by Richard Fox
“It can’t be…” Roland shook his head.
“‘Roland, you have to get up. Fight.’ You remember that? ‘Let her go.’ I said that to you all on Ouranos so you wouldn’t get Trinia killed for your damn honor.” Stacey kicked a pew, breaking a corner into splinters and knocking it into the row behind it.
“Why? Why lie to us?” Roland asked.
“Ibarra tradition,” she said, picking up the remains of an armrest. “Lie and just keep at it. Ends are all that matter, Ken. You know us. So why don’t I just go to Nicodemus or Martel and tell them the truth? That Saint Kallen is a fraud!”
She whipped around and drew an arm back to hurl the splinter at the stained glass window.
Roland grabbed her by the wrist before she could let fly, ice biting into his flesh as he tried to hold her back. The strength he felt in her arm felt like he was struggling against armor.
Stacey stared at Roland, her dead eyes locked with his.
She dropped the splinter and pulled free of Roland’s grip.
“You’re not Ken Hale,” she said. “Where am I?” Her head snapped from side to side.
Roland tried to squeeze his freezing hands shut, but they creaked like there was rust in his joints.
“I…I’m sorry, Roland,” Stacey said. “I need to show you something.” She reached into her robe and pulled out a small triangle. She tapped the pad of her thumb against the apex and the chapel vanished.
A playground appeared around them. Skyscrapers of Navarre’s capital city soared into the sky, disappearing into the ever-present cloud cover. Excited shouts of children playing filled the air, but there was no one there.
A moment later, figures materialized around them—kids and their parents. Roland recognized Nicodemus and his wife, carrying a newborn. Their eldest son, Jonathan, sat on a swing as his father pushed him, a toddler on his hip.
Roland stepped to one side and bumped into a pew that flickered in and out of view.
“Hologram,” Stacey said. “Live feed from the hab blocks.”
“Why are you showing me this?” Roland asked.
“They are why,” she said sadly. “They are why I’ve lied to the armor. I couldn’t win without them. Without you. Do you think armor would have come to Navarre with us if we hadn’t had Saint Kallen urge them to do it?”
“We are loyal unto death,” Roland said. “Ideals first. Politics second.”
Nicodemus’s son, Jonathan, kicked his legs forward, jumped off the swing, and arced up, giggling. He hit the ground hard with a yelp. The boy grabbed his ankle and began crying. Stacey lunged forward and her arms passed through him.
Nicodemus arrived a heartbeat later to comfort the boy.
“This is why.” Stacey stood and ran her hands down the front of her robe. “The future. Children, Roland. The Ibarra Nation is my child. It must grow. I was there in Phoenix when we first returned to Earth. Saw my childhood home being dismantled by the Xaros. My life came apart in that moment and I’ve never really been able to piece it back together. But this…this I can control. Our Nation free and safe. Free to live as we choose. Safe from those that would harm us. Armor is the key to that. There is no victory without you, Roland. I’m so close to finding it…so close.”
Roland looked at Nicodemus as he hefted Jonathan onto his other hip. The boy flung his arms around his father’s neck, tears streaming down his face.
“The lies are worth it,” Stacey said. “To me, at least.”
“You think the armor will turn on you if they know the truth about Kallen,” Roland said.
“Will they?”
“I think so,” Roland said, nodding slowly. He looked across the playground to where he remembered the door to the chapel to be, waiting to see if her honor guard would come through and finish him.
“Then it is in your interest to lie to me now. Buy time to get this back to the Templar. Yet you’re being honest…” Stacey asked.
“I betrayed the Terran Union when I escaped that prison on Mars. It was the right thing to do, but it still wears on me. I don’t want a second burden. Do what you will.” Roland straightened up.
The holo fell away, leaving him and Stacey in the chapel.
“What should I do with you, Roland? A traitor once. Would my armor believe you?” she asked.
“Almost every armor you have came from the Terran Union, all traitors one way or another. What do you want from me, my Lady? Do you want me to tell them or keep this secret?”
