by Richard Fox
“Kid, you go on enough drops and it gets to be old hat. Work yourself into knots before every mission and it doesn’t make a damn bit of good. Have your Armor locked and loaded. Know the mission. Head on a swivel. And be prepared for the plan to go right down the toilet the minute we step off. Murphy’s Law.”
“Makes you wonder why we go over the plan so many damn times when it never works out the way the brass thinks it’ll go.” Santos and Aignar walked to the doors, Aignar’s steps slow and stiff.
“So long as you understand the commander’s intent and keep working towards it—and stick to the plan when you still can—the chaos is manageable,” Aignar said.
“I know the intent: Assault the Kesaht home system. Beat them down and force them to surrender. Then get back to Union space and proceed to beat the hell out of the Vishrakath.”
“You got it…we still need to go to the briefing,” Aignar said.
“Figured you’d say that.”
****
Admiral Lettow waited for the murmurs to die down in the briefing room before he walked onto the stage. Ericson, the captain of the Normandy, picked her notes off the lectern and nodded to him as she moved away.
“Captains, ground force commanders, Armor,” he began. “Ericson just laid out the operational plan for the assault on the enemy’s capital, which we’ve learned they call Kesaht’ka. Roughly translates as ‘Heart of Unity.’” He touched a fingertip to a screen and a blue-green planet with a single large moon appeared in a holo over his shoulder.
“Thanks to fine intelligence work and Armor terminating a Risen commander on Umbra,” he said, “we know where the Kesaht home system is. Relic light, several hundred years old by the time it reached one of our telescopes, shows the world to be inhabitable and Earth-like. The system is not within the network of Crucible gates created by the Xaros, but beyond their advance before we put an end to them during the Ember War. Best assessment is that a Toth overlord jumped to the planet after the war, before the Qa’resh disabled all the jump engines, and proceeded to build a Crucible gate of his own in the Kesaht system.
“But now we’ve got them.” Lettow heard a number of enthusiastic remarks from the crowd. “And now the Terran Union will bring this war to an end. The Kesaht have pushed everything they have in their attack on us. They’re overextended and vulnerable. The planners down in Camelback Mountain have pulled together every ship—not already on the line—and together we will be the hammer that crushes the Kesaht.
“Mission is simple. Jump in. Seize the Crucible and proceed to destroy everything they have in space. Star bases. Shipyards. Every last damn satellite. Once we hold the orbitals, we will demand surrender.”
“And if they refuse?” The question came from General Laran, head of the Armor Corps.
“Intelligence is positive the Toth leading the Kesaht is a coward. He’ll accept any terms that don’t involve his death. President Garret wants the Kesaht out of our space and their threat over. Then we will take the battle to the Vishrakath. Make them pay for the lives lost on Novis.”
He touched the screen again and a list of the ships assembled to fight under his command replaced the Kesaht planet.
“Let me play devil’s advocate,” he said. “Yes, this is our entire reserve force. Yes, the Vishrakath are attacking Earth with mass drivers sent through off-set gates. But the Solar System’s defenses are holding. What happened to Iapetus—while tragic—was a fluke. We will smash the Kesaht before they and their allies know what’s hit them. We have the element of surprise; they have taken massive casualties in the past few weeks attempting to take our casualties. This is the turning point of the war, and we can end it with one swift stroke.”
Officers banged fists against chair arms and tabletops.
By the Saint, I hope I’m right, Lettow thought. We botch this and the war will be over…for us.
“If there are no questions, then return to your stations for final prep. Adversor et admorsus.” He ended with the Ardennes’s motto. Resist and bite.
Chapter 6
Bale stomped down the wide corridor of his star fort, the four legs of his tank moving like insect legs as they carried the gilded tank containing his nervous system. Toth warriors flanked him, each bearing a crystalline halberd in their reptilian hands.
Kesaht Risen, both Ixio and Sanheel, followed close behind, their hands carrying oversized data slates.
“Our offensive on Umbra has suffered a number of setbacks,” an Ixio said. “Remaining forces have shifted to hit-and-run attacks to harass the Terran devils still there, but the local weather patterns are causing—”
“The commander returned to us, did he not?” Bale asked.
