by Richard Fox
In the center of the room was a wide holo tank. A network of golden lattices enclosed the only other person in the room, a shadow inside the holo tank, arms moving about like a conductor leading a symphony.
When the door shut behind Roland, he noticed a pair of large and armored legionnaires holding gauss carbines, standing on either side of the doorway.
Roland had some confidence he could wrest the pistol away from the marshal, but trying to overpower the two legionnaires was a losing proposition—as long as he was out of his armor.
“He talks too much, doesn’t he?” came from inside the holotank. Roland recognized the voice from the Qa’Resh artifact on Oricon where he’d been captured. Stacey Ibarra.
The golden lattice degraded, revealing more and more of the person inside. She was silver, just like Marc Ibarra, her hair frozen in place in a short cut that extended halfway down her neck. Her body was a simple jumpsuit, detailed but the same color as the rest of her body. The golden lattice collapsed into a glowing flake, then lowered into the side of the holo tank.
She made her way down the curved stairs of the dais, her feet beating against the stairs with a metal-on-metal ding.
Roland’s breath fogged as she drew closer and a chill wrapped around his body. He gripped the coat in his hands tightly, feeling foolish for not heeding the marshal’s counsel.
“Look at you,” Stacey said. “Always a surprise to see the heart of an armor soldier in person. Only human inside those amazing suits.” She stopped a few feet away, her doll-like face betraying no emotion, but Roland could feel the soul behind her blank eyes.
“I didn’t think you’d be so young. I expected a few years on you at least. Your other armor friend didn’t put up much of a fight against Nicodemus. You at least gave him some sport,” she said.
“What happened to Aignar? To the rest of my lance?” Roland asked, shivering.
“They all left the Qa’Resh station before I had Oricon’s atmosphere crush it into dust. The Qa’Resh built things to last, but they didn’t build them that tough.”
“Why spare them? We’re at war and—”
“I am not at war with Earth!” She jabbed a finger at Roland’s chest, then bent her finger back into a fist and lowered her arm. “They are at war with me.”
“I saw what you did to the Cairo. Raw footage doesn’t lie,” Roland said. “You ambushed that ship and murdered her crew, then dumped it into an ocean world, hoping we’d never find the evidence.”
“Oh that,” she said, tossing a hand next to her head. “Did your masters tell you that the ship, the Leyte Gulf, was part of a squadron attacked by Earth—an unprovoked attack, I might add—and that the Leyte Gulf was the only survivor? That it fled to the system where the Cairo was hunting for it? Earth started this fight. The Leyte had vital information to bring me. That she repaid a blood debt on her way home was something of a bonus.”
“So you’re the victim here.” The side of Roland’s mouth pulled into a brief sneer as stiffness crept into his fingers and toes and pain needled along the edges of his ears.
“Earth could have left us well enough alone. We have…mutual problems.” Stacey backed up and turned to a holo screen along the walls.
Marshal Davoust nudged Roland’s arm. Roland scowled and put the coat on. The fabric heated up and pushed the chill away.
Stacey put her palm up to the holo screen and pictures flowed across the projection so fast they were almost a blur.
“We worried you wouldn’t be of much use to us,” she said. “But then the colonists on Oricon simply would not stop talking about a team of armor that rescued children from the Kesaht. Then the wheels began turning…”
The holo screen stopped on a picture of a sword, longer than Roland was tall, Templar Crosses built into the hilt and pommel. Text boxes popped up along the blade’s edge. Roland recognized it immediately as the sword given to him by Ibarran legionnaires, one that originally belonged to an armor soldier named Morrigan. Stacey’s bodyguard, Nicodemus, had taken it after crushing Roland in a fight on the Qa’Resh station.
Stacey touched one of the text boxes, and a double helix of DNA appeared on the screen.
“Plenty of blood on your sword,” she said. “And this one here is different from any we’ve seen before. You came across the leadership caste of the Kesaht, didn’t you? The ones called Ixio.”
