by Richard Fox
Roland was gone. Aignar’s faith in the Templar faded faster the more he thought about Nicodemus and the armor that rebelled with the Ibarras…and he was out of his armor. He leaned his head back against the bulkhead while his fingers tapped against each other.
Chapter 3
The clang of a metal door woke Roland from sleep. He shot up in bed and set his feet to the floor as a pair of beefy guards came through the open vault door, both in light power armor. The one in front carried a nightstick that crackled as he moved. The other held a tray of food. Both were baby-faced and thick-necked. Neither looked happy to see Roland.
The privacy screen around Ibarra’s cell was still up.
The first guard rapped his nightstick against the bars and the static electricity snapped in the air. He pointed the tip at Roland.
“The prisoner will move to the rear of the cell. Face the wall. Go to his knees and interlace fingers behind his head.”
“And if I don’t?” Roland asked.
“Then you don’t eat,” the second guard said as he raised the tray slightly.
The rumble in Roland’s stomach was motivation enough to comply. He got up slowly and shuffled toward the back of the cell. It would take time to learn the guards’ routine, to spot errors that he could exploit. Just because he was outside his armor didn’t mean he was done fighting.
He went to his knees and loosely laced his fingers together. He heard the cell door swing open, then two thumps on his bed. The door slammed shut.
“The prisoner will have thirty minutes to eat. Leave the tray to the left of the doorway and be prepared to repeat this process when we return,” the first guard said.
Roland got back to his feet.
“Prisoners of war have rights,” he said. “Does Earth know I’m alive? What happened to the rest of my lance on Oricon?”
The first guard rattled the cell door, then stepped back.
“We don’t know any of that, sir,” the second guard said. “We’re told to feed you three times a day and see to your needs. You step out of line and we’re authorized to treat you like any other inmate.”
The guard with the nightstick slapped it against his gloved palm, and electricity arced down his fingers. Roland wasn’t sure what that would do to the cybernetics in his skull and spine, but the effect wouldn’t be pleasant.
“Who told you this?” Roland asked.
“Thirty minutes,” the first guard said. “Fail to comply, and the prisoner will be on paste and water until he complies with instructions.”
The guards left. The vault door slammed behind them and the whir of pistons groaned through the metal.
On his bunk was a bottle of water, a plate of macaroni and cheese, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and two cut-up hot dogs. The utensils were light, made of pressed pulp and shrink-wrapped, useless as weapons.
Roland took a bite of the undercooked pasta and gritty cheese sauce. The quality was a few tiers below what he was used to in the army, and almost as bad as what he had at the orphanage, but it still tasted great. Hunger proved to be the best sauce.
“How is it?” Ibarra asked.
Where the metal man leaned against his cell bars, frost grew slowly around the metal. The privacy screen had come down as silently as it had gone up.
“They don’t feed you?” Roland took a sniff of the stale sandwich and dipped a corner into the cheese goo.
“I don’t eat,” Ibarra said. “My body runs off ambient heat. Don’t drink or sleep either. Who were the guards? Pair of big dummies with no necks?”
Roland nodded quickly and kept eating.
“Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Asshole,” Ibarra said. “I had a number of other affectionate terms for them…then they stopped coming in to check on me.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Roland deadpanned.
“Ha ha. Look who has jokes.” Ibarra pointed to the ceiling. “I guess there are a few topics that are off-limits. That’s why they cut me off. Tell me, did the baseball league ever get up and running?”
“Baseball?” Roland wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
“Sticks, bats,” Ibarra said, tossing an imaginary ball up and then swinging at it. “America’s pastime. Far superior sport than football—American and European. Do you know how much money I spent on stadiums and teams across the solar system?”
“Oh, that. President Garret threw out a first pitch a few years back at MacDougal Stadium. I never had money to go to a game. Could never find the live games online. Never got into it.”
“Ha! Blackout days still work. Your father never took you to a game?”