“Yes,” a Sanheel grunted. “His mind is readapting to a new body. A few more days until he’s capable of answering questions. We do not recover from a Risen transfer as fast as our Ixio brothers. Earlier reports from Umbra mentioned a significant Terran Armor presence, though they’ve largely been absent from the battlefield in the past week.”
“Always their metal suits,” Bale said. “What of the improvements to our own countermeasures?”
“The installation of Rakka brains into combat armor has been…irksome,” an Ixio said. “They lack the coping skills to adapt to their new bodies. They revert to atavism, brutal insanity. Useful as little more than terror troops and a danger to our own forces when encountered after their release.”
“And the project to adapt the rest of the Kesaht members?” Bale’s neural tendrils poked at a Sanheel and an Ixio.
“Your glorious Risen technology will not integrate with the suits,” the Ixio said. “Any who make the transition to…your more glorious state of being…are cut off from immortality.”
“Criminals. Cowards. Find volunteers. The Rakka solution is unsatisfactory,” Bale said.
“My Lord.” A Sanheel worked his thick jowls nervously. “You promised Risen immortality to all of the Kesaht deemed worthy. Every soldier on the front lines fights for that honor. If we turn away some to the metal-clad, then it—”
“We’re still in the earliest iterations!” Bale’s tendrils squirmed. “All Sanheel—or Ixio, we should try them too—that have their brains installed into suits are still very much alive. We’ll find a solution to the current design flaws. Do you hear me complaining about being in this tank? No. It’s quite liberating. Get volunteers or make some. Status report tomorrow.”
“Yes, my Lord,” the Ixio said.
“The Council of Risen awaits you in the command deck,” the Sanheel said. “They have an update from our Vishrakath allies.”
“They can wait. I have another matter to attend to. Now go away.” Bale went to a lift door and shooed away the Ixio and Sanheel with his back leg. He took the elevator with his Toth warriors, a long trip that went the entire length of the star fort.
The doors opened to a vault, and Bale issued a bird call from his tank. A force field dropped and the vault door opened with a series of clanks as massive gears moved the two-yard-thick metal out of his way.
Bale went into a laboratory. Rows of liquid-filled tanks with frost-encrusted data lines that ran to the ceiling made up most of the lab. Dark figures floated within ruby-colored fluid. A work area with oversized desks and a cot was in the middle. A very tall green-skinned humanoid woman stood next to a gurney holding fully grown a man, almost child like compared to the alien next to him. His skin was alabaster, and thick blue veins stood out against his skin.
“Trinia…you’re too slow,” Bale said to the Aeon.
Trinia touched a finger to a sensor cupped in her palm and traced circles over the man’s bare chest.
“It takes nine days to grow these procedurals,” she said without looking at Bale. “You demanded them faster and you saw what happened. Cellular disintegration and subject loss. You wish to keep rushing me?”
“You’ve made little more than playthings for me and my soldiers.” Bale lifted a metal claw and nudged the man. He moaned an
d tried to sit up. Trinia pushed him back down and hit his neck with a hypo spray.
“I don’t want meat puppets. I want something that can be put to useful work. Something made to suffer,” Bale said.
Trinia glanced up at the ceiling.
“The bodies need the procedurally generated minds to go with them. You had the raw genetic ingredients from corpses and prisoners. You don’t have the memory generations software or databases. It took me decades to prepare all that with Marc Ibarra. I’ve managed to cobble together a framework that will result in something viable. Something for your…needs.”
“No, no.” Bale extended the feeder arm from beneath his tank, a bronze spike encrusted with old blood. The spike opened and a tiny tendril reached out to caress the man’s skull. “No, I won’t feed on these. All it takes is one mistake, yes? You upload a burning mind to the meat and I’ll end up like Doctor Mentiq, my brain exploding and lining the inside of my tank like paint. Not that you’d mind that, eh?”
“Then why do you want procedurals at all?” Trinia asked.
“Because soon you will perfect the process. Patience, yes? You will recreate the procedural framework to create functioning humans, all programmed to be my willing servants. Then they will have children, children not of shallow minds and weed bodies, but minds that I can savor.”
