by Richard Fox
The crewman went red, then mumbled and turned away.
Roland stood and looked over the wounded, the children, Trinia…and the Iron Dragoons.
“Nicodemus…you read me?” he asked through their quantum-dot communicators.
“I have you. All birds are skyborne…but don’t celebrate yet,” Nicodemus said.
“We’ve done our part.” He cut the channel. “Hoffman! Put your Marines in the turrets!”
“Fun’s not over!” said a Marine with dressings over half his face and a splinted leg as he tried to get up. A gunnery sergeant sat him back down with a single hand and a flurry of expletives.
The deck tilted from side to side and the afterburners kicked on.
“That you, Roland?” a mechanical voice said from next to his feet. Aignar sat up, the stumps of his arms buried in a foil blanket.
“You look like hell,” Roland said as he went to one knee next to his old lance mate. Aignar’s blue eyes, one badly bloodshot, locked with Roland’s optics.
“Worse than the last time you saw me.” The cloth over his missing lower jaw flapped in the irregular air currents. “You seem to be doing all right.”
“What are you doing?” A Strike Marine medic put her hand on the small of Aignar’s back, then tried to lower him with a push to his shoulder.
“You want me to talk or not, Booker? Damn jarheads and their asshole ways,” Aignar said.
“Call me an asshole again and I’ll remember that.” She wagged a finger at him. “You start choking on your own saliva, I’ll still save you—just don’t expect my normal smiling bedside manner.”
“Roland, tell her how much of a beast I am in my armor,” Aignar said. “She’s bold because I don’t have my hands and feet with me.”
“Maybe you are fine.” Booker shrugged and left.
“I think she likes me,” Aignar said.
Santos came over, walking slowly to keep the ship from rocking.
“New guy, Roland. Roland, new guy,” Aignar said.
“Wait…Roland? Roland?” Santos said. “I thought the captain…acted that way because you were Ibarran. I didn’t know you were…you.”
“He’s better in a fight than you are,” Aignar said. “And he’s stuck with us through thick and thin.”
“Good to meet you,” Roland said, ignoring the barb from Aignar.
Santos offered a hand toward Roland, then snapped his hand shut and lowered it quickly. He turned his helm back to Gideon and Cha’ril, both on the other end of the cargo bay with Trinia.
“I should go,” Santos said. “You okay, old man?”
“If I had fingers, I’d show you one in particular,” Aignar said.
“He’s fine,” Roland said. Santos turned his back to his captain, mimed a fist to chest salute without striking his armor, and went away.
“Good kid,” Aignar said. “Reminds me of someone.”
“We didn’t part on the best of terms,” Roland said, knowing he was sugarcoating their last encounter. Roland had escaped from a Union prison on Mars, but not before Aignar had tried to talk him out of defecting to the Ibarrans. They’d come to blows, and Roland had left his old friend on the floor, his prosthetic arms broken and his metal jaw knocked loose.
Aignar made a grunting noise that Roland assumed was a laugh.
“You did what you had to,” Aignar said. “I should’ve just let you go. You’re a man. You’re responsible for your own damn self.”
“I’m sorry for what I did to you,” Roland said. “You…deserved better from me.”
“Well, you’re getting me home to my son, aren’t you?”
“In a roundabout way,” Roland said. “Got to take care of something first. Gideon…how is he?”
“He hates you. More than you can imagine. You’re lucky this bird’s full of wounded and a child. Otherwise, he’d be going for round two. Don’t pick a fight with him. Cha’ril, new guy, and I…we won’t be on your side.”
“We need each other for a bit longer,” Roland said. “Maybe after that—”
“No,” Aignar snapped, the speaker in his throat cracking. “You’ve got a life out there with the Ibarrans. The only thing Gideon has is his duty and this gap where you, Morrigan, and that Nicodemus guy ripped out a piece of his heart. He’s my commander. You…were my friend. Don’t think he’ll ever forgive and forget. You understand?”
“Why the warning?”
“Again, you’re getting me back to my son. That’s worth something.”
