Steel Sworn

by Richard Fox

  Grainy images of tall, dark figures with overlong arms and hunched shoulders atop a ridgeline popped up on Ely’s HUD.

  “Great. Ferals,” Lars said.

  “What’re those?” Ely asked.

  “The Kesaht tried to make their own Armor during the war. Didn’t work out how they planned, but they kept the units on ice. Now they dump them in no-man’s-land to scout around. They find us and go berserk, and that sends an alert to the Geist. Then here comes a shelling. Ferals surviving the strike isn’t so important.”

  Ely half looked over his shoulder, the urge to go back strong, but he kept rolling forward.

  “Just another day, kid. We’re not out here to pick a fight with them. We’re after something bigger. Do what you’re told and we’ll be out and back before you know it.”

  +Famous last words. See if we’ll be home by Christmas too.+

  Ely’s heart rate increased as the tunnel ramped up and he spied the end, a dark vault door with no light to welcome him.

  Chapter 9

  Ely knelt in the tunnel, his treads transformed back into legs, tight behind Pulaski and in front of Lars. Santos was at the vault door, gripping a handle with his helm angled down, like he was listening to something.

  “Run to my mark. Drop anchor. Let Aignar do the rest,” Ely said to himself. The lance channel was open, but he wasn’t broadcasting. “Run to my mark. Drop—”

  “Kid, stop talking to yourself,” Lars sent to him. “Or you going back and forth with that ghost of yours?”

  “How do you know I’m—”

  “I can still track your neural activity when you’re muted. You’re being repetitive, so I’m guessing you’re talking to yourself.”

  “Yes. Fine. I was. This is my first rail gun mission and the manual only has so much.”

  “You read the manuals. That’s adorable. We peel out and establish three-sixty security. Santos’ firing computer will feed you firing data. Drop anchor and hang on for the ride. Then we pop smoke and head back for pizza and beer.”

  “I’m not twenty-one yet. Well, by the calendar, I’m closer to—”

  +He doesn’t care.+

  “No one cares. Just do your part right and Pulaski won’t eat your face. Probably. He gets hungry after a mission.”

  “Steel Sworn…prep for go.” Santos twisted the handle and dust poured down the rim. Ely’s heart beat harder, pulsing in his temples. The captain thrust his arm out and threw open a hatch. The bright light of day broke down the tunnel and the four Armor rushed out.

  The sky was streaked with blowing dust, a gray sheen over the sun. Ely’s sabatons thumped in the loose sand, kicking up clouds with each heavy footfall. His firing position was almost two hundred yards away, a pulsing circle on the ground from his HUD. He focused on his position, pushing his Armor faster.

  “Alpha quadrant, clear,” Pulaski said.

  “Bravo, clear,” Lars added.

  Ely slid to a stop in the holo circle and looked around, confirming he was dead center of where he was supposed to be.

  “Charlie!” Santos shouted and Ely seized up. Looking up, he scanned the perimeter of the dried lake. Aignar cycled through optics and a small heat patch stood out to him.

  “Got an anomalous reading at eighty-six degrees…six hundred meters.” Ely pushed one heel into the ground, feeling the bedrock.

  “Delta, clear. Head on a swivel, everyone. Ready for targeting solution,” Santos said.

  Ely raised his foot and a diamond-tipped drill snapped out of his heel. He stomped hard and broke the slate of rock. The drill shrieked as it gouged out limestone and scattered hunks into the dirt around him, rattling his pod. Although the amniosis absorbed much of the motion, Ely still felt like he was in a never-ending tremor.

  +Good depth. Prep for anchor.+

  “No problem, this stuff is easy,” Ely said to Aignar, his teeth rattling.

  +Why did you say that?+

  “Anchor lock!” Santos announced. “Stand by for targeting data.”

  Ely’s drill seized up and an amber diagram of the spike extending from his heel came up on his HUD. “Aignar? Is this good news or bad?”

  +It’s OK. OK-ish. Lock in and the recoil probably won’t blow our legs off.+

  “That doesn’t sound ‘OK’ in my book.”

  “Ely! Lock in or relocate. We’re sitting ducks while our anchors are dropped,” Lars said over the lance net.

