The True Measure (Terran Armor Corps Book 3)

by Richard Fox

  “‘Have a Dotari lance mate,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said,” Aignar grumbled.

  He walked out into a cargo bay with a raised platform and two seats atop of it. Poles with lanterns fixed to the ends—meant to approximate torches, Aignar figured—formed a semicircle around the platform. Dotari crowded beyond the perimeter. There wasn’t another human in sight.

  Aignar walked up the stairs and paced around the seats five times (not three, as Cha’ril emphasized several times) then brushed off one of the seats with the edge of his sleeves. He sat down in the other, then rapped against the armrest.

  Cha’ril came through a door on the other side of the platform. She wore a blue-gray, formless gown and a veil that covered her face but left her quills exposed.

  Aignar bent a metal finger and tapped a button on his wrist. The Dotari language came out of the speaker embedded in his throat and the aliens around the room joined in, repeating segments over and over again as the song spread through the crowd like a wave.

  Although Cha’ril sat in the chair beside Aignar and he could see her face through the sheer veil, he couldn’t gauge her expression.

  “Now you must act disinterested,” she said.

  Man’fred Vo pushed through the crowd on one side of the torch-lined semicircle. He was bare-chested, and chalky-white runes were dabbed against his blue-green skin. He wore leather pants that ended at his knees and he carried a thin staff with a multicolored ribbon tied to one end.

  Fal’tir emerged from the other side, similarly dressed and armed, though the runes were markedly different. Aignar leaned forward to gaze at Fal’tir and realized that neither of the Dotari had belly buttons.

  “Disinterest,” Cha’ril hissed. “You must recognize the winner. If you show any favoritism, their clans may not accept the outcome.”

  Aignar pulled back and looked at her.

  “So we just chat while they—” Aignar winced as the two Dotari opened their beaks and bellowed a war cry, which changed to a song that they sang in tune with each other.

  “Yes, best to ignore them,” she said.

  “They’re done up like island savages about to go on a head hunt and I should ignore them. Sure. Easy.” Aignar leaned toward her. “Which do you want?”

  “Man’fred Vo is the son of a hero from the Ember War,” Cha’ril said. “His father flew on the Breitenfeld and went on to train most of our fighter pilots. ‘Vo’ means ‘son of,’ an old-fashioned naming convention. He is ambitious and skilled. Scored nine kills during the fight with the Kesaht.”

  “So you want him?”

  “Fal’tir is armor. He fought the Naroosha on Togrund.”

  “Fal’tir…his lance was human. They all redlined after the Naroosha hit them with some sort of ion pulse. He’s the one that broke through the Naroosha spike drones and killed the aliens in their nerve center.”

  “He is brave. The only Dotari to receive our Mark of Valor and your Armor Cross.”

  “So…him?”

  “You are ushulra. You are to choose.”

  The Dotari abruptly ended their song and began twirling their staffs overhead, then striking the deck and hissing at each other.

  “If you have a preference…help me help you, Cha’ril. I don’t have to choose at all, do I? I’ll delay, find a better solution for you than this business,” Aignar said.

  She reached over and gently put a hand on his.

  “What do you mean? This is wonderful. This is how the Dotari survive,” she said. “My parents will be so proud.”

  “All of you are—” slaves to your hormones, he didn’t finish. Aignar’s shoulders slumped. The Dotari were determined to play this out. He realized that the more he tried to overlay his own sense of what was right and wrong, the more friction he would cause.

  “If this is what you want,” he said.

  “It’s getting worse.” Cha’ril looked back to the posturing males. Man’fred rammed one end of his staff against the deck and pointed at Fal’tir. Man’fred raised his face to the ceiling and made a choking sound, then he thrust his head at Aignar and spat.

  A wad of phlegm hit Aignar in the chest. He froze in place, the feeling of warm goo seeping through his robes.

  “Am I supposed to ignore that?” he asked.

  Fal’tir raised his head up and made the same gagging noise.

  “No!” Aignar held his hands out toward the Dotari armor solider. “No, don’t you—” Fal’tir spat and hit Aignar in the shoulder.

  “Son of a bitch,” he fumed as he scraped the spit off his robes.