“Later…if we ever come across each other on the battlefield in armor…will we come to blows?”
“Get me home and we’re square, Ibarran. If there’s war after that…then there’s war.”
“Fair enough,” Roland said.
“New guy said he had a vision from Saint Kallen,” Aignar said, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Some of the other Armor did too. But not Gideon. Not Cha’ril. Not me. You know anything about that?”
“Did it come after you were cracked out of your pod?”
“How’d you know?”
“Then you might have seen it,” Roland said. Concealing the truth from Aignar didn’t bother him nearly as much as it did with Makarov. “Saint Kallen does as she will.”
“Her shrine’s still on Mars,” Aignar said. “Sealed. Unguarded. Doesn’t feel right to do that…almost disrespectful.”
“Get som rest, old man.”
Trinia tapped Roland’s shoulder. “You have much to tell me,” she said.
“Indeed. I need a slate so I can show you video of—”
Trinia held up a Strike Marine gauntlet.
“I need that back!” called out the wounded Marine with the bandages over his face.
A data port popped open on Roland’s arm.
Chapter 25
The Vishrakath hive ship was a massive asteroid, engines built into the aft section burned low, keeping the ship between Mars and Earth. Energy cannons flared to life and sent out a rain of pale yellow bolts from one half of the ship. The fire joined with other alien ships, inundating a section of space as a macro cannon shell shot from the red planet, running the gauntlet of fire from the alien fleet.
A bolt clipped the shell and it exploded into fragments, hurtling for eternity through the void.
The energy cannons fell silent, the barrels poking up from ancient craters glowing faintly with heat.
Over Mars, the Crucible gate’s basalt thorns shifted against each other and a white disk formed at the center of the ring. Another disk appeared a few hundred yards off the hive ship’s port side, opposite the just active energy cannons.
The Yalta burst out of the wormhole and opened fire a split second later. Rail cannons blasted hypervelocity shells into the hive ship’s rocky exterior, blowing away new craters and exposing the inn hull built into the asteroid. By the time the Yalta cleared the aft end of the ship, the rail cannons had reloaded and fired on the alien’s engine works. Cowlings the size of apartment buildings were shot off and went spinning into space. An engine core overloaded, blowing out the rear of the ship and sending a loose hunk of rock toward the Yalta.
The battleship angled away from the debris, and a cliff face spun past the bridge, missing it by tens of meters.
An Ibarran cruiser following the Yalta took the full brunt of the rock and broke apart on impact.
Ibarran rail gun pummeled the exposed inner hull as they came barreling out of the wormhole. The hive ship tried to roll and move the chink in its armor out of the line of fire, but the loss of the engines sapped its maneuverability.
The last ship in the long line of the Ibarran fleet, the Stolzoff, fired its rail cannons at once and pierced the inner hull. Explosions burst from the ship’s weapon emplacements and smoke and atmosphere bled out through the ruptures.
The Yalta canted on its long axis and brought dorsal and ventral guns to bear on a Vishrakath carrier that was little more than a mobile asteroid run through with fighter and bomber bays. The carrier collapsed u
nder sustained rail cannon fire, ripping apart like a dandelion in a gale.
On the bridge, Valdar tapped out priority targets for the fleet.
“Good shooting, guns,” Valdar said. “Ignore the support vessels, hit the ships of the line before they have a chance to—”
Light burst through the bridge windows and the ship lurched forward.
“Think they realize we’re here,” Marc said, still in unmarked legionnaire armor.
“If you don’t have anything useful to add, then shut up.” Valdar checked a damage report and cursed. “Zahar! Load porcupine rounds and saturate fire around the next Vish carrier. They’ve likely launched their ready fighters.”
He didn’t wait for a response as damage reports came in. The Vishrakath had been surprised and had lost their hive ship, but their off-the-cuff response to the sudden attack had scored several hits on his fleet.
“Three destroyers lost…cruiser Mohsin lost engines.” Valdar rubbed the back of his gloved knuckles against the chin of his helmet. He smiled as his small squadron of artillery ships—each more rail cannon than hull—annihilated distant targets quickly and methodically.