  “Locking!” Ely pushed his anchor lower and there was a jolt as stabilizing thorns snapped out of the spike and bit into the rock.

  The twin vanes of his rail gun shot up from his shoulder and hinged down with a snap. Electricity crackled between the vanes and he slapped the ammo box on his flank. Data scrolled down his HUD and the vanes tilted and adjusted erratically.

  +We’re slaved to Santos’ firing computer. Stand by to load.+

  Ely flicked a switch on the ammo box with his thumb and a silver bolt the size of a man’s arm rolled into his hand.

  “Why don’t I load now?”

  +Because if you have to unload, there’s a good chance the electrical discharge will fry circuits from your fingers up to your shoulder servos. You want to piss off Sugimoto? Because giving her unnecessary work will piss her off.+

  Ely gripped the bullet hard and stared down the holo line extending from the tip of his rail gun. His HUD zoomed in on the horizon of the inner moon. The sharp angle of a Geist pyramid ship was just visible from behind the moon.

  +This wind is throwing off my calculations. Then there’s the micro atmosphere on that moon…+

  “It makes that much of a difference?”

  +We’re trying to thread a needle and the eye is several hundred thousand kilometers away. No room for error.+

  “Show me the data.” Ely reached out and grabbed the air where the holo crunched information.

  “Solution locked,” Lars said.

  “Hold fire for convergence. We have to beat the shield harmonics.” Santos reached up to the breach of his rail gun and readied his round.

  Equations floated up his HUD. He highlighted several and tossed them to the top of his vision.

  “Locked,” said Lars.

  “Locked.” Pulaski tapped his round against his helm, then placed it over the breach.

  Ely pantomimed the Karigole, and the tingle of static energy grew between his fingers as movement along the side of the lake caught his attention. A guttural howl rose in the air and shadows loped toward him. Each was bigger than him and built like a metallic ape, eyes bright yellow, thick jaws snapping at the air.

  “Sir? Sir, they’re coming right for me.” Ely raised his gauss cannons.

  +No. Don’t shoot!+

  “Don’t shoot? What part of ‘coming right for—’”

  “Lance, load rails!” Santos ordered.

  Ely pressed his shell into the breach and bright-white trails of Jacob’s ladder meandered down the vanes.

  +You fire and it’ll spoil your anchor lock. Hold!+

  The biomechanical Rakka’s gallop turned into a sprint, closing even faster on Ely, an atavistic rage emanating from them.

  “But…but…” One of the equations in his HUD flashed red. Ely adjusted one of the fields and his rail gun juddered to one side. Aiming reticles from the other Armor flashed over the distant Geist ship.

  +What are you doing?+

  “They’re almost here!” Ely bent his gauss cannon arm up. The biomechanical nightmares were seconds away.

  “Lance…fire!”

  A tight magnetic field formed around the vanes and reality seemed to warp around the rail gun. The shell vanished, shooting off at an obscene velocity, shattering the sound barrier. The blast slammed out like a shotgun blast, scouring dirt off the lake bed and sending a hurricane of force into the Rakka.

  Recoil rocked Ely back. If he hadn’t been anchored, he would’ve gone flying. His arms windmilled and he fell back, catching himself before his vanes could strike the ground.

  A
dark shape came out of the dust cloud and hit the ground hard close to Ely, sliding to a stop next to him. The Rakka’s metal shell was crumpled, pale green blood oozing from the cracks. Its eyes flickered and went out.

  Ely pushed himself up to one knee, waves of blown dirt reverberating around him.

  “There were three. Right?” He straightened his cannon arm, searching for the threat he knew was still out there.

  “No effects on target yet,” Santos pushed out over radio, the dirt disrupting their infrared comms systems. “Stay anchored.”

  “Do what?!” Ely caught a shadow to one side and swung his gauss cannons over. A delirious mechanized Rakka stumbled around in the dust. Ely opened fire, striking the alien several times and blasting its head clean off its shoulders before a claw swiped down and knocked his aim away. Bullets exploded against the rock and splinters sparked against his Armor. A half-smashed face of a Rakka screamed at his optics, loose teeth flying from its bloody mouth.

  Ely reared his helm back and slammed his forehead into the alien’s crooked nose. He caught the Rakka by broken plates on its chest and held it as both barrels emptied. Blood and gore splattered out its back and it slumped against Ely’s arm, dead.