  Fal’tir spun around and struck at Man’fred with his staff. Man’fred swept his weapon around to block and their staffs met with a crack of wood. The pilot turned the sweep into a full turn and whipped the other end around, striking Fal’tir in the ribs with a smack.

  The Dotari armor retreated, one elbow clutched against his side.

  “Cha’ril, what? What are they doing?” He looked at his cheat sheet on the inside of his arm and didn’t see anything about combat.

  “Fuli ma thrish arra,” she said. “‘Until one yields.’”

  Man’fred raised his staff overhead and slammed it down at Fal’tir, who dashed aside and snapped a blow at his opponent. Man’fred tried to parry and took the hit on his hand. Man’fred snarled in pain and pulled the hand back, two fingers obviously broken.

  “Or lax-i-dive log,” Aignar read from the notes.

  “No. This is not a cooking contest.”

  “Fore es smog?”

  “That’s indecent.”

  “Thrak azog?”

  “Yes, with a ‘k.’”

  Aignar hit his hand against his chair.

  “That means I can stop this if there’s an obvious winner? Right?”

  “Don’t. One will yield and then you’ll give me to the winner,” she said.

  Gripping the end of his staff, Man’fred spun it around into a wide arc and swept it at Fal’tir’s knees. The armor jammed his staff against the deck and stopped Man’fred’s swing. Man’fred moved forward with his momentum and took a jab to the stomach from Fal’tir.

  Aignar squirmed in his seat, confused that neither had tried to strike each other with hands or feet, even though both had several openings for a punch or kick that could have ended the fight quickly.

  Fal’tir swung the other end of his staff at Man’fred. The pilot yanked his staff back and blocked the strike, then planted his weight on his back foot and spun around, swinging his staff in a backhanded strike.

  The blow hit Fal’tir on the side of his head, knocking him off-balance. Man’fred struck the armor soldier on the knee and sent him to the ground. Fal’tir’s staff escaped his grasp and rolled toward Aignar and Cha’ril.

  “Dentar!” Man’fred pointed his staff at Fal’tir. Yield!

  The armor looked up at Cha’ril and crawled toward his weapon. Purple blood ran down his face and dripped from his beak.

  The crowd broke into a chant. Dentar! Dentar!

  Man’fred rammed the tip of his staff against Fal’tir’s back, jabbing his already hurt ribs. Fal’tir cried out in pain but kept crawling toward his staff. Man’fred raised his staff over his head and let off a long trill. When he turned around, Aignar saw murder in the alien’s eyes.

  Man’fred faced the crowd, beat a hand against his chest, then whirled around and struck at Fal’tir with an overhand strike that would shatter his skull.

  The staff hit Aignar’s metal forearm and shattered. Aignar stood between the two fighters, arms bent at his side and ready to fight. The crowd had gone silent.

  “Enough!” Aignar’s fingers snapped open and he clamped down on the remnants of the staff still in Man’fred’s grasp. He yanked the staff away and held the other end with Man’fred’s cloth to Cha’ril.

  She reached out, hesitated, then undid the knot on the cloth and held it to her chest. She stood and held out a hand to Man’fred. He jumped up on the stage and intertwined the fingers of his
unbroken hand with hers.

  The crowd began singing, the same tune she had sung in the passageway when Aignar held the two fighters’ totems.

  The main doors to the cargo bay slid open and Dotari carried in tables and giant bowls of steaming gar’udda and metal kegs. Cha’ril and Man’fred hurried away to an open side corridor. The crowd’s mood changed immediately and they swarmed around the food and drink.

  “You made a mistake,” Fal’tir said. The armor lay on his side, clutching broken ribs and bleeding freely from the cut on his face.

  Aignar knelt next to him and looked over the cut.

  “Buddy, you lost.”

  “No. I am armor, same as you. We cannot fail. We do not surrender.” Fal’tir crawled toward his staff.

  Aignar put his hand on the staff and pinned it in place.

  “If you go after them, what’ll happen?” Aignar looked the armor in the eye. “He’ll kill you. You want to die for pride? We are armor. Save your fury for the enemy, a real enemy.”