It took another ten minutes before the remaining Vishrakath ships broke and ran.
“Hail from Mars.” Marc touched a screen and made a tossing motion toward Valdar.
A harried woman with thick glasses stared wide-eyed at Valdar.
“Ibarrans? Over my planet?” she asked.
“It’s Mable, isn’t it?” Valdar asked.
“Wait…you? I thought—you know what? I can figure it out later,” she said. “Right now, I need your ships to clear out the Vish in geosynch orbit over Mount Olympus.”
Valdar reached into the holo tank and pulled Mars closer to him. Red enemy icons around the planet began shifting.
“Negative,” he said. “There’s a Vish fleet of corvette analogs coming up my wake and—”
“There are ten mass drivers closing on Phoenix,” Mable said. “I need the macros on Olympus cleared to fire or those shells will get past the final interception line.”
“Once I gain void supremacy—”
“Phoenix, Valdar!” She slapped her camera, jostling her image. “I already had to choose between Baltimore and Oslo today. Lucky shot from a battleship took out the rock, saved the crab cake capital of the world and saved me a lot of grief. But the alien assholes just loosed ten rocks at Phoenix. We can’t lose that city.”
Valdar ran a time plot to the Vishrakath force holding over Olympus. A force half again as large as the one his fleet had just demolished.
“It’ll be bloody,” Valdar said.
“I’ll help. Just get their cannons oriented off my guns and we’ll play the old hammer and anvil game. Wait…where’s the Breitenfeld?” she asked.
“Long story. I don’t know how it ends. We’re moving at best speed to engage the force over Olympus. Valdar out.” He sent commands to the rest of the fleet and felt the deck rumble beneath his feet as the engines maxed out.
“Admiral.” Zahar hurried over to the holo table. “The Mohsin can’t keep up at this speed. She’ll fall behind.”
“And the Vish corvettes will overtake her. I know, captain.”
“Even if the crew abandons ship, the Vishrakath fire on escape pods.” Zahar bit his bottom lip and looked to Marc, a plea on his face.
“If we hold back for the Mohsin, Phoenix and the tens of millions there will be lost,” Valdar said. “Do you have a solution?”
“Ibarran lives for Terran…no, no, Admiral, I don’t. Forgive me for questioning you.” Zahar turned away, his head low.
“You could’ve jumped in, ‘my Lady,’” Valdar said.
“And undercut your command authority?” Marc asked. “Besides, I may not have a heart anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathize with him. Union dogs ordered every Ibarran like him killed if captured. Resentment is a bit warranted.”
“If the Union keeps that bull up after all this,” Valdar said, “I’ll defect for real.” He rubbed his thumbs against the side of his fists and opened a channel to the Mohsin.
“I hate this part,” Valdar said just before the captain of the stricken ship came up in the tank.
Chapter 26
The Destrier’s cargo bay was empty of the wounded and children, and ten armor faced off against each other: five Ibarran Templars—Roland, Nicodemus, and three Nisei—across from the Iron Dragoons and two others rescued off of Kesaht’ka.
Trinia worked between the two groups, welding together a device from several open crates of parts. She moved uncomfortably in a bespoke vacuum suit made by the Midway’s foundry.
The ship rumbled through turbulence and the Aeon clicked her tongue in annoyance. Neither side of armor moved.
“This is fun,” Roland said to the other Templar through a private channel.
“None of us can blink,” said Araki of the Nisei.
“No contact with the ground elements,” Nicodemus said. “Best tactical decision is to come in with as much firepower as one ship can carry. The only way Trinia could get Gideon to cooperate was if the security detail was even. I don’t like it either.”
“If this wasn’t for the Lady,” Umezu, another Nisei, said, “they could sit and spin back on the Breitenfeld with the rest of the Union crunchies. For all I care.”
“It is for the Lady,” Nicodemus said, “and we are Templar. Honor and duty are our watchwords. We can assume the Union will be professionals.”
Roland opened a channel to his lance mate.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Nicodemus said. “‘Assumptions are the mother of all screwups.’”