“I’m not going to help you.” Roland straightened up. “You and your pack of traitors have done enough damage to Earth. You goaded us into a fight with the Kesaht and—”
Stacey raced toward Roland and grabbed him by the front of his coat, hefting him off the ground with ease and shaking him.
“You think they’ll stop with us!” she screamed. “Do you know what they’ve done!”
The cold from her fists stung through the fabric and made Roland’s breathing painful.
“My lady…” Davoust said.
Stacey dropped Roland to his feet and gave him a not-so-gentle push backwards, but the marshal stopped Roland from losing his footing.
Stacey’s still features stared at Roland, and he could feel hatred burning inside her.
“You know what happened to the colony on New Caledonia?” she asked.
“Where?” Roland rubbed his chest, kneading warmth back into his flesh.
Stacey reached back to the holo screen and her fingers tapped out a code in the air. The dais changed, and the large field came to life and showed a burnt-out village, the streets littered with dead men, women, and children.
“Little over a year ago,” Marshal Davoust said, “phase 1 colony from Earth in the Orion arm along the edge of Crucible space. Resupply convoy found it like this. Eight hundred sixty-three dead…two hundred and nine missing.”
“No, never heard of this,” Roland said.
“Of course not.” Stacey walked into the holo tank and knelt next to a dead woman clutching a bundle in her arms. She ran her hand along the woman’s head, then set her other hand on the bundle. “It was just before the second Terra Nova expedition. President Garret couldn’t have his good news story preempted by a story about human beings murdered in cold blood. Typical of him.”
She stood and traced a circle with a fingertip. The holo sped ahead and stopped next to a partially collapsed building. In the rubble were black plates of armor, their edges stained with gray goo.
“Officially,” she said, “the attack remains under investigation, with no clue as to the identity of the attackers. But you know now, don’t you, Roland?”
“That’s Rakka armor. They’re the Kesaht’s foot soldiers. They decompose rapidly after they’re killed…”
“And Earth should have figured that out by now,” the marshal said.
“Why would they attack us that long ago?” Roland stepped away from Davoust. “Did you all kick that hornets’ nest and lead them to the colony?”
“We encountered them only a few months ago,” Stacey said. “And they were just as hostile. Willing to talk now?”
Roland hesitated. He’d fought the Kesaht, seen their fleet in action, and recognized them as a potent enemy on par with the Vishrakath and Kroar. If the Ibarrans had information that Earth could use…
“Only if you’ll send me back,” Roland said. “Send me back to Earth with everything you know about the Kesaht. Every bit of information. Promise that and I’ll tell you what I know about the Ixio.”
“Hardly a bargain for us.” Stacey came down from the dais and extinguished the holo with a metallic snap of her fingers. “We’d get that information eventually.”
“Not without risk to our agents on Earth,” Davoust said.
“But is he worth keeping?” she asked the marshal.
“Détente behar dugu. Lurra gehiegi behar da. Armadura hau besterik ez izatea zer behar dugu,” Davoust said.
“English, please,” Roland said.
“I accept your terms,” Stacey said. “Tell me about the Ixio and we’ll return you to Earth with everything we
know. Their tactics. Fleets we’ve encountered.” She extended a hand to him.
Roland grit his teeth and shook her hand. It was like pressing his hand to a glacier. His flesh flared with pain before going numb. He pulled back and gripped his stiff fingers.
“Their home world,” Roland said.
“See,” Stacey said, wagging a finger at him, “that’s a good question. We don’t know where it is. The Kesaht were never part of the old Alliance. How a new race managed to access the Crucible network is something of a mystery. There, I just gave you something. Now tell me about the Ixio.”
Roland took a deep breath and wondered just how big of a mistake he was about to make. He told them how he and Cha’ril first learned of a third Kesaht species during a hasty autopsy of a Sanheel, then about encountering one of the tall biomechanical aliens named Tomenakai aboard their battleship.