  “You don’t know what I’m feeling. Cha’ril is the most beautiful—”

  Aignar grabbed the edge of his robe, the part doused with the foul-smelling spray, and rubbed it against Fal’tir’s nose. The Dotari gagged before falling on his back. Fal’tir looked up at the ceiling, then propped himself onto an elbow.

  “Did that work?” Aignar asked.

  Fal’tir wiped the back of his hand against his cut and looked at the blood coating his fingers.

  “Can you…can you get me to sick bay?” the Dotari asked.

  “Sure thing. Then we’ll find a bottle of whatever’ll get you drunk and I’ll show you how humans handle a little heartache.”

  ****

  Gideon, still in his dress uniform, walked into the Ardennes’ cemetery where a dozen suits of armor stood in coffin-shaped maintenance enclosures along the edge of the room. Gideon took steps up to the catwalk that ran at waist height to the armor.

  Stopping at a suit, he typed in an access code at a small workstation and the breastplate on Gideon’s armor came loose with a thump.

  “I don’t blame you, sir,” came from the armor to Gideon’s right. Aignar’s helm turned toward his lance commander.

  “Aignar? The ship’s personnel tracker has you in your quarters.” Gideon unsnapped his collar.

  “My tracker’s in my wrist.” Aignar’s hand rotated from side to side. “I left it behind. Couple advantages to being part man and part machine. Then I came down here, figured I deserved some quiet time.”

  Gideon leaned against the back railing.

  “Admiral Lettow sent me a message explaining everything that happened,” Gideon said. “The whole thing was…unexpected.”

  “At least it’s over,” Aignar said. “At least I hope it’s over. Fal’tir seemed to chill out after the medics patched him up. I doubt any Dotty will come demanding satisfaction now that Cha’ril and Man’fred are joined. Did the admiral mention I got spit on? Was that in the memo?”

  “He left that out.”

  “Part of the theme to being an ushulra, sir. Lots they don’t tell you. Good news is that the smell goes away after you burn the clothes and take a couple showers. Why the Dotties can’t just get drunk and do the walk of shame the next morning…”

  “But it’s over now that Cha’ril is married.” Gideon rubbed a hand against his cheek.

  “Not married married, but joined married. They kept correcting me on that. The two lovebirds are on a special pass. We won’t see them for another twenty-four hours. Which is fine by me.”

  “Honestly, what you had to deal with up here was better than what happened on New Bastion,” Gideon said. “The Ibarras got greedy, made proccies that the galaxy can’t accept. There will be a war…”

  “That bothers you, sir? You don’t have any love lost for the Ibarras.”

  “I don’t. I’ll tear down their cities brick by brick and smash their ships with my bare hands. But I’d rather this fight be one Earth wants, not one that we’re forced into. Others—not me—will pull their punches, and that will get the entire galaxy against Earth.”

  “What about the Kesaht?” Aignar asked.

  “They’re more afraid of procedurals than the Kesaht,” Gideon said. “I can’t say I blame them. They all know the Ibarras, what they’re capable of. As far as they can tell, the Kesaht may be nothing but a bunch of raiders.”

  “So now what?”

  Gideon shrugged off his jacket and folded it neatly.

  “We’ve got the location of an Ibarra world,” he said. “We take that back to Earth and then Phoenix decides the next move. Pull up your VR sims and load a firing range. Ibarra targets.”

  Chapter 13

  A sparkling white disk formed in the center of a Crucible gate and a single Vishrakath ship emerged through the wormhole. This ship was small; all that remained of the asteroid it had been built into was a crust of rock. It zoomed out of the jump gate and hooked around a lime-green moon, the atmosphere swirling with methane.

  Kesaht claw ships tracked the Vishrakath ship, motes of glowing light at the apex of the ships’ irregularly sized digits.

  The craft sped past the Kesaht defenses, skirting a battleship and accompanying fleet. It came around the moon and shot toward a world made up of brown seas and deserts. Patches of brightness on the dark side marked domed cities. A patchy belt of light stretched around the equator, tracing to a massive construction project in orbit over the day side that would ring the planet once it was complete.

  It angled away from the planet toward a star fort made up of the reddish-brown plates the Kesaht preferred for their void craft. Crescent-shaped fighters spilled out of the fort and swarmed the asteroid ship. The Vishrakath continued, barreling toward an open hangar as fighters maneuvered out of the way.