“Roland, you are armor. Your soul is strong. I know your type. You can’t carry a lie with you. It will eat away at your soul, a black cancer that will bring you down.” Stacey sat on the step leading up to the pulpit and rested her forearms on her knees.
“That’s how I live,” she said. “My dark path goes back for decades. Marc Ibarra set me on it before I was even born. I carry the guilt and I carry a burden to protect the Ibarra Nation…and by extension, the future of the human race. Let me eat that sin for you, Roland.”
“You want me to tell them that you’re Kallen?” he asked.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not my grandfather. I just want you to know that we’re close…close to a final victory. The Breitenfeld and the Keystone gate it carried were the last pieces of the puzzle. Malal’s Ark is just out of reach.”
“My Lady…I am sworn to your service and my oaths as a Templar haven’t changed,” Roland said, “even if Saint Kallen is not—if what I’ve experienced is not true. But now I’m in the middle of something that could throw the entire Nation into chaos. If the armor turn on you, then the—”
Stacey raised her face to him.
“I’m wrong,” Roland said. “The Ibarra Nation will never turn against you. You brought almost all of them forth from the procedural tubes. They will never believe me. Neither would Makarov.”
He and the youthful admiral had grown close since Ouranos; her favor was still in his breast pocket. They’d done their best to keep things quiet, but there was no point in keeping things hidden from Stacey.
“She’s different,” she said. “Couldn’t make one of her caliber without loosening the controls.”
“But the rest of the Nation?”
“My children. I love them, and they me. The Legions are mine, all mine, Ken…No. Roland.”
“Why do you keep calling me Ken Hale?” Roland asked.
“I…am slipping.” Stacey turned her palms up. “When my soul rushed into this ice cube, my body was dying. The matrix holding me wasn’t designed for that degree of trauma. Sometimes things get a little muddled. You’ve…seen that in me more than once. Trinia could have fixed me, stopped the slide, I hoped. There might even be a transfer point on the Ark, get back to my old self, but I’m not what matters. That’s not why I need the Ark.
“And Ken Hale…was a good man. A better person than I would have ever amounted to. You remind me of him. I do miss him. Miss the chance I lost to be with him. I don’t blame him for leaving. He deserves to be happy. I want that for you. For everyone.”
“Thank you, my Lady,” Roland said as he sighed and looked up at Kallen before the gates of Ft. Knox. “I am Armor. I’ve fought battles and foes I never imagined when I joined the service, yet I still feel like a damn kid.”
“I was a damn kid when the Ember War started,” she said. “I sure as hell didn’t sign up for the Xaros. But one thing I’ve learned about life—it isn’t fair. Ever. But we must fight for the future, no matter the blows we take or how hard we fall along the way.”
“I will…I will do what’s right,” Roland said.
Stacey stood and walked up to him. As she raised a hand, frost fell from her fingers.
“Ken, I wish we could have…it’s not our fault.” Stacey wrapped her other hand into Roland’s and he stifled a cry of pain.
She brought his hand up to her still mouth and pressed it against her lips. The flesh between his thumb and forefinger b
urned with pain then went numb. She let him go and walked out of the room.
Roland kept his bearings until the honor guard shut the door, then he gripped his wrist and fell against the shattered pew, his hand throbbing with pain.
Scar tissue matching the imprint of her lips began to burn as the cold wore off. He hadn’t felt pain like this since a Ranger’s bullet had taken a chunk off of his arm back on Mars.
He looked up to Kallen.
“What now? Pray? Who’s going to hear me, Saint, you or Ibarra?”
He kept himself propped up against the broken pew until the pain in his hand ebbed away. The agony seemed to focus his mind on his situation. Tell the truth of Ibarra and Kallen and risk fracturing the Ibarran Armor? Keep what he knew secret and hope Stacey could win the war before her mind finally unraveled? Play along with Saint Kallen and abandon his morals?
Roland thought back to Mars, when Tongea had taken him and Aignar to see Saint Kallen’s final resting place. He remembered feeling something, a presence that he couldn’t explain. But he wasn’t plugged into his suit then, so was that just a figment of his imagination or did Stacey’s deception go deeper than what she claimed?
