by Richard Fox
“Ships…moving through a construct in orbit,” the slim female said. “Their troops…smaller than the metal walkers…they are flesh and bone.”
“Then let us elevate one,” Pallax said. “The theosar will bring them to the Geist, then all will know everything. Dispose of the intruder.”
“Don’t deny me a toy. This Stacey…her construction is of Malal’s exalted people. Strange…” Seru leaned against a wall and the vines reshaped into a seat. She crossed her legs and tapped fingertips across her chest. “Harvest one of her flesh thralls. They may know something I can use to crack her mind.”
“Impetuous as ever,” Noyan said as she snapped her fingers and screens appeared over the walls, all showing the Ibarran troops arrayed around the Ark. “We had so much time to contemplate perfection and you’re still the same…These heretics are well armed. We need a prisoner, just one. If we push them, they may damage the temple—or harm the prophet in the holy of holies.”
“Then bring forth the scythes,” Pallax said. “We just need a head.”
“My theosar works best with living subjects, my darling.” Seru blew him a kiss. “Get me one to play with, won’t you, Noyan?”
“I shall.” Noyan turned a hand over and a shadow formed in her palm. “Ready the pilgrim fleet.”
“It will draw from the offerings,” Pallax said. “They still have ships in orbit. Let us lie in wait just a little bit longer. Who knows what they’ll bring back for us. This Aeon sounds interesting…”
“The scythes are difficult to control without the tamers…but I see your wisdom,” Noyan said. “Let the hunt begin.”
Chapter 14
President Garret’s hands kept trembling. He bit his lip and willed his digits to still, but they wiggled of their own accord these days. He gripped the edge of his coat, tempted to reach for the pills in a pocket, but he couldn’t do that just yet. Not in front of the war council.
A moon with a bulge around the equator hung in front of the Terran Union’s senior leadership. Plumes of dust rose from glowing craters along the bulge.
“The mass driver strike threw Iapetus off its axis,” General Kaufman said. “Every macro emplacement is off-line. We’re still trying to figure out how the Vishrakath got three warheads through our defenses. Current best guess is they stacked off-set jump points behind each other, staggered the munition velocity, and—”
“Rescue. The rescue efforts,” Garret said.
“Elements of 12th Fleet responded immediately. Titan station as well…three thousand seven hundred and twelve souls rescued…so far,” Kaufman said.
“There were over a quarter million on that moon.” Garret leaned against the holo rail and shook his head.
“It was a failure. No denying it.” Kaufman raised his chin slightly. “But it is the only successful mass driver strike the Vishrakath have had since they began bombardment nearly three weeks ago. We’ve integrated new artillery ships into the defense grid. Proximity warheads have a near perfect intercept rate and have reduced our volume of return fire by—”
“Does the public know yet?” Garret asked the lone civilian in the room.
Chambers, the head of Union Intelligence, tugged at her cuffs, a tell any intelligence professional should have been able to control.
“It’s slipped through the censor controls,” she said. “We delete any images that make it onto the net, but word of mouth isn’t something we can control. I suggest you make a formal address in the next three hours before the story blossoms into a full-blown panic.”
“You think it won’t?” Garret scratched his face and realized he hadn’t shaved in days. “Civilians think they can sleep safe in the bunkers. They see what one mass driver hit does and the illusion of safety will be gone. It’s one thing to hear about the kiloton effective yields the Vish rocks can drop on a city. Another thing to see it.”
“Then cancel the assault on Kesaht’ka,” Kaufman said. “Send that force to the Vish-held systems where they’re opening the offset wormholes and—”
“We’ve been over this!” Garret slammed a palm against the rail. His hand shifted back and forth, and he shoved it into his pants pocket. “We won the Ember War with a bold, decisive attack. It worked because the Xaros weren’t ready for us to show up on their doorstep. Same difference. The Kesaht don’t know we’ve got their home address. We’ll knock them out of this war. That’ll make the Vishrakath realize they’re about to face our entire might and they’ll fold. We push the Vish back and they’ll come at us even harder. Was I not clear?”