“It’s Gideon I don’t trust,” Roland said. “If he’s waiting for the chance to deal a mortal wound to the Nation, we’re giving him the perfect opportunity.”
“The Warsaw has a hull full of his people. What does he think would happen to them if he goes astray?” Nicodemus asked.
“That we’d void them all. Which we wouldn’t. Makarov wouldn’t.”
“But that’s not what he thinks,” Nicodemus said.
“We can’t let Lady Ibarra’s safety hinge on what we think Gideon is thinking. I want to beat myself up just for saying that.” Roland cringed within his pod.
“Is Gideon an honorable man?”
“That…there’s no doubt there. Stabbing people in the back isn’t his style.”
“Then we must believe he is true,” Nicodemus said. “But don’t take your eyes off him. Ever.”
“Agreed.”
****
Gideon seethed as he looked from Roland to Nicodemus. The two bore the Templar cross so prominently on their armor, bragging about their treason, practically rubbing his nose in their new loyalty.
He pulled his arms and legs close to his body within his womb, wishing for a chance to lash out. To hurt something.
“Sir?” Cha’ril asked over the Union Armor’s channel. “We’ve crossed into the planet’s atmosphere. Nekara, they call it. I’m not picking up any IR traffic, but they haven’t let us into their wider net.”
“I can try to splice in,” Santos said. “Our sensors can pick up atmo scatter from even short-range IR. Our tech is almost the same and—”
“Don’t,” Gideon said, forcing his muscles to relax. “Don’t assume they’re amateurs or fools. You stick your hand in the cookie jar, they’ll cut it off.”
A panel opened up on Cha’ril’s shoulder. A data flex-line snaked out and reached to the matching port on Gideon’s pauldron. Gideon accepted the suit-to-suit hardline connection.
“They can see us,” Gideon said.
“Let them,” the Dotari said. “They won’t give us complete transparency, we’ll return the favor. What’s our plan, sir? What are we doing?”
“I’m getting us all home. The survivors are all aboard the Breitenfeld and other Ibarran ships. We’re not going back to Earth just yet. I still don’t exactly understand what they need Trinia for.”
“Sir…it’s me. I don’t trust the Ibarrams. They almost killed my joined when Roland escaped. I was pregnant. The thought that I’d lost him was…But they betrayed the Union. The Union that saved my people from Takeni, that gave us a home on Earth and then returned us all to Dotari. Then the Breitenfeld found a cure to the phage killing my people, and the Ibarrans stole that ship from you. And from us. We are a spacefaring culture. To steal a ship with such a history…disgraceful. And if I don’t trust the Ibarrans. I know that you don’t trust the Ibarrans.”
Blood rushed to his cheeks and adrenaline dumped into his system as he thought of fighting with Cha’ril against the traitors. He worked his jaw from side to side, frustrated as he worked out the second- and third-order effects of her attacking the Ibarrans.
She was Dotari, and the traitors could assign blame to her entire race if she joined him in an assault. Some of assault force had survived the operation on Kesaht’ka, but Earth’s combined fleet was spent. There weren’t enough ships to defend the colonies…or the Dotari, who numbered barely over a million. Earth couldn’t protect itself and its main ally if the Ibarrans came looking for retribution.
No…no, Cha’ril couldn’t join him. The act of a lone soldier was just that. A hint of coordination or conspiracy would be enough reason to strike back at the weakened Earth and her allies.
“We keep the Aeon safe,” Gideon said to Cha’ril. “Bring her back to Earth and keep her out of the Ibarrans’ hands. You saw what the Toth made her do. If the traitors can exploit that knowledge, then—”
“Abominations,” Cha’ril said. “Such things should never be.”
“And that’s why she must come back with us,” Gideon said. “Earth abandoned the procedurals. We’ll never go back to it.”
“And if the Ibarrans demand the Aeon?”
Gideon’s Armor clenched its fists. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Cha’ril was quiet for a moment. “As you say, sir. Say the word and it shall be done.”
“You’re a good soldier, Cha’ril. The legacy of Caas and An’ri live on with you.”