by Richard Fox
His boots came loose after shifting from side to side and lifting his legs enough to extricate them a few inches at a time. He splashed out of the knee-deep water and unholstered his gauss rifle from his back. Mud and water came off with a few shakes and it charged to life.
The battery pack he’d dropped was lost to the muck.
Something tugged at his arm. He looked down and saw a vine creeping round his wrist. He yanked his arm free and backed away from the tree that still held his parachute. Protocol demanded he at least bury his parachute, but it was lost to the fog. Hale shrugged off his harness and wrapped it into a tight ball, glancing at the vines that made a few halfhearted attempts to reach out to him. Hale tossed the harness into the pond and tried to find his bearings.
Anthalas’ star rose in the east and set in the west, same as Earth, but was lost in the fog. The beacon from the IR buoys couldn’t reach through all the moisture between him and the satellite. Hale took an old-fashioned compass from his belt and opened it. The needle wavered between directions, seemingly indecisive until it settled on magnetic north. Depending where one stood on Earth, its magnetic poles could be anywhere from ten to fifty degrees off true north or south. Hale didn’t know what the magnetic declination of Anthalas’ magnetic field was, or if it had flipped itself like Earth’s magnetic field was wont to do every couple million years or so.
Hale knew there was a mountain range to the east of the landing zone, so he found west and started walking. Dark bat-like shapes swooped through the fog over his head. He stopped and swung his rifle toward sudden splashes in the water around him, but nothing ever came out of the fog.
“I don’t like this planet. At all,” he said and kept walking.
****
The surface of Anthalas’ moon was little different than Luna’s. Gray dust and jagged rocks blasted from the surface by asteroid impacts over millions of years covered the surface. The Iron Hearts and Lafayette stood in the basin of a shallow crater, looking up at the interlinked cubes directly above them.
The armor bore variable vector jet packs on their backs. The dual anti-gravity repulsors had enough thrust to get them in and out of the moon’s gravity well and maneuver through space at a slow speed. The fuel-burning jets had more oomph to them, but their enormous heat signature could have attracted Xaros attention.
Lafayette, wearing a smaller jet pack and an armored space suit of Karigole design, scanned the cube ships through an optic box atop his rifle.
“Well, professor?” Elias asked.
“There are three hundred and twelve cubes linked together … but no engines,” Lafayette said.
“What about these? I saw them on the planet-facing edge,” Bodel said. He sent image captures of blackened wire frames attached to several cubes to the rest of the team through their local IR net.
“Ah, sharp eyes, Mr. Bodel,” Lafayette said. “Yes, they could be engine mounts. But that begs the question of where those engines went, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe the Shanishol version of Cortez led them all here,” Elias said.
“What is a Cortez?” Lafayette asked.
“Not a what, a who. He was a Spanish military leader that burned his ships so his men knew there was no going back if they failed to conquer the native peoples and enslave them,” Elias said.
“He sounds like a horrible person. Is he a venerated leader in human history?”
“He gets mixed reviews. All depends on who you ask. You find a place for us to start looking or should we throw a dart and go to whichever one it hits?” Elias asked.
“Look at that,” Kallen said. She pointed her arm with gauss cannons mounted on the forearms at the other side of the crater. She took long strides across the moon, each step aided by a quick boost from her jet pack.
She stopped near the edge and held up a fist to keep the rest of the team from going past her.
There, pressed into the dust, was a footprint. Whoever, or whatever, set foot on this moon had a four-toed foot larger than a manhole cover. Treads of the space boot ran beneath each toe splayed out like a bird’s. There were slight divots at the end of each toe; whatever had been there had claws.
“There’s more over the edge, lots more,” Kallen said.
“Maybe the Shanishol sent someone down to have a look around,” Bodel said.
“Shanishol had feet like humans, not like this. Look familiar to you, Lafayette?” Elias asked. The Karigole stared at the footprints, his gloved hand on the hilt of a knife sheathed against his thigh. “Lafayette?”
