by Richard Fox
“I’m not leaving!” she called out. “I am armor! I am armor and I will not leave!”
The floodlight snapped off and the suits stepped back from the wall.
Rejection. That’s what she felt. Dismissed as just another cripple, worthy of nothing but a make-work position, good for nothing but the chance to make others feel good about their ability to move unassisted.
She was thankful for the storm—she couldn’t tell if it was rain or tears running down her face. Looking at the screen on her armrest, she activated it with a flick of her eyes. With only a few commands, a specialized robot car would be by to pick her up in minutes.
Elias slammed a hand down on the screen. “Stay,” he said. “You’re stronger than you know.”
“I’m a fool,” she said. “A damn fool.”
“Fools don’t plan for years. Fools don’t fight to walk as armor,” Bodel said.
“Fools will sit out in the rain and weather and not seek shelter. So then what does that make us?” she asked.
“Are you quitting?” he asked.
“No…no I didn’t come here to give up.”
“Then you’re no fool.”
“Take your hand off my chair,” she said.
Elias pulled away and wiped water off his forehead.
“You know you’re wet when you feel that dribble down the crack of your ass,” Bodel sad.
“That was hours ago,” Elias said. “What’s your secret?”
“Being hungry,” Bodel said. “Amazing how that’ll take your mind off other problems.”
“How is the chow in there?” Kallen asked.
“Lousy,” Elias said. “But we don’t eat in the suits.”
“Don’t feel the rain either,” Bodel said.
“Or the cold?” Kallen smiled.
“Let the crunchies worry about the weather. We get our suits, we’ll walk together on Mars,” Elias said.
“Walk on Mars…”
Dawn broke through the clouds and the cold in her shoulders faded away.
****
Midday was as miserably hot as the night was wet and horrible. The sun’s rays sucked moisture from the ground and transferred it to the air, making it muggy and as humid as the air could hold.
“You can’t say that the Macross Saga was on par with the US rebroadcast,” Bodel said. “It was a bastardized retelling.”
“The story was redone for a Western audience,” Elias said, “and it had to merge with the next two seasons.”
“Which weren’t even Macross,” Bodel said, tossing his hands up. “Not all Mecha series should be interchangeable.”
“Japanese culture wasn’t known for originality,” Elias grumbled.
“You two are arguing about cartoons,” Kallen said. “Two grown men bickering about children’s cartoons.”
“Anime is not a cartoon,” Elias said. “It’s an art form.”
“Wait…” Kallen narrowed her eyes. “Do you two have a—what do they call it—a wafer?”
Elias gave Bodel a sharp look.
“No idea what you’re talking about.” Bodel looked away.
The chain-link fence rumbled to one side. Kallen looked up and down the road as best she could, but didn’t see any cars coming.
A suit of armor walked through the gate, fifteen feet tall and towering over the guard shack, the heavy gauss cannons fastened to one forearm, twin vanes of a rail cannon locked to its back and glinting in the sunlight.
Kallen’s heart caught in her throat as the armor approached. The suit stopped in the road and went down to one knee, servos whining as one massive hand pressed knuckles into the asphalt.
“Death,” Colonel Carius said from the suit’s speakers. “Death waits for you.”
“This is not living.” Kallen shook her head. “I will look death in the eyes on my feet, not cowering in a corner.”
“You will be tested,” Carius said. “Held to the same standards in armor as everyone else.”
“You mean…” Kellen’s mouth fell open. “You mean—”
“If you are found wanting, you are gone,” Carius said. “No second chances. No excuses.”
“Yes. Yes! Thank you, sir!” Kallen felt like she could fly.
“Thank me when you earn your spurs,” Carius said. “When you’re ready to fight on the front lines.”
He leveled a metal finger at Elias, then swung it to Bodel.
“Candidates, she’s your lance mate now. Bring her to medical. More instructions to follow.” Carius went back to the gate, then stopped before he passed the guard shack.
“You are…” Carius looked over his shoulder, “the Iron Hearts.”
Elias put a hand on Kallen’s shoulder and smiled as she met his eyes.
