Iron Dragoons (Terran Armor Corps Book 1)

by Richard Fox

  “These weather patterns are…unusual,” Cha’ril said. A time-lapse photo featuring a continent formed along a mountain ridge that ran from the northern pole to the equator showed a massive hurricane assaulting the lower third of the continent. The storm’s progress was glacially slow over several days. Roland zoomed in and found that the hurricane had several eyes scattered over the land mass.

  “Sir, when you said ‘adverse conditions,’” Roland said, “did you mean we’re doing an orbital insertion through the hurricane?”

  An icon labeled SHARD JUNGLE popped up…over the hurricane and some distance from one of the stable eyes.

  “The key to any orbital drop is velocity control and a decent landing zone,” Gideon said. “This drop will be a bit more complicated due to high winds…and lightning.”

  Roland heard Aignar curse softly.

  “All right, you three, analysis: if the Vishrakath found the artifact in the Shard Jungle, where is it now?” Gideon asked.

  “Can their aircraft operate in that hurricane?” Cha’ril asked.

  “No, they may have decent warships and infantry,” Aignar said, “but their in-atmo craft are all rotary wing. Can’t handle high winds. Their void fighters might make it, but they’ll move with all the grace of a drunk on a high wire down here.”

  “Can ours?” Roland asked.

  “Not with all that electricity in the air,” Aignar said.

  “Then they’re on foot or in ground vehicles,” Roland said. “No roads in any of these Pathfinder Corps survey pics…thick jungles…so they’re on foot?”

  “Why did the Baradans preserve their buildings and not their roads?” Cha’ril asked.

  “Something to collect taxes on,” Aignar said.

  “Focus,” Gideon snapped.

  “So they’re on foot, in a storm…where are they heading?” Roland asked.

  “The eye,” Cha’ril said and pinged the nearest gap in the storm. “Conditions are stable in there. A lander can get in and back to orbit if it does a corkscrew approach—fuel-intensive and difficult, but possible.”

  “Then we set down in the eye and wait for them to show up,” Aignar said.

  “Won’t the Vishrakath have the same idea?” Roland asked. “Something this important, you want extraction waiting.”

  A topographical map of the continent around the stable eye came up. Three wide valleys led through the Shard Jungle area to the eye.

  “Which one, Roland?” Gideon asked.

  “Sir…” He zoomed in on each, looking for something like a collapsed canyon or deep gorge that would block travel, but they all appeared open. “I don’t know the Vishrakath that well…they were major players in the old Alliance against the Xaros. They’re the head of a coalition of several other species…I don’t know how they fight. Aignar, you were there on Cygnus. What do you think?”

  “I spent a week ducking Vish bullets and murder-bots. Didn’t give much thought to their high strategy while I was killing them.”

  “Sir…I don’t know,” Roland said.

  “Vishrakath commanders are cautious,” Gideon said, “content to trade space for time and welcome battles of attrition when they have the greater numbers. They control the orbitals…we need to know where the Pathfinder team was lost. The Vish will use the closest route to the eye.”

  “Now hear this, now hear this,” boomed through the ship’s loudspeakers. “Prepare for contested wormhole jump.”

  “Roland, why didn’t you choose a route?” Gideon asked.

  Roland’s heart sank at the question. “Because I didn’t have the best answer, sir. I could guess, but I didn’t want to take that kind of a chance with the lance.”

  “Well done, Roland,” Gideon said, and the candidate’s ears perked up. “Excellent analysis from all of you.”

  “I hope we survive this to tell the others we got a pat on the back,” Aignar said.

  “Stow it, candidate. None of you have earned your spurs yet,” Gideon said.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  Roland felt a chill through his body. All the color around him faded to white.

  “If I fall,” Gideon said, “get the artifact. Nothing else matters.”

  Roland’s entire universe fell into a white abyss as they passed through the wormhole.

  Chapter 19

  The Scipio broke through the white plain at the center of the Barada Crucible and arced toward the planet below like an arrow fired from a bow.

