari courtship. Not unless you want to provide both the dowry and witness to the consummation.”
“Forget I asked.”
“But thank you, Aignar. If I was a human female, I might try and get you drunk.”
“No, that’s not…thank you. Also, never say that to any human guy. Ever,” Aignar said.
“Is there some sort of—”
“Oh look! Transports.” Aignar pointed over the mountain ridge to several Destrier aircraft in the distance. “I need to get dressed. Hurry up with my leg.”
****
Roland drifted in and out of sleep as his Mule rumbled through turbulence. His armor was in “storage” configuration, folded into a trunk shape the size of a small cargo container and bolt-locked onto the floor of the transport. Even though the space within his womb hadn’t changed, he always felt cramped in the more compact configuration.
Aignar was in the same Mule, along with almost two dozen somber colonists.
“Roland, you asleep?” Aignar asked him over IR.
“Yes.” Roland tensed his muscles, which strained against the first actual effort they’d done in days.
“Good. Something’s been bugging me about what Gideon said. Most of 3rd Squadron defected—went with the Ibarras, right?”
“That’s what he said.”
“I’ve been studying lance heraldry since I found out we were going to stay with Gideon and be Iron Dragoons. Historically, Dragoons were heavily armed infantry soldiers that rode into battle on horseback. Our heraldry comes from the American army unit that fought in the Iraq War in unarmored vehicles, oddly enough. So—”