“Crystal, Mr. President,” Kaufman said. “The attack on Kesaht’ka continues, though the communications we’re getting aren’t responding to crypto challenges. Keeper thinks interference from—”
“I have a speech to write.” Garret tucked his other hand beneath his armpit and stormed out.
Chapter 15
Armor techs worked around Roland’s suit within the Warsaw’s cemetery as a robot arm hoisted a jet pack onto Roland’s back and the frame locked on with a snap of bolts.
Roland ran the pack’s integration sequence and monitored his HUD as his onboard systems meshed with the new addition.
“Attention on deck!” came from below the catwalk running parallel to his suit’s waist.
Roland made manual adjustments to the stabilizer gyros and a fuel nozzle connected beneath the left jet.
“Chief? I need my IR transmitter boosted. The Kesaht always scramble the atmos…Chief?” Roland leaned forward slightly, searching for his tech crew.
Admiral Makarov came down the catwalk, her hands clasped behind her back.
“I sent them away.” She stopped, facing to one side, not looking at Roland.
“I didn’t think I’d see you before we dropped,” he said. “We’re one gate—”
“I know damn well where I’m supposed to be, Roland. The admiral should be at the helm of her ship, readying a blind assault into a heavily fortified system that already chewed up the best fleet the Terran Union could muster. Yet here I am, down here with you…”
Roland paused the final steps of the jet pack’s installation and the cemetery went silent.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You,” she said as she turned to him and put her hands on the railing. “You come out of the Ark and tell us Lady Ibarra is trapped in some sort of Qa’resh technology. That Saint Kallen…” she paused and narrowed her eyes, “Saint Kallen appeared to you and the rest of your lance and ordered you to go and rescue the Aeon from the Kesaht. Or from the Terran Union. That’s what Saint Kallen told you?”
“That’s…how we understood it,” Roland said.
“Marshal Davoust had no problem with this?” Makarov flung a hand up next to her face. “Just send our warships away. Leave him and the Legions practically undefended while I take my fleet and my ships and my sailors into a warzone to carry out a mission given to us by a long-dead armor soldier.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “That sound about right to you, Roland?”
Roland nodded.
“And you’re—this doesn’t bother you?” Makarov’s jaw clenched.
“The mission isn’t the problem,” Roland said. “You took the Warsaw on a suicide run over Mars to save me and the rest of the Union’s prisoners. Long odds aren’t the problem. The problem is your doubt. You doubt what we’re supposed to do. That’s what’s driving you crazy.”
“Don’t think we’ve been together—dating, whatever it is we are—long enough for you to know me that well,” she said as she turned away.
“Am I wrong?” Roland asked.
Makarov rubbed her face.
“You’re not like the other commanders,” Roland said. “Lady Ibarra told me you were…different.”
“Different in that I somehow have decades of command experience up here,” she tapped the side of her head, “yet am barely out of my twenties. I don’t even know how old I actually am. Did I come out of the procedural tubes a week before we met? Year
s? Am I different in that I’m some sort of a contrived person?”
“You can question Lady Ibarra,” Roland said. “She…wanted you to be more independent than the others. You can doubt, and that freedom is what’s bothering you. We’re to save Lady Ibarra. No one else in the Nation will even blink at acting for her.”
Makarov let out a frustrated hiss and beat a fist against the railing.
“Do you know who inherits command of the Ibarra Nation if anything—God forbid—happens to her?” Makarov asked.
“Her grandfather…is out. Davoust?”
Makarov shook her head slowly.
“There’s Admiral…no. Wait. Really?”
“We begged her to generate a successor.” Makarov sighed. “Bring forth someone with her vision and her intelligence from the crèches…but she wouldn’t do it. The other flag officers didn’t press the issue, but I did. In private. That’s when she named me her successor. That decision makes more sense now. I was always the successor.”
“And now you’re at the head of a fleet on the way to the Kesaht home world—”
“I am not afraid! Lady Ibarra isn’t gone, is she? She can be saved?”