  On the bridge, Captain Tagawa gripped her command chair, her jaw set as she watched a holo projection of the entire planet, their projected course, and the location of the Vishrakath ships arrayed over a small continent near the southern pole.

  “Get me an IR line to Dr. Lowenn,” Tagawa said. “Helm, keep us on course to swing around the planet and overfly the research station. Engage secondary heading on my mark.”

  “Got Lowenn,” said the communication’s petty officer, “we’ll have line of sight to her for the next…five minutes.”

  “Open channel.” Tagawa swiped a finger over her gauntlet and brought Gideon into the call.

  “Scipio, this is Lowenn at Magellan Base…where’s the rest of the fleet? Did the Ticonderoga not tell you how critical this is?”

  “Vish set off a disruption field that’s holding back transit of anything larger than my ship, Doctor,” Tagawa said. “My girl may be small, but she’s fierce.”

  “Where did your pathfinder team last make contact?” Gideon asked.

  Lowenn tapped a keypad off screen and coordinates flowed across her image.

  “The Vishrakath are all over the Shard Jungle, Captain Tagawa. What does Phoenix think you can accomplish?”

  “I’m carrying four suits of armor, the Iron Dragoons,” Tagawa said.

  “Four?” Lowenn leaned toward the camera. “Just…four?”

  “We are all,” Gideon said.

  Lowenn shook her head quickly, then her feed grayed out to static as the Scipio flew beyond Magellan Base’s horizon.

  “I have faith in you,” Tagawa said. She plotted the location Lowenn had sent her and double-tapped a spot along the ship’s projected path. “Here?”

  “It’ll have to do,” Gideon said.

  “Hold on down there. We let you go too fast, you’ll turn into a flaming lump of good intentions and poor planning all the way down. Scope is clear of any Vishrakath ships this side of the planet. Small favors.”

  “Does she know we can hear that?” Cha’ril asked.

  “Shh! Shut up,” Aignar hissed.

  “We’ll signal for extraction when we have the artifact,” Gideon said.

  “God’s speed,” Tagawa said and closed the channel. “Helm, set for insertion. Keep the aft thrusters primed just in case the Vish take offense to our little maneuver.”

  ****

  Roland stepped out of his coffin and rolled his armor’s shoulders forward. He gave his rotary cannon a quick spin and cycled bolts into his forearm cannon. Intellectually, he knew he was the most heavily armed and armored weapon system humanity had ever produced. Inside his armored womb, anxiety and fear beat in tune with his heart.

  Gideon marched up to the closed hell hole and slammed a sabaton to the deck. It mag-locked to the plating.

  “Brace,” their lance leader said. “Be generous with your thrusters on the way down. Your armor has the path.”

  Roland widened his stance slightly and locked his feet to the deck.

  Gideon sent a live feed from his optics to the three candidates, who formed a ring around the hell hole with their leader, and Roland saw his armor. Tall. Strong. The suit bore none of the raging emotions that urged him to step away from the hell hole and back into his coffin.

  “I am armor,” Gideon intoned. His helm looked across the other three.

  “I am armor,” he said again.

  “I am armor,” Roland, Aignar and Cha’ril repeated the words.

  “I am fury.”

  Roland felt a sens
e of calm come over him as he said the words in time with his fellows.

  The hell hole slid open and a smear of gray clouds ripped across the sky below. The Scipio lurched forward as her thrusters cut her forward velocity. Amber lights blinked around the edge of the hell hole.

  “I will not fail,” Gideon said as he unlocked his boots and stepped into the hole just as the lights turned green. Aignar crossed himself and followed. Cha’ril punched Roland in the shoulder and dove down.

  “I am armor.” Roland hopped forward and fell.

  The Scipio drifted overhead, his and the ship’s velocity a near match. The hell hole closed and the corvette rocketed forward on burning thrusters. Barada stretched out around him, the atmosphere breaking into blue bands on the horizon, the system’s star casting long shadows behind massive thunderheads, breaking apart the gray monotony of the massive hurricane’s cloud cover.