Bodel grabbed her wheelchair by the handles and the batteries hummed to life. The three crossed the threshold together.
THE END
A sneak peek at A HOUSE DIVIDED, Terran Armor Corps Book 4, available now!
Chapter 1
Corporal Jerry Marris struggled down a sand dune, one hand gripping his gauss rifle, the other gripping PFC Valencia by the carry handle across the back of her shoulders. He dragged his squad mate down the slope, his eyes locked over his shoulder as he struggled to keep her from sliding away, a difficult task even in Ranger power armor and the too-high gravity of Theseus II. Valencia left a trail of congealing blood in the sand.
Distant explosions sounded after them and gauss bullets and laser bolts snapped over sand dunes around them. Jerry checked the compass heading on the inside of his skull-shaped visor. He had a good idea which direction would get him back to Terran lines, and which way led to the Kesaht, but the mounds of sand around them had a bad habit of disorienting him.
“Talk to me, Val,” Jerry said.
“I’m cold,” she said, pain lacing her words.
“Rook rook!” echoed over the battlefield. Jerry looked to the top of the surrounding dunes but didn’t see any of the alien Rakka.
“Your armor’s not functioning right.” Jerry hauled her up a dune slope, positioning her so her head was angled higher than her heart. Her left foot was a mangle of broken armor and bloody flesh. A bullet strike to her sternum had cracked the armor plate but hadn’t penetrated.
“Get this off…need to breathe.” Valencia pawed at her skull visor, but Jerry pushed her hands away and took a spool off her belt.
“Air’s bad,” Jerry said. “Just hold tight while I get a tourniquet on you.”
“You said my leg was fine.” She struggled to sit up, but her elbows sank in the sand.
“It will be.” He drew a length of wire from the spool and fed it into an eyehole just below her left knee. As blood oozed from the chewed-up remnants of her foot, Jerry ignored the white bone fragments mingled with the beige armor. Pulling the tip of the wire through the exit hole below her knee, he wrapped the wire over itself, then put his thumb against a button on the spool.
“Ready in three…” He pressed the button and the wire tightened against itself, the auto-tourniquet squeezing against her leg and strangling her femoral artery.
Valencia gasped in pain and her left leg reared up. Jerry caught her just below the knee and stopped her from bashing the abused limb into the ground.
“Son of a bitch!” she cried.
“Hurts me too,” Jerry said.
“Rakka.” Valencia slapped a palm against the sand.
“Gonna get you out of here,” Jerry said.
“Rook rook!” sounded again and ice ran down Jerry’s spine. He turned around and found the enemy charging over dunes right for them, their red eyes bright with murder, their hodgepodge armor rattling against their bodies as sunlight glinted off their crude blades and serrated bayonets at the ends of their laser rifles. He snapped up his weapon and opened fire.
Gauss bullets snapped out and smashed into the Rakka, the rounds hitting with enough force to punch through a Rakka and kill the alien behind it. But the bloodshed only seemed to make
them charge faster.
Jerry put himself between Valencia and the enemy.
“Saint Kallen,” he prayed as he dropped an empty magazine and slapped in a fresh one, “witness this.” He shot a Rakka with a severed human hand still in Ranger armor dangling from a necklace. The screaming aliens closed in as he unloaded another magazine.
As Jerry swung his rifle butt into a Rakka’s hairy face, crushing it with the blow, an axe chopped into his shoulder. Although it deflected off his pauldron, the blow still stung, and he lost his grip on his rifle.
A Rakka stabbed a bayonet at Valencia, but Jerry flung himself toward her and grabbed the blade. As he held it firm, the edge cutting into the thin padding over his palms, he locked eyes with the Rakka and saw his skull-shaped visor reflected in the alien’s eyes.
The Rakka grunted at him like an angry ape, then backed off, leaving the weapon in Jerry’s grasp. The rest of the mob pulled away from the two Rangers.
“The Saint heard you,” Valencia slurred.
A shadow passed over Jerry, and the whirl of a rotary cannon rose in the air.