The alien look startled, and took his hand away.
“Yes, sorry. There are many species with feet like that. Given that this moon lacks anything in the way of weather or geologic activity, these footprints could be millions of years old. They may be from the original inhabitants of Anthalas,” Lafayette said.
“I went and saw Neil Armstrong’s footprints on Luna, the originals from 1969,” Bodel said. “They’d still be there if the Chinese hadn’t ‘accidentally’ erased them when they took the colonies over.”
“But that footprint could be a few hours old too, couldn’t it?” Elias asked.
“That’s correct, but there’s no evidence anyone else is in system with us,” Lafayette said. He raised his rifle back toward the cubes. “Best we hurry.”
Elias looked at Anthalas. The bands of Xaros rings around the planet brought back memories of standing on the Breitenfeld’s hull during the battle for the Crucible. Inside the armored womb of his armor, Elias felt his heart beating faster as his withering body dumped adrenaline and stress hormones into his bloodstream. There was no battle—his mind knew it—but his body still had fight-or-flight instincts. Elias focused on the bio feedback from his armor, the press of the moon against his armor’s feet, the sensation of heat from the enormous red star at the center of the system.
He hated the almost atavistic demands of his flesh-and-blood body—the constant feedings, physical therapy and cleaning. Nothing his body required aided him inside his armor. But there was no way out of his armor, never again. He’d pushed his mind over the limit to save the ship from a Xaros attack, damaging his nervous system to the point where it couldn’t function without external input from his armor. So long as the plugs into his brain were connected to his suit, he could function. Without the armor, he was nothing. Maybe Stacey will come back from wherever she is with something that will get rid of my body forever, he thought.
He had no choice but to live in his armor. But his fellow Iron Heart Kallen took every chance she had to armor up. A paraplegic, being connected to her armor was the only way she could move, even if the limbs were mechanical and designed for combat.
“Let’s start with one of the cubes that had an engine mounted to it,” Lafayette said. “There may be a power source. Cube number thirty-seven?” A beacon point appeared on a cube through Elias’ visual feed.
“Fair enough.” Elias squatted, then launched himself into the air. The servos in his knees and hips sent him nearly ten yards high, then his anti-grav thrusters came to life with a flare of blue light.
The thrusters shook his armor as he accelerated. He cut them off once he’d achieved escape velocity from the moon and let his momentum take him the rest of the way to the ship. The charge in the thrusters was finite, and they still had to get back to the Breitenfeld.
As they neared, details of the cube’s surface came into focus. Each side was a jigsaw puzzle of metal plates welded together, none identical. There were no windows or airlocks.
Elias swung his legs around and reoriented his armor so it was flying toward the cube feetfirst. He pulsed his thrusters, losing speed with each tap of anti-gravity. He slowed to almost nothing a few yards above the surface and activated the magnetic liners in his boots to pull him the rest of the way down.
The soles and heels of his boots snapped against the cube’s hull, and he felt vibrations as the rest of his team landed around him. They stood against the underside of the ship; an obs
erver on the moon’s surface would see them as if they were standing on a ceiling.
“Why are the stars twinkling?” Bodel asked. Stars seen between the cube ship and the moon were as expected—steady—as there was no shifting atmosphere to bend the light. But starlight seen between the cubes wavered and was slightly diffuse, like seeing them through a thin fog.
“It’s only around the space and sun-facing sides of the ship,” Lafayette said. “Why don’t we get on another cube facing and investigate?”
“We aren’t here for a science expedition. We need to hurry up and find the Shanishols’ Omnium and get the hell out of here,” Elias said.
“Agreed, but do you see a door around here?” Lafayette said, motioning to the flat expanse of welded plates.
Kallen slid across the surface, adjusting the pull on her magnetic linings so she skated over the surface like it was ice. She went horizontal as she came to the edge and fell into space. She swung her feet back to the other cube face and arced back to the ship with a touch of her thrusters.