  The sight was nothing like he, an orphan child once lost in the shuffle of Earth’s largest city, had ever imagined.

  He leaned forward and angled his head toward the planet. His HUD projected rings ahead of him, setting a path to the landing zone Gideon had chosen, close to the last-known location of the pathfinder team that had the artifact. Icons for the other three armor soldiers pulsed.

  To the south, an eye in the hurricane seemed to taunt him with the promise of clear skies and an easy descent. Light glinted off a lake formed into a perfect circle.

  Wind rustled against his armor as the atmosphere thickened. He, with all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick, kept his focus on the course. Although he drifted dangerously close to the edge of the rings, he resisted the urge to fire the thrusters on his jet pack. A blast of anti-grav particles or a stray heat plume would be a nice fat clue to the Vishrakath that something was amiss over the Shard Jungle.

  “Hitting the cloud layer,” Gideon said, “will lose IR in a few seconds. Rem—beacon.”

  Gideon’s icon blinked rapidly, then vanished from Roland’s HUD.

  “Anyone else wish we were back on that rock?” Aignar asked. “Just orbiting Ceres…no big deal.”

  “I find your lack of focus worrisome,” Cha’ril said.

  “I’m just a leaf on the wind right now,” Aignar said. “A big metal leaf. With guns.”

  “If you’re trying to upset me again, it’s working,” she said.

  “Clouds. See you kids on the ground.” Aignar’s icon blinked out.

  “Is this how humans always approach combat? With…levity?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t find anything funny about this. At all.”

  “Curious.”

  Roland watched as the hurricane swallowed her.

  As the gray pulled closer, he took one last glance at the sky above and a slap of wind sent him rolling over and toward the opposite side of the course. Rain lashed across his optics as the clouds darkened further. He tapped his thrusters, leveling out.

  “OK…I’ve got this.”

  A fork of lightning slashed through the sky just in front of him, his optics going dull as they compensated for the deluge of light. A clap of thunder slapped him aside with enough force to shake him inside his womb.

  He steered back into the center of his flight path, then the whole thing angled sharply to the right. Roland swung toward the ever more distant rings and activated the thrusters in the flat of his sabatons and up and down his legs. His HUD pulsed red, urging him back on course. He’d almost reached the outer edge of the ring when his thrusters cut out.

  Tiny strands of electricity slithered up his legs.

  His armor was rated against lightning strikes, but Roland did not want to test the engineer’s promises in the middle of a combat drop.

  ALTITUDE. ALTITUDE flashed on his HUD and rang in his ears. He fired his jet pack as he descended through the gray void. Columns of flame ripped from the pack, the heat strong enough that he felt the effects through the womb and damage icons flashed on his ankles.

  The clouds parted, and Roland found himself falling straight toward a cliff face. He angled away and managed to soften the collision against the rock wall. His feet and hands ripped furrows down the rain-swept rocks, sending a cascade of shards and pebbles down the mountain.

  The jet pack snapped off and he came to a halt, gripping the side of the mountain for dear life. His jet pack pinged—overheated and nearly out of fuel. Sheets of rain fell from the sky. Deep-gray columns dotted the horizon, torrential downpours from the roiling storms all around him.

  “Not great.” Roland looked down and into a chasm that ended in darkness. A cracked slope ran from the opposite side of the chasm to the edge of a jungle. His jet pack came back online.

  “Stay up here, exposed and asking to be shot,” he said, “or…” He pushed off the cliff face with a burst of force from his legs and arms, sailed backwards and kicked his feet out toward the slope. He fired his jet pack and shot forward. Everything but his knees cleared the edge of the cliff. The impact knocked a boulder loose and sent it crashing down the chasm, the impacts matching the sound of thunder overhead.

  Roland got up, his lower legs stiff as the armor retuned the actuators to compensate for the landing. He felt an ache in his own calves and ankles as his nervous system sent commands to the armor that the armor couldn’t carry out perfectly.