“It wanted the children,” Roland said. “Human children. Said they were important for whatever kind of ‘unity’ the Kesaht provide with their skull implants. The children weren’t aberrant like the adults, who he said were ‘false minds in weed bodies.’ Then I—”
“Stop,” Stacey said, giving Davoust a quick glance. “He said those words, ‘false minds in weed bodies’ exactly?”
“That’s right. Then he went off about how we must be ‘redeemed’ for our crimes or we must be purged. Then I cut his head off and crushed his skull.” Roland shrugged slightly.
“It fits the theory,” Davoust said. “The shield tech. The cloaks.”
Stacey half-raised her arms, then let them fall to her sides. She turned to the holo tank, then back to the marshal. Pressing her hands over her face, she then drummed her fingertips against her metal body, making high-pitched tings like the toll of small bells.
“No…no, no, no, this isn’t my fault.” Stacey looked around, as if she didn’t know where she was.
Roland stiffened, his instincts sensing a threat.
“We didn’t have a choice!” Stacey screamed, the words echoing around the room and the force of her words stinging Roland’s ears. “I had to do it! We kept it from the rest because we knew they’d try and stop us. But when it was over, Valdar…Valdar blamed me. Me!”
She grabbed Roland by the back of the neck and jaw. He grunted in pain and tried to pull away, but her grip was like his armor’s.
“Ken didn’t judge me.” She shook her head from side to side as Roland beat at her arms. “Ken understood. Is he gone? Did he stay for me like I asked?”
Roland tasted ice in his mouth as his spit froze.
“Guards!” Davoust grabbed Stacey by the forearms and tried to pull her off Roland. A power-armored guard lifted her hand off Roland’s neck and yanked Roland back, tossing him against the wall.
Roland touched his ice-cold jaw and watched as the two guards pinned Stacey’s arms and legs and held her against the floor.
She wailed, a cry caught somewhere between grief and madness. She pulled an arm free and struck one of the guards in the chest, blasting him back and sliding across the floor.
“I had no choice!” Stacey struck at the other guard, who caught her by the wrist, the power armor’s servos and pseudo-muscles straining against her raw power.
Davoust grabbed Roland by the back of his jacket and dragged him out of the room. The door closed, and Roland heard Stacey screaming…followed by the crash of metal being bludgeoned into scrap. Roland lay on the floor, staring at the vaulted ceilings as pain pulsed through his face and neck.
The marshal knelt near Roland, keeping a hand to the soldier’s chest.
“Are you hurt…badly?” Davoust asked.
Roland tried to open his mouth, but it was locked in place. He managed a pitiful grunt.
Davoust looked at the flesh on his palms, stained white with frostbite.
“She has her moments,” Davoust said. “When they tell Earth about this, know it doesn’t matter to us. She is our lady. She loves us. She will save us. And we will die for her.”
****
Stacey sat against a broken computer bank, sparks falling against her skin, leaving tiny black smudges that faded away seconds later. She stared at the dais in the middle of the room, her unblinking eyes locked on the flickering holo tank.
Hunks of broken machinery were strewn across the floor, like the aftermath of a hurricane.
Her two guards huddled against the door, blocking it with their bodies. One was on a knee, a broken arm clutched against his side. The other stood up, his helm broken and blood dripping from a broken nose.
“Hamish. Tyrel…I’m sorry,” Stacey said.
“Are you well, my lady?” asked the one with the broken nose.
“I am now. Would you…would you take Hamish to the infirmary? I need a minute.” She got to her feet and brushed herself off.
“We cannot leave you,” Hamish said.
“I shouldn’t have made you so well.” She went to Hamish and reached out to touch him, then pulled her hand back. “Look what I’ve done to you both. Just go. Leave.”
“We cannot—”
“Then summon the doctor!” Stacey stamped a foot against the ground, cracking the marble.
Tyrel nodded and touched the screen on his forearm.
Stacey walked slowly to the dais. She ran her fingertips along the edge and tapped out a code against the side. There was a hiss of hydraulics and the dais rose out of the ground. A clear cylinder came up, its contents hidden momentarily by steam that faded away.