“He died with 8th Fleet deep in the void. Mom was on Luna when the Xaros smashed it. I was just a kid.”
Ibarra looked away. “Sorry to hear that. I remember when Luna fell. Those were some dark days. You wouldn’t believe how close we came to losing it all.”
“I grew up hearing about you, even before the war with the Xaros. Your name was on everything. Then came the war and you were still all over the place, even though you were just a hologram. Couple kids at school thought you weren’t real at all, that you were some sort of fake that Qa’Resh probe made to control all of us.”
“Jimmy was talented in many things,” Ibarra said. “Acting like a human being was not one of them. Even after all those years working with him, he could impersonate me about as well as you could infiltrate a flock of geese.”
“The Qa’Resh probe was named ‘Jimmy’?”
“He had a quantum-state designation—the Qa’Resh were like that—which was a pain in the ass to say, so I called him Jimmy. Sue me. You want to meet him?” Ibarra went to his desk and opened the drawer. He removed a needle of glass that caught the light.
“It was…over a hundred years ago that he plopped down in the Arizona desert and gave me a call. His spark went out after the war, but I kept him around. Hard to imagine being without him. That Stacey let me keep him tells me there’s hope I might get out of here someday. Otherwise she’d have me at the engineer center being worked on to find out just how indestructible this body is or isn’t. She let you keep something too, I see.”
Ibarra set the needle in his palm and rolled it from side to side.
Roland looked down at his plate and frowned.
“Let me keep what?” the armor soldier asked.
“What’s under your pillow.”
Roland lifted up the corner of his threadbare pillow and found a small book. Strips of green tape reinforced the cover and masked the title. He opened it up and found it was a Templar study book—pages of prayers, instructions for wearing the cross, and handwritten annotations in the margins of the text. He flipped to the front page and at the bottom was written PROPERTY B.B.
“This isn’t mine,” Roland said. “I have one just like it, though.”
Ibarra peered at the pages.
“You’re a Templar?” he asked.
“I’ve not stood the vigil, but I’ve pledged myself to the order. Is it true that all the armor that left with you were Templars?” Roland asked.
“It is,” Ibarra said, glancing up at the ceiling, as if that admission would get the privacy screens turned back on. “Convincing Hurson’s squadron to come with us wasn’t too difficult. As I’m sure you understand.”
“No, actually, I don’t understand.” Roland took a bite of his sandwich and chewed slowly, forcing Ibarra to wait. “Templar swear to defend Earth. To sacrifice for the good of all, to live up to Saint Kallen’s legacy, and be the iron that strengthens the hearts of others. We don’t take off with a traitor that didn’t get his way with a treaty.”
“The original oath was to defend humanity, not Earth,” Ibarra said.
“Wrong. I have to memorize all this before I can stand the vigil. I’ll show you…page thirty-seven.” Roland flipped pages and cleared his throat. “For I swear on my honor and my life that to serve humani—wait.” He frowned and went back to the beginning of the book. “This was published ten years ago�
�”
“We didn’t leave Earth because we were throwing a tantrum over the Hale Treaty,” Ibarra said. “We left to save Earth. To keep our deadliest weapon from being tossed aside to please an enemy that never truly wanted peace. There were some in the Armor Corps that understood this and some that didn’t.”
“What about the civilian transport ship High Command said you destroyed, the Hiawatha? You were about to be indicted for murder. That seems like a better reason to run off than what you’re going on about,” Roland said.
“The Hiawatha?” Ibarra frowned, then recognition filled his face. “That? They tried to pin that on me? President Garret had all the details about that little blip right after it happened. He was all for it after I told him. I do him a favor and give him plausible deniability in case of blowback and what does he do? Hangs that albatross around my neck after I’m gone. That bastard.”
“So you did blow up that ship and kill all those people?”
“It’s not like I had a choice. The Xaros were days away and everyone on board was a—”
The privacy screens shot up and cut Ibarra off.