A black suit of armor towered over Jerry, a Templar cross emblazoned over the chest and shoulder. The armor held a Mauser rifle in both hands, the wide-bore weapon almost as large as Jerry. The rotary cannon, spinning so fast the barrels were a blur, spat fire and tore through the Rakka.
The aliens broke and fled, some managing to scramble over the dunes before the rotary cannon swept through their ranks, killing dozens within seconds.
As the armor stepped off the dune, its massive foot crushing a dead alien, the rotary cannon snapped back, and an empty ammo can spat off its back and fell smoking into the sand next to Valencia.
The armor’s helm turned to the Rangers.
“Get her out of here,” Roland said, his voice booming through speakers.
“I will never leave a Ranger…” Jerry said, shaking blood from his hand and grabbing Valencia by the carry handle with the other, “to fall into—”
“I know your creed,” Roland said. “Head east.”
The breech on his Mauser snapped open and Roland loaded a magazine the size of Jerry’s helmet. He strode west, crushing dead aliens with each step.
“No!” Jerry yelled, reaching for the armor. “There’s too many! A full-scale counterattack. They tore up our platoon. Sanheel and—”
“I am armor.” Roland beat a fist against his chest and bounded over a dune in two steps.
“I lost too much blood,” Valencia said. “Swear that was the Black Knight.”
“You ain’t dreaming.” Jerry hauled Valencia around the slope.
****
Roland charged up a three-story-tall dune where bodies of Rangers and Rakka lay partially buried in the slope. The noise of his feet slamming into the sand caught the attention of a Rakka on the other side, and the alien stuck its head over the slope just as Roland’s helm crested. The armor swatted the foot soldier, launching it into the air, an arc of blood trailing it.
Beyond the dune was a wide bowl in the desert, inside which Rakka milled around their Sanheel officers. The tall centaur-like leaders of the Kesaht assault clustered around a field captain with wide silver thread woven through his hair to mark his rank.
Roland kicked through the top of the dune and opened fire with his Mauser. The massive rifle boomed and kicked back with recoil strong enough to kill an unarmored soldier if they’d been foolish—or strong—enough to wield it. The fist-sized shell bounced off the energy shield protecting a Sanheel lieutenant and tore through a pair of Rakka nearby.
The Sanheel captain pointed at Roland, roared a challenge, and jabbed the butt end of a haft against the ground. A wide spear tip snapped out of the haft and the captain charged toward Roland, the weapon aimed at the armor soldier and glinting in the sunlight.
The rest of the centaurs brandished their own spears and galloped after the captain, forming a wedge of alien bulk. Rakka scrambled to get out of the way, but a few were too slow and were trampled into paste.
Roland came down the slope, still firing his Mauser, but each shot was just as ineffective as the first. The Sanheel captain charged faster, spittle flying off its tusks.
Roland flung the rifle behind him, embedding the barrel in the sand. He pulled a sword hilt off the side of his leg and flicked a button on the Templar cross worked into the hand guard. A seven-foot blade snapped out in segments, and an omnium lattice spread within the weapon, locking it rigid.
The armor took up a fighting stance and held the sword level with his helm, resting it on his left arm, the tip pointed at the oncoming Sanheel. The double-barrel gauss cannons on his right forearm powered up.
“Come on.” Roland twisted his front foot in the sand and felt the vibration of the charging Sanheel through his womb.
An energy field formed around the captain’s spear tip, and the alien pulled his elbow up to deliver a strike aimed right for Roland’s chest.
Roland fired a single round from his forearm cannon and struck the Sanheel’s spear on the haft. The bullet slapped the weapon to one side and left the captain’s guard wide open. Roland lunged forward like a fencer and stabbed his sword through the captain’s shield and into his sternum. Momentum carried the alien forward, impaling it up to the hilt and stopping like it hit a brick wall.
Roland’s optics locked with the stunned captain’s face, then he wrenched the blade to one side and dragged the dying Sanheel into the way of a lieutenant’s spear thrust. The spear pierced the captain’s back and the lieutenant’s jaw went slack in shock. Roland ripped his blade free in a geyser of blood and spun it over his head, striking through the lieutenant’s neck and sending the head flying.