Inside, a young woman was frozen in stasis, her chest covered in blood from a bullet wound. Blood stained a hand reaching for help, spilled down the sides of her mouth and hung frozen in time within the chamber. Stacey, her mind and soul trapped inside the metal shell, looked at her true body, her mortally wounded flesh and blood.
“Should I go back?” she asked her guards. “Go back for that last moment of true life?”
“We need you,” Hamish said.
“We are lost without you,” Tyrel added.
“I fought the monsters,” she said. “I stared into the abyss. And this is what I have become.” She ran her fingers down the seam of the stasis pod and it sank back into the floor.
“Why do I do it?” she asked.
“Every soul cries out to live,” Hamish said, wiping blood off his lip. “You will save us. You will save all of us.”
“Just like you did during the Ember War,” Tyrel added.
“There are dark days ahead of us,” Stacey said. “But who better than an Ibarra to bear the torch?”
Chapter 6
Sitting on his bunk, Roland rubbed his aching jaw and poked at a plate of rubbery potatoes. He looked up at Marc Ibarra through the cell bars and shrugged.
“A pair of medics looked me over, then I got the hood and muzzle and they brought me back here,” Roland said.
“This is worse than I thought,” Ibarra said. “But things are beginning to make sense now.”
“Really? I got the impression that she’s had meltdowns like that before.” Roland mashed his fork into a potato and took a bite. The pain of chewing spoiled his meal.
“Not that—the Toth, you nitwit.” Ibarra shook his head. “We thought they were extinct, but some of them must have been away from their home world and had a ship with a Qa’Resh jump engine. The overlord must have…” He paced across his cell, one hand on his hip, the other tapping against his lips in thought.
“They must have feared we’d hunt them all down,” Ibarra said. “This was before the Xaros were defeated. They jumped to a system beyond the Crucible network, in Alliance space where the Xaros hadn’t made it to. Then they must have gone to the Kesaht system and…it fits.”
“What fits?”
“Fits that the Toth would masquerade as divine beings to a less advanced culture. They’ve used the glamour of high technology to enthrall others. How did I miss this?”
Roland waited as Ibarra kept pacing, occasionally raising a hand mid-revelation, then dropping it again
to continue wearing a rut into the floor.
“Why would the Toth be afraid of us killing them off?” Roland asked. “Wasn’t it the Xaros? They were the ones bent on xenocide across the whole galaxy.”
Ibarra stopped, then clasped his hands behind his back.
“It wasn’t the Xaros that annihilated the Toth home world…it was us,” Ibarra said. “Do you know what the Xaros masters were? Energy beings. Nigh immortal, with an infinite supply of drones and technology that we still don’t fully understand. By the end, they’d destroyed Bastion and the Alliance. There were drone armadas several-trillion strong closing in on Earth before we launched the final attack on the Key Hole gate and the Xaros’ Dyson sphere. Things were desperate, you understand?”
“I know about the last battle,” Roland said. “What I don’t understand is what any of this has to do with the Toth. We killed off the Toth? I don’t believe it.”
“What you believe is irrelevant.” Ibarra’s surface shimmered. “We had one real weapon at the end of the war: a Qa’Resh named Malal. The last Qa’Resh in the galaxy. He was left behind and imprisoned after the rest of his kind…ascended, shall we say. Malal was willing to help us fight the Xaros, but he had a price. And when you make a deal with the devil, you end up losing your soul. So Stacey and I agreed to Malal’s terms once the Xaros were gone. And the Toth paid the price.”
Roland set his fork down, his appetite gone. He looked at Ibarra, a man he knew had traded billions of human lives so that a few—Roland included—might survive and reconquer Earth. What Ibarra told him made a certain horrific sense.
“What did you do to the Toth?” Roland asked.
“Malal wanted to follow the rest of his kind into paradise, some other dimension where death was impossible,” Ibarra spoke quickly. “To do that, he needed the gate, which the Qa’Resh had, and he needed the strength to open it. Malal fed off the minds of sentient beings, their souls. And the number of souls he needed was in the billions.”