“If we rescue Trinia…”
“Put yourself in my place, Roland. As heir apparent, as the one who must lead our Nation if we lose our great Lady, as commander of this fleet…tell me what my doubts should be.”
Roland shifted within his armored womb. She could project gravitas when she needed to, even though he was the one in the giant suit.
“One with a history of conflicting loyalties comes out of the Ark, saying that Lady Ibarra is locked inside a Qa’resh machine, revealing that Saint Kallen has shared visions with Armor, and now she wants us to save an alien scientist and the Terran Union forces on the Kesaht home world. That—”
“Not just any Union force,” Makarov interrupted, brandishing a finger at him. “Your old lance. Your old commander, the one named Gideon. The same one that killed Ibarran Armor on Nunavik and tried to murder Lady Ibarra. Do you see the issue, Roland?”
“You fear I’m just trying to save my former companions. That I’m trying to put the Nation into the middle of the fight against the Kesaht, the alliance the Union wanted from Lady Ibarra. That I’m still loyal to the Union.”
Makarov’s eyes softened and her lips pressed into a white line.
“You have your doubts about Lady Ibarra,” she said quietly. “I know you do. This is your chance to call the whole thing off. Save Ibarran lives. We don’t need the Ark to survive, Roland, but if we charge into a massacre, the Nation may not recover. It’s…”
She put a hand to her chest.
“I wish I was like the others—no conflict, purity of intention. But my command instincts tell me one thing: these blasted…emotions are tearing me apart,” she said. “Just tell me the truth. Are we going to save Lady Ibarra, or is this a trick? I don’t believe you’re so selfish or manipulative as to…but I have responsibilities. For our Nation. For us all.”
Roland reached a huge hand to her, the whirl of gyros the only sound in the cemetery. He turned his palm up and stopped a foot from her chest. Makarov put a hand on his metal finger.
“We will save her,” Roland said. “Lady Ibarra…her ends are just. Her life is worth far more than mine. By my Armor and my honor, I swear I am true to the Nation. True to the Templar. True to all of humanity. This fight is a long shot, but we need to take it. Better to try to win it all than hesitate and lose everything.”
“L’audace, et toujours l’audace,” Makarov said.
“I don’t speak Basque, Ivana.”
“‘Audacity. Always audacity.’ It’s French, you knuckle-dragger. You still have my favor? My mother’s rank…the only tangible thing I have from her?”
Roland tapped his breastplate. He had the bit of cloth inside his skin suit. Regulations be damned.
“Why did I work myself into knots over this? Are you really going to engineer a betrayal of our Lady, me, the Nation…while you’ve got a momento mori to our parents? If you’re that evil, then what hope does the Lady have?”
Roland ached to tell her the truth about the visions, unsure if that would help convince Makarov…or anger her because he’d withheld that truth.
“It must be hard to trust me. I’ve been on both sides of the battle,” he said.
“The insignia on your armor doesn’t make you who you are,” she said. “You bring Lady Ibarra back to us, you understand? I don’t think I’m ready to lead the whole thing. Being a fleet commander is hard enough.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Roland said, tilting his helm slightly.
The screen on her forearm buzzed and she ran her hands over her lightly armored vac suit, checking seals, and then removed her helmet from her hip.
“The Keystone’s ready for us. We’ve got a few jumps before we arrive in the Kesaht system. Once we get there, I’ll do my best to convince any Union force that we’re there to help. Still…they may not be happy to see us—you in particular.”
“Enemy-of-my-enemy sort of thing,” Roland said. “I hope.”
“I don’t have time for hope.” She locked her helmet on and it hissed as the suit pressurized. “I come to battle with guns for the Kesaht and a ticket off that planet. The Union wants to play stupid, I’ll leave them to their own devices. Good hunting, Roland.”
“And you, Ivana.”
Makarov touched her fingertips to her visor and blew him a kiss.
Roland felt a warmth in his chest as she left, one that replaced the nagging dread he’d had since he left Stacey in the Ark.