A Sanheel charged past Roland and managed a glancing blow against Roland’s side. Sparks flew from the impact and left a silver gash across the matte-black paint of his suit. The rest of the aliens overshot Roland and wheeled around, leaving their backs to the dunes from where Roland had emerged.
The alien that managed a hit grabbed his spear at the end and swung the tip in a wide arc aimed at Roland’s neck servos. Roland blocked the strike with the flat of his blade and hooked the spear head with his edge. He yanked back, pulling the Sanheel forward. Roland lowered his shoulder and lunged forward, catching the alien in the chest, crushing its ribcage and snapping the bones.
Another Sanheel stabbed at Roland’s arm and got the spear wedged in his elbow servos. Roland kicked the attacker’s foreleg and shattered it at the knee. The Sanheel pitched forward, crying out in pain. Roland kicked it in the flank just as it hit the ground and sent it barreling into two more Sanheel, knocking them all down in a tangle of limbs and spears.
A Mauser boomed and a Sanheel’s shield flared as its head exploded. Two more Mausers opened fire, felling the alien officers with each shot. Roland slashed across an alien’s chest, leaving a deep gash that severed a rank sash and sent a gout of blood down the alien’s front.
The Sanheel whirled around, confused by Roland’s continued assault and being fired upon by weapons that defeated their shields.
As an alien reared up and beat at Roland’s shoulders with its front hooves, Roland ducked to one knee and cut across the Sanheel’s underbelly. Its legs gave out and Roland stomped a boot against its skull, splattering its head across the bare, rocky ground. Mausers fired another volley, and he spun around. All the Sanheel lay dead and dying.
Three suits of armor stood atop a dune, smoke rising from the red-hot barrels of their rifles.
Roland turned to face the thousands of Rakka that had just witnessed the fight and raised his bloody sword overhead.
“I’ll have you next!” Roland pointed the sword at a wide-eyed foot soldier, and Sanheel blood snapped across the plain.
The Rakka hooted in fear, turned, and ran.
Roland charged forward, bellowing a war cry at the highest volume his speakers could manage. He slowed as the Rakka kept running, frantically climbing the dunes at the far end of the basi
n and vanishing into the deep desert.
He slowed to a stop and slapped the flat of his blade against his leg, knocking blood free.
“Your plan was stupid,” Cha’ril said from behind him.
“If it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid.” He turned around, and Aignar tossed the Mauser from the sand dune to him. Roland caught it by the grip and reset the power output on the rifle to HIGH.
“How did you know they’d charge instead of shooting you?” Aignar asked.
Roland touched the Templar cross on his chest and slapped a hand against his black armor.
“They know me,” Roland said. “Sanheel are ambitious, prideful. If I plug them a few times with my underpowered rifle, it looks like I’m helpless. If they kill the Black Knight in hand-to-hand combat, they’re sure to be promoted. Once they were committed to a close-in fight, it was like shooting fish in a barrel for you three, right?”
“Target acquisition was simplified, yes,” said Cha’ril, the lance’s Dotari member.
“We should finish them.” Aignar gestured toward the last of the Rakka as they disappeared over the dunes. The basin was littered with Kesaht vehicles and supplies.
“No need,” Lieutenant Gideon said. “Flyboys finally decided to send close air support to this sector now that the enemy’s broken contact. Kesaht know we won’t bomb them when they’re right on top of us.”
“A little space is all we needed.” Roland looked up as a flight of six Condor bombers streaked overhead. Canisters loosed from the bombers and came apart over the retreating Kesaht. Hundreds of sub munitions rained down on the aliens, exploding into metal flechettes with a ripple of pops.
“Not bad, Roland,” Aignar said. “Right, sir?” he asked Gideon.
Gideon didn’t even look at Roland as he watched another flight of bombers cross over the first attack run.
“Prep for transport,” Gideon said. “We’re needed in another sector.” He locked his Mauser over his back, across the spine from his rail cannon vanes, and pointed to the west where a Dragonfly aircraft flew over the dune wall. The ship was little more than a cockpit attached to massive engines at the fore of the craft and a long keel ending in an aft made up of another engine.