No matter how much more time Elias spent in the armor than Kallen, she always managed to be more graceful in her movements than either Elias or Bodel. Elias would admit to a bit of jealousy to himself and no one else.
The other side of the cube was little different than the last. As they approached the edge, a gossamer wall appeared, stretching across the entire cube ship. The Iron Hearts stood at the edge of the cube, looking through the slightly opaque barrier.
Lafayette leaned close and tapped a finger against the wall. The wall stuck to his fingertip and pulled back with an elastic snap.
“Curious, there are micrometeorites embedded within the … film,” Lafayette said.
“Like putting a cover over a car you’re not going to drive for a while,” Bodel said. “Keeps space from eating away at the cubes one tiny tick at a time.”
“Why not have this all the way around the ship?” Kallen asked.
“The moon is between the open underside and the rest of space. Whoever put this on was either lazy or efficient,” Elias said.
Lafayette scraped residue from his fingertip into a specimen tube. He held the sample up in front of his eyes and shook it.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” he asked.
Elias skated into the middle of the cube and knelt. He raised a hand into the air and slapped it against the cube hard enough to leave an imprint in the metal. He felt a slight vibration through his armor from the strike.
“There’s a strut beneath me,” he said. “Find a thin point in the hull so we can get in,” Elias said. Kallen and Bodel skated over the surface, stopping to kick their heels against the hull.
“Why don’t we check for an access point along the passageways connecting the cubes?” Lafayette asked.
“Because this is a smash and grab, professor, not an excavation.” Elias scooted over and slapped the hull again.
“Why do you keep calling me that? I have the Karigole educational equivalent of an associate’s degree,” Lafayette said.
“Because you keep yammering like you should be wearing tweed!” Elias flicked a fingertip against the hull, then again a few feet over. “Got a thin part.”
He raised his arm into the air and punched his fingertips through the welds of a hull panel. There was no rush of air from around the breach, so he squeezed his hand around the hole and peeled the hull of the ship aside. He stood and dragged a piece away like he was rolling up a throw carpet. He stopped when the hull panel was at the far edge; he might have to fold it back later and didn’t want to send it floating into the void.
“Inelegant, but effective,” Lafayette said.
The entrance was big enough for the Iron Hearts, and there was nothing but darkness to greet them.
“Who wants to go first?” Bodel asked.
****
The swamp morphed into tall, thin trees that reminded Hale of ash trees, but with thick bushy tops that looked like roots in the shape of a dandelion head. The fog thinned enough that Hale could see the great red disk of the system’s primary in the golden sky. His IR couldn’t find a buoy to connect to, and he had no idea if he’d gotten closer to or farther from the landing zone.
His Marines would wait at the landing zone for an hour, then continue the mission with or without him, which was five minutes from now. A gust of wind thinned the fog out and Hale saw a clearing beyond the thin trees. He made his way toward the clearing, boots crunching on tree bark that had shed from the thin trees like scales off a fish.
He got to the edge of the clearing and saw a flicker of movement on the other side. His fingertips drummed against the edge of his forearm display. Suit-to-suit IR wouldn’t stretch through the fog. Mimicking a bird call on an alien world was about as useful as screaming “There’s something weird right here!” to anything that wasn’t from Earth. If there was a good way to tell friend from foe out there, it wasn’t coming to him.
There was a whoosh of air and powerful arms grabbed him from behind. His rifle was knocked from his hands and his arms pinned to his side. A knife glinted in the weak light and he felt it press against his throat through his armor.
“Look up. Always look up,” Steuben hissed into his ear.
Hale squirmed in the Karigole’s powerful grasp and he slammed his head back. The edge of his helmet struck Steuben’s face and Hale heard a grunt of pain. Steuben shoved Hale away and the Marine scooped up his rifle and swung it around at Steuben.
Steuben rubbed his jaw and slid his knife into a scabbard running along his forearm.