  He lifted a sabaton off the ground and the ankle snapped into place with a jolt of pain, but the ache subsided.

  Roland dropped the spent jet pack to the ground and kicked it into the chasm. He wouldn’t leave anything behind for the Vishrakath to find. His weapon systems came online and Roland looked around.

  The storm filled the air with the impact of rain on stone, with rolling thunder and the rustle of trees against each other in the driving wind. His first alien world, and it was miserable.

  “Roland, over here,” Cha’ril’s voice came over the IR, tinny and distorted. A marker pinged at the edge of the jungle and he ran toward it, taking great loping strides down the slope.

  He found the rest of his lance just inside the tree line, none looking worse for wear.

  “Well, you managed to walk away from that landing,” Aignar said as rainwater poured down a tree and onto his shoulder. He angled his forearm cannon away from the deluge.

  “It was either incredibly skillful or lucky,” Cha’ril said. “Given your experience level, I will assign it to the latter.”

  “I have the pathfinder team,” Gideon said. “Three kilometers to the south. Wedge formation. Follow me.” The lance leader started moving, his feet splashing in the inches-deep runoff from the slope.

  “Did you use a radar ping to triangulate our location?” Roland asked as he took his spot to Gideon’s right.

  “Pathfinders seed mountains, any terrain feature they can, with IR beacons, passive system. Vish wouldn’t be able to find them unless they know the exact frequency to ping. The beacon knows exactly where it is from GPS. Shoot it with an IR beam and it’ll send back your location,” Gideon said. “You all would have learned about this next week during your training.”

  Roland stepped over a fallen tree, the roots exposed at the base and washed clean, reaching through the air like the ends of a nervous system.

  “Are we weapons-free?” Aignar asked.

  “Negative. Shooting the artifact with gauss shells is not how we accomplish our mission. Be judicious with your targets and your aim,” Gideon said.

  The jungle thinned, giving way to groves of blue-barked tree trunks with no branches. Gideon slowed to a stop a little more than arm’s distance from one of the strange trees and reached a hand toward it. A thorn of hardened sap stabbed out of the tree and cracked against the palm of his hand. The misshapen spike tried to recede into the bark several times before it pulled back inside.

  “Good to know,” Gideon said.

  “Shard Jungle,” Roland added.

  “There…” Gideon ran around the shard trees and pointed to a pile of stones along an overflowing stream. His lance formed
a triangle around him, scanning the surrounding jungle as Gideon flicked a stone the size of a man’s head off the heap.

  A nearby tree bore scars from bullet strikes. Roland flicked his rotary cannon from side to side, then switched to his thermal optics, and saw little else in the rainy gloom.

  “Found them.” Gideon lifted a stone with both hands. Six dead Terran soldiers, all soaked to the bone, lay in a pile of limbs and equipment. Gideon pressed his hands between two corpses and lifted one out onto the ground. The man looked to be in his early twenties, his pale eyes staring, uncaring, into the sky. A sensor wand snapped out beneath Gideon’s left wrist and he ran it up and down the body.

  “There’s no physical trauma,” Gideon said.

  “That’s not how Vish kill us,” Aignar said. “I’ve seen it in person.”

  “Cha’ril, Roland,” Gideon said, pointing into the jungle, “they set off an emergency buoy from another hundred yards or so that direction. Go see what’s there.”

  “Sir,” Roland said and pressed forward, Cha’ril at his side. A thick stand of tall reeds blocked their view of where Gideon had told them to go. Roland put the fore of one boot against the base of the reeds and pressed the thick wall of vegetation down, something a soldier on foot could never have managed. A reptilian creature scurried away, squealing in fright. A robot pack carrier lay against a tree, raised wheels spinning in the rain.

  “Found their packer,” Roland said. Fragments of bark on surrounding trees had been ripped away, thick rivulets of sap bleeding down the sides.