Roland sighed and looked up at the ceiling. He took a bite of his hot dog and shook his head.
“How about you just give us a list of what we can talk about?” he said through a half-full mouth before he turned his attention back to the study book and went to the chapter with the Poems of Remembrance.
Chapter 4
Aignar walked through the officers’ mess, his nutrient shake in hand. The smell of everyone else’s meal used to bother him when he left the hospital. Now the aromas seemed to give his daily goo a bit of flavor.
He went past a round table of Dotari officers, all sitting shoulder to shoulder and eating from communal bowls of the gar’udda nuts that they never seemed to tire of. Some were armor, the rest pilots from the Ardennes’ joint squadron.
As he sat down at an empty table, he heard a high trill. The grates on the air-conditioning vents looked normal and recently cleaned, but the pitch warbled up and down as he dug a knuckle against the back of his jaw and debated scheduling a hearing test with the medics. It was bad enough that he had to speak through cybernetics; bad hearing would make his non-armored life even more difficult.
Cha’ril practically slapped her tray down across from Aignar as she sat down quickly, her head bowed, her gaze squarely on the small bowl of steaming gar’udda.
The noise stopped. Aignar’s brow furrowed further and he touched the other side of his prosthetic jaw.
“Cha’ril? When did you come aboard? How you feeling?”
“Just docked. I’m fine. Totally fine.” She snatched up a gar’udda and ate it quickly, still refusing to look at Aignar.
“You look different. Your skin is a few shades darker and your quills are…” He sniffed the air, then took a whiff from the end of his straw. “What is that smell? It’s like cut grass and lemons. That some sort of new spice on your lunch?”
“By the ships of my ancestors, this is embarrassing.” She pressed her hands against the side of her face, then flapped the back of her fingers against the bottom of her beak.
“What is that?” He glanced at the bottom of his boots. “Ah…it lingers.”
“It’s me. The smell is from me. Okay? Just drink your goo so we can leave.” She munched on another nut, cracking it loudly.
“Were the showers out on your way back from Mars? Now—” He cocked an ear to the ceiling. “There’s that sound again. You hear it?”
Cha’ril pushed her bowl to one side and folded her arms on the table.
“Aignar, I need you to do something for me. Bang your fist on the table and look agitated,” she said, looking at him with a plea in her eyes.
“Now it’s weird, Cha’ril. Very weird.”
The keening grew louder and other human diners began to look around in confusion.
“I’ll explain in a minute. Just…do it,” she said.
Aignar shrugged, lifted his cup of nutrient paste off the table, and struck a hammer blow against the corner. The tip broke off and the entire mess hall went silent. The table full of Dotari males turned their attention back to their food, occasionally glancing back over at Cha’ril.
“What the hell?” Aignar asked.
“My pheromones are…eliciting a response from the men. They’re preening for me. That’s the sound you heard.” Cha’ril flushed around her eyes and across her forehead.
“Back up,” Aignar said. “I’m missing something.”
“This is very normal Dotari mating behavior. During the season, entire villages will be filled with song.” Cha’ril tilted her forearm up from the table and blocked her view of the table full of the males as she kept eating.
“Mating…season?” Aignar set his cup down and pushed it to one side.
“Those of us in the Dotari Expeditionary Force had our reproductive cycles put on hold while we served, but the Council of Firsts put an end to that. Ha ha. Now our biological impulses are coming to the fore. Don’t make it weird.”
“Wait…what? Why did I have to hit the table?”
“As my lance mate, you fill the role of ushulra, an older male relative that keeps suitors away…well, you shouldn’t as you’re not Dotari. In fact, I shouldn’t have asked you to get involved. Feces. I’m only making things worse for us both.” She rubbed her temple.
“So much for not making it weird,” Aignar said. “How long does,” he sniffed twice, “does all this last?”