“Good reaction,” Steuben said, “but you are still lacking in tactical awareness.”
“Damn it, Steuben! I could have shot you,” Hale said.
“If I’ve grown so sloppy then I deserve to be shot.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
Steuben pointed his clawed fingers toward the north end of the clearing. “There. We were preparing to leave when I heard you tromping through the undergrowth like a lost child. What happened to you?” Steuben reached over his shoulder and unsnapped his gauss rifle from his back armor. The Karigole used the same technology as their human allies for small arms, but his rifle packed almost as big a punch as a single shot from Orozco’s Gustav.
“I got blown into an electrical storm and landed in a tree that tried to eat me. Other than that I’m fine,” Hale said.
Steuben grunted and led Hale through the woods. They came to a knot of Marines and Lowenn, all huddled around a small IR radio antenna.
“Sir!” Standish waved to Hale. “Guess who’s the first human being to ever set foot on an alien planet?” He poked both thumbs at his own chest. “This guy. Armstrong on the moon. Chang on Mars. Standish on Anthalas. We’ll take some photos later so school kids know what to draw with their crayons and stuff.”
“This mission is classified, you twit,” Torni said, shaking her head as she tapped a button on the IR radio. The antenna swiveled from side to side slowly. “School kids will never know about this.”
“What?” Standish’s shoulders slumped. “Sir, we’ve got to tell everyone about this when we get back.”
“No, Standish. You’re going to have to do something else to be famous,” Hale said. “We have comms to the buoys?”
“Negative, sir. Atmosphere is playing hell with comms. I’ve got nothing from the Breitenfeld, nothing from the Rangers,” Torni said.
“No loss of equipment on the drop,” Cortaro said. “We’ve got food, water and batteries to last five days.”
Hale looked up and saw white haze stretched across the golden skies. A few blood-red clouds marred the sky like scabs. Their mission wouldn’t wait for perfect weather.
“All right,” Hale said. “We’ve still got our mission. We move north to the capital, wait for the weather to clear then reestablish contact. Form up into your fire teams. We’re moving in echelon formation. Ms. Lowenn, with me please.”
Lowenn, who’d been sitting with her back to a tree, used
her rifle like a walking stick to get herself to her feet. Hale wanted to snap at her for using her weapon like a tool, but she wasn’t a Marine.
Lowenn at least kept her finger off the trigger as she fell in beside Hale. They walked behind the rest of the Marines, with only Steuben behind them.
“Lowenn, what do you think of this place?” Hale asked.
“You mean as a vacation destination? I’ll pass.”
“No, from your anthropologist background.”
Lowenn shrugged. “There are a couple things that don’t fit what we know about the Xaros, or even this planet. If the Shanishol did come here at the invitation of some advanced civilization, why don’t we see more signs of it? One glance at Earth from orbit and you’d know it was inhabited. The Great Wall of China, the Suez and Panama canals, lights from cities and the hyperloops. All this before the Xaros wiped it away, of course.
“So where is all that? The Shanishol had decades on the planet before the Xaros showed up. If they had the wherewithal to cross interstellar distances, why not do some sort of infrastructure improvements? They didn’t even build roads from the cities.”
“Maybe the Xaros erased everything but the population centers,” Hale said.
“The Alliance has sent probes to a couple planets the Xaros have preserved. There’s one I remember, a red desert world the Alliance doesn’t have a name for. The hypothesis is that the locals heard radio transmissions of a neighboring civilization being wiped out by the Xaros and decided to cease their reproductive cycles. Commit very slow species-wide suicide before the Xaros could get to them. The Xaros showed up and didn’t erase a single thing. They left a few caretaker drones in the system and the murmuration of a few hundred million drones went on to the next species,” she said.
“Other times, species have tried to play possum. Bury a few sentients deep underground or in a gas giant and hope to ride out the storm. The Xaros find the survivors every time, and every time they wipe out every trace of that civilization, even if they left the remnants intact to begin with.”