  The ship came to rest in the dock as the Kesaht fighters roiled like a disturbed hive.

  ****

  Three Vishrakath rode a lift through the Kesaht star fort. Two held stubby gauss rifles, their white skin cracked and covered with old battle scars. The third, its skin an aquamarine blue, scratched at the deck with its four legs.

  The lift slowed to a stop in front of metal doors. Hydraulics hissed and the doors opened. A Toth warrior, down on all six limbs, bared shark-like teeth at the Vishrakath and snorted at the two bodyguards.

  Another warrior holding a crystalline pike leveled the weapon at one of the bodyguard’s rifles and let out a dull battle ululation.

  The head of the delegation sidestepped the hissing Toth. There, at the far end of the bay next to a large window, was a Toth overlord. Bale’s nervous system twitched inside the glass tank mounted atop a mechanical body with four limbs. The metal was embossed in gold, images of Kesaht history carved into the limbs and the bulging metal beneath the tank filled with bubbling water.

  “Enough posturing, Bale,” said the head Vishrakath. “It grows tiresome.”

  “Let them have their fun, Tuchilin,” Bale said. “The Kesaht are of no threat to me. You represent a bit of sport.”

  “We are not here for sport.” Tuchilin walked forward, almost stepping on one of the warrior’s hands. “We are here for a progress report.”

  “Come and see.” Bale’s forelimb tapped the glass in front of him. Tuchilin kept a wide berth as he went around the Toth.

  Below, thousands of Rakka were in a hangar, all in lines to surgery stations where thin-limbed Ixion supervised as the bestial Rakka had cybernetics implanted into their skulls.

  “The Rakka are primitive,” Bale said, “a tribal species that can barely utilize fire, though their petroglyphs are rather ornate. Their cognitive abilities are perfect for adjustment into a mind-set far more useful.”

  “Cannon fodder is hardly useful,” Tuchilin said. “Do the Ixion and Sanheel think so highly of themselves that they choose not to fight?”

  “The duo that considers themselves true Kesaht are quite willing to do what is necessary to win. They merely recognize that if the
re will be causalities, the Rakka should bear them. The Ixio and Sanheel tried for centuries to bring the Rakka up to their level of ‘perfection.’ I succeeded where they failed.”

  “Your raids are getting out of hand,” Tuchilin said. “You agreed to remain hidden until such time as the Kesaht were ready to destroy Earth and the Ibarras.”

  “While I am the Kesaht’s savior, I still require sustenance,” Bale said. “Feeding on my adoring subjects would be…problematic. It took Doctor Mentiq quite a while to train his gardens to appreciate the event.”

  “Eat your own kind.” Tuchilin pointed at one of the Toth guards. “Eventually, you will provoke a response and Wexil won’t be able to stop it.”

  “You are shortsighted. The Kesaht think it is their mission to bring their blessed unity to all the galaxy. We can hardly work toward that goal if we don’t have subjects to experiment on.”

  “Our bargain was to destroy the humans, not engage in some quasi-religious nonsense. Stop your raids. That’s an order,” Tuchilin said.

  “Order?” Bale spun in place, bringing the front of his tank to square off with the smaller Vishrakath. “You think you can order me to do anything? The Kesaht are my playthings, not yours. I will be the one that finally destroys the humans. I will burn Earth to cinders and force the survivors to watch, just as I saw my home world annihilated by them. Then I will savor their suffering as I feed on them and make the rest watch as I do it.”

  “You will have your revenge, Bale. Wexil and the rest of the Vishrakath want you to have it. But don’t force us to choose between the situation we’ve created for you and New Bastion. You’re not that important.”

  Bale’s claws dug into the deck.

  “Your armada’s growing.” Tuchilin moved closer to the glass, ignoring the angry Toth overlord. “Are you prepared to assault Earth? With the system’s macro cannons, a head-on assault would be futile. Earth must be destroyed from within. That is why Wexil has Earth and the Ibarras at each other’s throats. Let the enemy weaken itself, then strike. Simple.”

  “And how has Wexil managed this?” Bale asked. “The Ibarras are hidden.”