  “Did I—did I—”

  +I helped. Focus on the mission! Security. Check rail charge. Ready munition. There’s a checklist for a reason!+

  “Effects on target,” Santos announced, sending a picture of the distant pyramid ship, one corner torn away and trailing debris. “Raise anchor and prep to disengage.”

  “Alpha quadrant clear.” The diagram of Lars’s Armor blinked as he raised his anchor.

  “Bravo, clear.”

  Ely tried to raise his anchored leg, but it was stuck. He rotated his heel from side to side and tried to retract the spike, but it wouldn’t budge.

  +This suit’s old. The rail gun was calibrated for a larger, more massive suit.+

  “Does that help me get unstuck?”

  “Charlie!” Santos called out.

  Ely remembered his security duties and looked up. His scanners cut through the dust and a pair of target icons appeared over incoming Geist fighters.

  “Contact. Contact!” Ely fired his gauss cannons, but the fighters were coming in too fast to target them easily. White bolts spat from the fighters and battered the lake bed. Ely’s anchor suddenly released and he fell forward, dodging bolts.

  The lake exploded up into a fog of dirt and pulverized rocks. Ely was lost in the abyss, alone.

  Lars emerged from the gray and, grabbing Ely under one arm, got him to his feet. “You hit?” Lars asked, half-dragging, half-pulling Ely to the open hatch.

  “I don’t think so.” Ely reached up to his vanes. One was badly bent, the other broken. A small charge went off and his rail gun fell away.

  +Can’t retract them,+ Aignar said.

  Lars shoved Ely into the hole and he slid down.

  Pulaski and Santos were already at the bottom of the ramp. The Karigole’s Armor was scorched, ugly black craters still smoking. One arm ended at the elbow.

  Santos stood next to him, data lines connecting from his hand to the back of Pulaski’s helm.

  “Is he OK?” Ely asked.

  “I’ve got him stable…his amniosis temp spiked and almost cooked him.” Santos poked a recess on Pulaski’s legs and they folded out into treads.

  “I’ll live,” Pulaski said groggily, “no thanks to you…whelp.”

  “Slave off Lars and get out of here.” Santos transformed and rolled out, the Karigole right behind him. “Tunnel blows in two minutes.”

  “What? What did I do wrong?” Panic rose in Ely’s chest.

  “Move out.” Lars whacked Ely’s back and Ely brought out his treads and rumbled after his lance commander. “You were slow calling out the incoming air threat.” Anger tinged Lars’s words. “The rest of us didn’t have enough time to react. There’s a reason we have sectors, Ely. We have to trust that everyone’s watching their lane.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry. There were Rakka and then—”

  “Save it,” Lars cut him off. “Ask Aignar why he wasn’t kicking your ass the entire time to do the right thing.”

  “He did. He was trying, I mean. I screwed up. I screwed up bad,” he said.

  “Keep rolling.”

  They went the rest of the way in silence.

  Chapter 10

  Marc Ibarra studied the ground beneath his feet. He’d been walking without any progress for so long that twin grooves had formed. To move in this realm required no physical effort, and the Ambassador body he was accustomed to fueled itself on ambient heat. He was something akin to a perpetual-motion machine, and it didn’t matter to him that his Geist captors knew it.

  He hadn’t kept track of the time he’d spent walking toward the Ark, and it didn’t matter so much to him. This was where he was, and so long as he kept the Geist confounded as to where Malal was…he was winning.

  Ibarra lurched out of the depression he’d worn into the ground and stopped. The sky changed, melding from ugly gray to a vivid blue with high clouds. His surroundings shifted to towering crystal buildings.

  “You know this place?” Shannon asked from behind him.

  “I know of it…” Ibarra turned slowly. A steep drop marked the edge of the city, almost as if it floated in the air. “This is where the Xaros first set foot in our galaxy. Star on the far edge of the Perseus Arm. They set up the mother of all Crucible gates to connect to their Dyson sphere still in the intergalactic void.”