“Consuming one so young can’t be—”
“Patience! Their minds will ripen as they age. I fed from Mentiq’s human stock on Nibiru. Exquisite taste! Long-term planning, my dear Aeon. In the meantime, there are more than enough true born humans on Earth and their colonies to tide me over. Once the war against the Terran Union is won…what remains of the humans will exist solely to serve me and my appetite.”
“Then don’t rush me.” Trinia tossed her sensor onto a tray.
“But who says I have to wait so long for a taste?” Bale struck out with a leg and knocked over Trinia’s cot. A human girl squealed, her hiding place gone.
Bale grabbed the girl by the wrist and lifted her up. She sobbed, eyes squeezed shut.
“Stop, leave her alone!” Trinia reached for the girl, but a Toth warrior slapped the flat of his halberd against her chest and stopped her in her tracks.
“What do you call this vermin?” Bale poked the girl in the stomach with his feeder arm. “Such a mistake to get attached to meat. But the children look so much like juvenile Aeons, don’t they? Shall I sample the bounty you’re breeding for me?”
The feeder arm snapped open and the wire-thin tendrils grasped at the girl as she kicked at the air.
“Bale, I’m working as fast as I can,” Trinia pleaded. “Stop torturing her. It helps nothing!”
“Reminds you to keep at it, yes?” Bale dropped the girl and she curled into a ball, still sobbing. “Besides, too much stress ruins the taste. Best to eat when they’re willing meals.”
The Toth warrior snapped his halberd away and Trinia scooped the girl up and held her against her chest.
“Faster…Aeon,” Bale said. “Your work will satisfy me, or that thing against your breast will.”
Bale’s tank twisted around and he went back to the lift.
Trinia clutched the girl for several minutes more. She brushed blonde hair out of her face and smiled down at her teary eyes.
“He’s gone?” the girl asked.
“He’s gone.” Trinia nodded. “I can’t keep him away, little one. Remember what I told you? He’s only scaring you. He won’t ever hurt you.”
“He will!” She wiped a tattered sleeve across her eyes. “Once he has the proccies he wants, he won’t need you. Then he’ll-he’ll—”
“No.” Trinia smiled at her. “Bale is a monster. Evil. But he is no fool. I am too valuable to him to anger. And if he hurts you, then I will never rest until I can hurt him. He knows that.”
“So we just stay in this place?” The girl peeked over Trinia’s shoulder to the man on the gurney. “Stay here with the zombies?”
“Bale’s not the only person that knows I’m valuable.” Trinia sighed. “Someone will come for me. And when they do, you’ll come with me. Okay?”
“Will they come soon?” the girl, Maggie, asked.
“Maybe yes. Maybe no.” Trinia smiled slightly. “Back to our lessons, yes?”
“Will you teach me how to make an explody-mind?”
Trinia gave her a pat on the head.
“Not just yet, little one. Not just yet.”
Chapter 7
Roland tugged his cuff toward the raw, frost-burned flesh of his left hand as he made his way down the steps of the Warsaw’s briefing amphitheater. Staff officers and commanders from across the Ibarran fleet were already present, grouped together by ship. Legionnaires, hard-eyed and well-built men that stood half a head taller than everyone else—even out of their power armor—took up a back corner of the seats. Legion and Navy all kept their military bearing, but Roland could feel the nervous tension in the room.
Roland spied the glint of skull plugs through the crowd and caught a glimpse of white tabards down in the front rows. He hurried down the steps.
A one-star general with a gold cord wrapped beneath his right shoulder—one of Marshal Davoust’s senior staff—stepped to one side to let Roland pass. Roland nodded quickly, still unused to the amount of deference the Ibarrans gave to Armor. That the prevailing faith within the Ibarra Nation had a locus on Saint Kallen—and Armor as her de facto avatars—gave Roland his explanation, but what he’d just learned from Stacey had sown doubt in his heart.
Roland slipped into the seat at the end of a row next to Nicodemus. The older man glanced at a clock over an exit and then to Roland.