He clutched his hand to his chest and looked up at the stained glass window.
“Who says…who says I have to decide now? There’s still a war to fight. My lance needs me. Doesn’t matter what Ibarra is, the Kesaht still want to kill us.”
He got up and winced as he moved his thumb against the new scar tissue.
“Duty calls.” He beat his damaged hand against his heart in a salute to Kallen and left the chapel.
Chapter 3
Stacey Ibarra walked down a narrow, windowless corridor. A pair of honor guard followed just behind her, unaffected by the cold aura her silver body generated. At the end, a single legionnaire armed with a snub-nosed gauss carbine stood guard next to a vault door. Another silver being—Marc Ibarra, wearing a lightly padded jumpsuit with wires running through it in small square patterns—stood on the other side of the vault frame.
“Stacey!” Marc held his arms wide. “I knew you’d take this call, so important. So diplomatic. I knew you had it in you.”
“Shut up.” Stacey held up two fingers pressed tightly together and swiped them to one side. There was a rumble within the walls as unseen gears began turning. The vault door rotated slowly.
“Talk is always good,” Marc said. “Much better than shooting. Better hurt feelings than blood all over the place, yes? Yes?”
Frost grew on the walls and over the legionnaires’ armor as the two immortals spoke.
“Talk is useful only when the truth is told,” Stacey said, turning her metal face to Marc, “not lies.”
“Well,” Marc said as he wrung his hands together, sending bits of ice falling to the floor, “it depends which lies are told. And to who. And when. They have their uses, certainly.”
One edge of the door opened as the vault continued to rotate.
“Legionnaire,” Stacey said, pointing to the guard. “Medvedev, yes?”
“Yes, my Lady.” He bowed his head quickly, his hands still on his weapon.
Stacey’s finger swayed to Marc. “If he speaks in there, shoot him.”
Medvedev flipped the power setting on his carbine to high and a low whine filled the air. He hefted the carbine’s stock to his shoulder.
“Now that’s a bit much,” Marc said.
The legionnaire raised his muzzle.
“Whoa, meathead! We’re not in the chamber yet. Heel, boy. Heel.” Marc raised his palms up defensively.
Medvedev grumbled and turned the muzzle away from Marc.
Stacey sidestepped through the opening and into a small, cylindrical room bare of any decoration. Floating over a small plinth was a box, glowing from within. Stacey went to the box and began tapping in a code on a panel as Marc and his guard followed her inside.
A lens on one side of the box lit up and a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and thinning hair appeared on the other side of the plinth.
“—of goddamn time, Keeper. She won’t…oh, Marc.” Garret, president of the Terran Union, put his hands on his hips and nodded to Marc. The silver man, his back to the curved wall, gave Garret a quick wave.
A woman stepped into the holo projection from the quantum box. She was tall, her blonde hair run through with gray, her face lined with wrinkles. Her fit body was in stark contrast to the age in her face.
“Speak,” Stacey said, her elbows slightly bent, fists held at her waist.
“Thank you, Stacey.” Torni took a step closer to the box, half reaching toward the leader of the Ibarra Nation. “I know there’s been some strain between our—”
“Strain?” Stacey leaned toward Keeper. “You call this strain? You murdered an Ibarran in cold blood. You know you did this. His name was Tyrel, and the Terran Union put a bullet in his head simply because he existed without your permission.”
“The Hale Treaty tied our hands,” Garret said. “There were observers from Bastion there. If we hadn’t complied with the Omega Provision, we’d be in a war with every race in the galaxy, not just the Kesaht, the Vishrakath, and their allies.”
“You murdered him,” Stacey said. “Murdered.”
“We’ve suspended the Omega Provision,” Keeper said. “It was wrong to ever put it into effect, we know that. And nothing we can do will bring that man back, but there are more lives at stake now than before. Hear us out.”
“I don’t care,” Stacey said. “It doesn’t matter what happens to you. To Earth. To anyone but my Nation. You want my children dead. All of them.”