Chapter 16
Santos checked his battery charge for the dozenth time: still near a hundred percent full. Made sense, as he’d hot-swapped for a fresh stack just before he and the rest of the Armor had set out from Gold Beach.
He sat against a wall, Mauser rifle clutched in his hands. Even in his suit, he felt fatigue in his limbs. A data packet pinged on his HUD, and he opened a new operations overlay.
Simple enough: he would still take up rail-gun firing positions just outside a wide empty zone surrounding Hegemony City. A pic of a shield generator built into the lower edge of the dome flashed, and he acknowledged that he had his target identified.
A team of Pathfinders rushed past him, their image wavering as their cloaks struggled to compensate for the rapid movement.
“Irks me to have crunchies out ahead of us,” Aignar said.
“I thought Pathfinders loved this sort of thing,” Santos said. “Being the eyes and ears of the main force. Not like we’re going to sneak up.”
“There were nine Pathfinders when we left Gold,” Aignar said. “Six just went by.”
“Can we hurry up already?” He looked to one side, where Gideon and Laran were in consultation with each other.
“Santos, you have the easiest assignment,” Cha’ril said. “Point and shoot. Your target isn’t even moving. The rest of us will keep any enemy from bothering you.”
“Any easier and we’d have to write it out for you in crayon,” Aignar said.
“And I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Santos muttered. “I just…I’m ready to go!”
“This is a shoestring tackle of an operation, kid,” Aignar said. “We’re not getting a second chance at this.”
“I am Armor,” Santos said. “I am fury. I will not fail.”
“Better not,” Cha’ril said. “You screw up and one of us will have to drop anchor and fire. We don’t have the batteries for a shot and a long fight. You do. Lances behind us will take care of the Risen building.”
“Get set,” Gideon said. “Friendly force tracker pulse coming.”
Infrared relays built into the lances’ suits and the power-armored Rangers and Strike Marines sent location data across the web formed by their IR comms.
Santos swallowed hard as he realized just how many warriors were taking part in this assault. Thousands of individual soldiers and a few dozen Armor. If this was
enough to bring the Kesaht to heel, then it would be a battle to be remembered long after Santos was gone.
Dad said he never got nervous before a fight, he thought. I’m starting to think he’s a damn liar.
“Hold up,” Gideon said. “Waiting for Strike Marine snipers to get into over watch.”
“Them and their pea shooters,” Santos said. “Tiny little rail guns compared to what we’ve got.”
“You want me to tell that to the sniper watching over you?” Aignar asked.
“No. No we need to be nice to the crunchies,” Santos said.
Laran looked to the horizon then waved at Gideon. A wide comet tail broke against the sunset.
“Go. Go!” she shouted.
“What about the—” Santos didn’t have a chance to finish before Gideon grabbed him beneath the arms and hauled him to his feet. Santos got his legs moving, barreling forward at a sprint, his boot heels cracking pavement with each strike.
“A Kesaht battleship broke through our fleet,” Gideon said. “Get fire on the dome, and bring the shields down before the ship can hit us from low orbit.”
“Can’t be accurate from that range.” Santos scanned the ground ahead at the firing point, looking for a place to drop anchor. “They miss and—”
“They could hit the unshielded city!” Cha’ril shouted. “Which is why we need the shields down now. Stop thinking and start functioning!”
Santos slid to a stop and pressed his left heel against the road. A diamond-tipped spike snapped from the housing in his foot and punctured the concrete. The drill in his leg bore down, sending loose rock spraying through the light coating of dirt across the road.
“Ah…crap!” He picked up his anchor foot and retracted the drill. “Hit a void. Relocating.” He looked around and ran toward a building, knocking the wall and roof aside with wide sweeps of his Mauser heavy rifle. He checked that he had line of sight on the distant dome.
The city was atop a slight rise, a dead zone of cleared buildings a few blocks from where he was all the way to a several-story-tall wall that made up the edge of the city. The thought of crossing that kill zone while under fire felt daunting. But he had his Armor and his rail gun to put things in his favor.