“I don’t actually know. I’ve not had to deal with any of this since I entered the academy years ago. There are some environmental factors at work that are making things worse.”
Aignar shook his head.
“And I thought dealing with Roland’s hormones were a problem.”
There was a slam of fists against a table, and a Dotari male stood up. He was larger than the others and wore a pilot’s overalls. He glared at another Dotari across the table and his quills furled out as he hissed. The other Dotari—the plugs at the base of his skull marking him out as armor—rose to his feet slowly, then beat his hands against his chest.
The Dotari table suddenly burst into action as one half grabbed the pilot and the other manhandled the armor in opposite directions, the air alive with a cacophony of squawks and chirps. As quickly as the din erupted, it ended as the two factions left through opposite doors.
“What the hell was that?” a Ranger lieutenant asked from behind Aignar.
Cha’ril kept her head down and chewed through her bowl as fast as she could manage.
“Aignar,” she said as she chewed, “what are your opinions of this? Please be honest.”
“I’m starting to wish the Ibarras had captured me instead of Roland.”
Chapter 5
The hood over Roland’s head cut out all light and sound, but he felt his seat shudder as whatever transport he was in came to a stop. The half-mask over his mouth kept his jaw clenched tight and muzzled. Some armor soldiers used the seclusion hoods to fall asleep when out of armor, their bodies so used to the sensory deprivation that resting was almost impossible outside the wombs.
Roland noted the count of this newest transition—9,482—and added it to his running total. This was the fourth time he’d been put into an air car, tube transit, and elevator. Keeping him blind and deaf would hide most everything of value he could learn about his surroundings, but at least he could gauge time and distance with his count.
Naturally, he assumed the guards were walking him in circles a few times to defeat such a tactic, but Roland felt the need to do something constructive.
A rough hand gripped him by the elbow and pulled him up slightly. He stood, the heavy shackles around his hands and ankles limiting him to a shuffle as the second guard took him by the arm and led him forward.
Roland felt a slight breeze tug at the hood and moist air caress his bare hands. A few minutes—and several direction changes—later, the guards jerked him to a stop. His hood came off
and Roland blinked hard as his eyes adjusted to harsh lights.
“Wait outside,” a man said.
There was a snap of a closing door and the lights dimmed. Before Roland was a man in his mid-forties, bald but for a ring of hair over his ears and around the back of his head. He wore an army uniform, the ribbons and design the same as the Terran Army, but the badges were different and a gold braid ran from his left shoulder to beneath his armpit. He had five stars on his shoulder, a rank not used by Earth since the end of the Ember War: marshal.
“I will show you trust and respect,” the marshal said. “You will keep that trust and respect so long as you return the courtesy. Understand?”
Roland tried to work his jaw, but the muzzle tightened in response. He nodded.
The marshal waved a hand over the gauntlet screen on his left arm and the muzzle and restraints fell to the floor. Roland rubbed his jaw and looked around. They were in a small antechamber with marble floors and lacquered walls. A simple wooden door was behind the marshal.
The Ibarran officer turned around, and Roland saw a pistol strapped to his thigh. The man handed Roland a long coat from where it hung over a leather and chrome stool.
“I am Davoust. You’ll appreciate this later,” the marshal said.
“What do you want with me?” Roland took the coat but didn’t move to put it on.
“It’s not me that wants you. Do us all a favor and don’t play games with her,” Davoust said.
“If you think I’m going to help you—be a pawn in your war with Earth—you should’ve kept me blind, deaf, and dumb. Less trouble,” Roland handed the coat back to Davoust.
The marshal glanced down at the proffered coat, shook his head slightly, then touched his palm to the doorknob and the door swung open. Davoust motioned for Roland to follow him.
Inside was a circular room, the ceiling four stories tall and domed. Shelves made up the lower levels of the walls, discordant colored spines of books and journals belying the organization of the room. The upper walls were computer banks, humming and emitting cold mist from their cooling systems.