“No, that’s not true.” Garret motioned to one side and a pair of Strike Marines in power armor materialized at the edge of the holo field, a hooded woman grasped by the arms between them.
A Marine pulled the hood off, revealing a mess of blonde hair. She flung her head back to clear her vision, and deep-blue eyes looked from Stacey to the legionnaire behind her.
“Masha!” Medvedev took a step forward then snapped back and brought his carbine level with the elder Ibarra’s chest.
“I failed you, my Lady,” Masha said, “but the target is still alive on Eridu. She—” The hood went back on and the Marines carried the spy away as she screamed Basque obscenities.
“One of yours, obviously, given how much trouble she’s caused through the Union,” Garret said. “And she won’t be killed by us. The Omega Provision is over.”
“Only because no one on Bastion knows you have her,” Stacey said.
Garret and Keeper shared a look.
“You have our people too,” Keeper said. “What did you do to the crew of the Breitenfeld? To Admiral Valdar?”
“They’re safe and sound,” Stacey said. “I’m not you. I don’t kill prisoners.”
“Moral superiority aside,” Garret said, “we have a chance to end the war with the Kesaht. Right now. You interested?”
“They want peace?” Stacey crossed her arms.
“No. Bastards are still attacking our colonies and killing every human they can get their hands on. There’s only the sword with them,” Garret said.
Stacey nodded slowly.
“We found their home world.” Keeper held out a palm and a map of the galaxy projected from her palm. Keeper wasn’t human, at least she wasn’t anymore. She was the mind of a slain Strike Marine within a Xaros drone, one capable of reforming into the shape of a woman, but so damaged that Keeper had to mask the cracks as old age.
“Epsilon Iridani by our star charts,” Keeper said. “Outside the original Crucible network. Bale must have jumped to the system before the Qa’resh destroyed all the jump drives. He built a Crucible gate and whipped the Kesaht up to fight this damn jihad of theirs. But we’ve got that Toth bastard now.”
“Good for you,” Stacey said.
“The Kesaht won’t stop with Earth,” Garret said. “You know they won’t rest until they come for your worlds too.”
“Won’t
be my problem,” Stacey said.
Marc raised a hand to speak, but Medvedev put his finger on the trigger and Marc’s hand snapped back down.
“We’re launching a mission to defeat the Kesaht in their home system,” Garret said. “From what we know about them, if we kill Bale, the rest of the Risen commanders and their deployed fleets should fall back. Then we can turn our forces to the Vishrakath.”
“I don’t care,” Stacey said.
“The Vish have killed millions with their mass drivers,” Keeper said. “Innocent civilians. They’ve sent dozens of city killers through Crucibles at Earth. We’ve knocked them all out of space, but the attacks are only getting more frequent. We are running out of time and ships, Stacey.”
“I told you,” Stacey said, shaking her head. “I told you this would happen. You were so eager to get New Bastion up and running that you agreed to the Hale Treaty and gave up the only thing that gave us an edge over the aliens: procedural technology. Now you’re desperate because you don’t have the manpower to fight and win and you have only yourselves to blame.”
“And you were right!” Garret shouted. He dug into a pocket and pulled out a small pill bottle. He twisted the cap off and tossed two small white discs into his mouth as Keeper watched, her disgust evident on her face. “You were right all along. That good enough for you, Stacey? Ibarrans good. Union bad. We turned our galactic expansion into a goat screw when we sent Ken Hale to negotia—”
“Don’t you dare!” Stacey swiped at Garret, her fist passing through his projection a split second before he reacted and ducked away. “Don’t you dare blame him. He was your pawn. The treaty—and everything that happened after—is on you!”
“I get it.” Garret bit down on his pills and swallowed hard. “I get it, Stacey. Pin it all on me. Doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that we know where the Kesaht’s base is. We’re set to go there and smash it to pieces, knock those bastards out of the war and back to their Stone Age for all I care…but we need you.”
“You what?” Stacey cocked her head to one side.