“Sorry, sir,” Roland said, tugging at his Templar tunic. “Got…delayed in the chapel.”
Just then, Admiral Makarov walked onto the briefing stage and spoke quickly with one of the officers tending to a holo table. She was young, in her early twenties, at odds with her senior rank.
Nicodemus raised an eyebrow at Roland.
“No, no, that’s not—” Roland held up his left hand and swiped it back to his waist when he realized what he’d done.
Nicodemus took Roland by the wrist, but Roland twisted it free and half turned away from his lance mate.
“It’s nothing,” Roland said.
“You wouldn’t hide ‘nothing.’” Nicodemus crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s wrong?”
Roland swallowed hard and looked back across the crowd. Nicodemus and the other armor present might—might—believe him. But the legionnaires and Navy present were almost certainly from the procedural tubes and hardwired to obey Stacey Ibarra no matter what her motives were…or her level of self-control.
“Nothing that will affect the mission, sir,” Roland said.
“You know where we’re going?” Nicodemus tilted his head toward Makarov.
“Why would—why would she tell me anything? I-I…” Roland yammered for a moment before Nicodemus put a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“You’re young. Ignorant in things you haven’t even considered,” Nicodemus said. “Even on an Ibarran ship, which is more regimented than anything I saw back in the Union, there’s scuttlebutt.”
“Scuttlebutt about what?” Roland looked to the stage and briefly locked eyes with Makarov. His cheeks flushed and he had to look down to examine his shoes.
“Boy-o still trying to play it cool?” Morrigan leaned over from beside Nicodemus, her long braid of red hair falling from her shoulder.
“He is,” Nicodemus rumbled.
“You two don’t—” Roland cut himself off. Morrigan had been engaged to her lance mate, Bassani, who died in battle. Nicodemus had married not long after the initial defection from the Union. Arguing with those two, each better versed in all things relationship, felt disrespectful.
“Tell you this,” Morrigan said, flipping her braid behind her head. “There’s always a war. There’s always a reason to say ‘no.’ There’s always an excuse to be alone…but you’ll
never get back the time you could’ve been together. Take it.”
Gripping his right hand over the fresh scar Stacey had given him, Roland said solemnly, “Who knows how much time any of us have.”
The lights in the auditorium brightened and then dimmed. The briefing was about to begin. Conversation died down and stragglers hurried to their seats.
“Is it Mars, Roland?” Morrigan asked. “Is it time to bring Saint Kallen’s bones home?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Roland shrugged.
Marshal Davoust walked onto the briefing stage and the room came to attention. Light shone off the man’s bald pate as he made his way to the holo table, clenching a baton in his hand and tapping it against his flank.
Davoust set the end of the baton into a port and twisted it to one side. The lights lowered to almost nothing and a holo screen appeared high over the table. The words TOP SECRET, bordered by yellow and black chevrons, flashed several times in the holo.
“Warriors of the Ibarra Nation,” Davoust began, “you are all now on commo lockdown. This mission comes direct from Lady Ibarra…who will be joining us.”
Roland’s hands clenched into fists.
The holo changed to a map of the galaxy. Pinpricks by the thousands peppered the stars—locations of Crucible gates—through a good three-quarters of the Milky Way. Roland knew almost all had been built by the xenocidal Xaros during their long purge through the galaxy. The aliens’ drones had massacred any sentient life encountered and built Crucible gates over habitable worlds, or worlds containing relics of already extinct races. Several dozen more appeared through the remainder of the galaxy, new gates built by the races that made up the old Qa’resh-led alliance against the Xaros.
The holo zoomed in toward a section of the Outer Arm, devoid of any Crucible gates for thousands of light-years.
“Our target is a planet designated Nekara.” Davoust removed his baton from the port and tapped the end cap against a screen. The holo closed in on a star and the orbits of several planets appeared, a target icon over the fourth ring. “All we have on the system’s composition is what we can pull from old light that’s reached Ibarran space. Much of the finer data is lost to nebulae between the galactic arm with Nekara and us. But we can deduce where the habitable zone is and, therefore, that is where we should start looking.”