  “All true, but the Xaros aren’t what’s interesting about this place.” Shannon walked around him, her hands clasped behind her back. “This is the largest Qa’Resh artifact ever encountered, and it was lost. Planet destroyed to beat the Xaros. Too far from any other Crucible to reach with a jump. It would take centuries of star-hopping to finally reach this place just to sift through the ashes.”

  “Oh no…anyway…” Ibarra went to a pool where shards of crystal danced in the middle, the glinting glass circles a central axis that rose high into the air. “This where you’re going to stick me for the next while?”

  “After the Ember War, Ken Hale created the Pathfinder Corps,” Shannon said. “Their public-facing mission was to scout out potential colony worlds—First Contact, though that was rare, and the one verified instance ended in disaster for all parties. Search and rescue too. But their true purpose was to find Qa’Resh artifacts. You destroyed most of the Terran Union’s records when Earth fell to us, but we’ve put the pieces back together.”

  “Very clever of you,” Ibarra said with a smile.

  “But the Pathfinders were never concerned with contacting the Qa’Resh. The Union put no effort into maintaining relations with the Qa’Resh, Holy Malal’s exalted race. New Bastion? No mention of the Qa’Resh, except to entice species into participating in the League. It begs a number of questions, Marc. What happened to the Qa’Resh?”

  Shannon snapped her fingers and reality blinked.

  They stood on a wide dais of interlocking hexagons, a column of light surrounding them. Ibarra made out pods surrounding them, most just large enough to hold a few humans, some much larger, some smaller.

  “The original Bastion…I never made it here,” Ibarra said. Shadowy figures appeared in the pods and he felt more and more eyes on him. The Geist were watching.

  Shannon raised a hand and a crystalline entity with dozens of long tentacles hanging from a dome-shaped top floated into view.

  “Many believed this was the Qa’Resh,” Shannon said, “but this is wrong. These jellyfish-looking creatures were drones of a sort. The Qa’Resh rarely appeared on Bastion, and when they did, they were seen as the same race as those that looked upon them. An interesting trick of theirs, one to foster cooperation. All the Ambassadors had the same disguise. Stacey Ibarra only ever saw other ‘humans’ when she was here, unless she chose to see who they truly were.”

  “You ever seen a Gyrarta in person? Nothing but teeth and
eyeballs. Who needs that sort of nightmare fuel?” Ibarra asked.

  “But the Qa’Resh were here…” Shannon waved her hand and the crystal being faded away. “No further contact recorded after the Ember War. So where did they go? Why did they leave?”

  “What makes you think I know?” Ibarra raised an eyebrow.

  “Because you, your heretic granddaughter, and Ken Hale were all part of the Pathfinder Corps’ true mission to find Qa’Resh artifacts. You knew there was no reason to seek out the Qa’Resh…because you knew they were gone.” Shannon wagged a finger at him. “We have records from the Breitenfeld. We have testimony from the Ruhaald who fought there. We saw what happened on Sletari—Qa’Resh planetary defense systems used against the Xaros. This wasn’t something you or Stacey Ibarra could have managed. You had the most exalted Malal with you, or you had another Qa’Resh.”

  “That’s some conclusion. How many years of skull work did that take the Geist?”

  “Let’s stop insulting each other’s intelligence.” Shannon fumed for a moment. “The Ark appeared to the Geist on Nekara a little more than a million years ago. The holy relic went dormant not long after…which coincides with the last traces of light from the Xaros’ home galaxy arriving in the Milky Way. The Xaros annihilated their own galaxy when a jump engine tore a hole in the quantum fabric of reality. By accident, one assumes.”

  “Yes, go on,” Ibarra said and tapped a foot.

  “The Qa’Resh learn of a nearby galaxy being erased…naturally there’s some concern that whatever did it will reach the Milky Way. Within years all non-Qa’Resh advanced sentient life in the galaxy disappears…except for the Geist. The Geist who kept their faith in Malal’s promise of salvation and eternal life, all provided by his grace.”

  “Uh oh…there are some nagging questions, aren’t there?” Ibarra raised his arms. “A good number of conclusions to draw from the possible answers. Let’s start with this hypothesis: the Qa’Resh feared that total annihilation was coming for them, so they decided to jump ship and leave the Milky Way—maybe even our plane of existence—before it was too late, and the Qa’Resh just so happened to take most other sentient races with them. You with me?”