by Richard Fox
“Pathetic,” Gideon said. “Absolutely pathetic. Your tunnel vision sent you right into an ambush. Roland. Explain why you didn’t pull back after you lost comms with Aignar.”
“Sir, I thought it was a line-of-sight issue with the IR.”
“Cha’ril, why didn’t you try to reconnect?” Gideon asked.
“I was too focused on the objective, sir,” she said as her head dipped lower.
“You chose an overwatch position with excellent observation and fire line,” Lieutenant Silva said to Aignar. “It was also the most obvious spot for an overwatch, which is why I set my ambush there.”
“Signal from the noise,” Gideon said. “We’ve been over this. The satellite sent you data that a defending element was here. You found the battery pack we hacked. But what did you all miss?”
“You didn’t ping anywhere else,” Roland said. “If you were anywhere else in the exercise area, the satellite would’ve picked up your signature there…and here. We found your battery and assumed you were gone.”
“Some decent analysis at last,” Gideon said. “But figuring out your mistake five minutes after you’re dead doesn’t help.”
“Why didn’t our sensors read you?” Cha’ril said. “Even underground your power signature should’ve tripped our passives.”
“We were dark,” Gideon said. “No systems online. I waited until I felt your footsteps through the ground before powering up.”
“Same,” Lieutenant Silva said.
“Patience is a virtue,” Gideon said. A Mule shuttle crested the horizon, heading straight for them. “There is a time to attack, and there is a time to hold back. You all made the wrong choice. Hoof it back to Gate 37-C. I’ll meet you there for your next assignment.”
The cadre walked away.
Roland pulled up a map, chose a route back to Olympus that followed an above-ground hyper loop connecting the fortress to a nearby spaceport and sent it to his lance mates. He concentrated on his armor’s legs and the internal treads folded out of the housings on his thigh and calf armor. He rolled toward the lip of the crater, churning up a cloud of dust in his wake.
“Well…that could have gone better,” Aignar said.
“Cha’ril?” Roland twisted his helm to look at her, motoring behind and to his left.
“I made a number of errors. I should have stopped you from moving on the flag. A magnetic scan would have revealed Gideon’s trap.”
“I think that’s the closest she’s ever come to an apology,” Aignar said.
“Don’t push it, ape,” she snapped. “The Dotari staff in Olympus tell me that expressing self-criticism during an after-action review is an acceptable trait among humans. I’d prefer if you two would internalize your guilt and perform better at the next exercise without having to share with me. That’s the Dotari way.”
“Baby steps, Cha’ril, baby steps,” Roland said. “It was my first time as assault element lead and I screwed it all up.”
“At least you didn’t get rail-gun sniped off a hilltop,” Aignar said. “Yes, I know that happened to you, Cha’ril. I’m externalizing your guilt for you. Baby steps.”
Cha’ril swerved her treads over a rock and kicked it at Aignar. He swatted the rock into fragments and laughed.
“Come on, Cha’ril, giving you shit like that means I like you,” Aignar said.
“I thought human males gave the object of their affection severed plant genitals, not…shit.”
“There are different levels of affection,” Roland said.
“Which level lets me kick him in the throat the minute we’ve decanted?”
“I can never tell if we’re getting closer or drifting apart,” Aignar said.
“Before you two start an impromptu live-fire exercise, any idea what’s at Gate 37-C?” Roland asked. “That’s to the east of the mountain. Squid territory.”
“The Ruhaald are here?” Cha’ril asked.
“Squids are navy personnel. Old nickname for them,” Aignar said.
“You think they’ll have bots to clean us up?” Roland asked. “Or do we get to spend hours on the racks vacuuming out every speck of dust?”
“Cadre save the bots for winners,” Aignar said. “Right now, that ain’t us.”
****
The hangar behind Gate 37-C rivaled the new Phoenix University stadium in size and volume. As a child, Roland had marveled at the immense structure the few times his orphanage had dragged him and the other children out to an American football game, the teams drawn from fleets and Marine divisions. That the Martian engineers had built something so immense within Olympus gave Roland a crushing sense of irrelevance, even while he was inside his armor.
Four Esquiline-class corvettes formed the corners of a square on the hangar floor, each in different stages of retrofit. Scaffolding and spider-bots surrounded each ship, removing hull plates and swapping out components. One ship was split open from stem to stern, her inner workings displayed like a vivisection.
“Which one’s the Scipio?” Aignar asked.
“The one taking on supplies and going through pre-launch checks.” Cha’ril shared a target icon that pinged on a ship on the far side of the square. The ship boasted turret-mounted rail cannon and several point defense nodes around the hull. “Logically, I doubt the cadre sent us here to reassemble a ship.”
The three walked around the perimeter of the shipyard, drone-controlled supply carts slowing and veering out of their way to let them pass. If he’d been on foot, Roland would have never trusted the machine intelligences to not run him over. In his armor, his old flesh-and-blood fears felt like a child’s memory of what goes bump in the night.
The Scipio’s crew, a mere two dozen sailors and officers, formed two lines at the foot of the ship’s loading ramp. Gideon, in armor, spoke with a female commander as an armor support team rolled equipment into the ship.
“Right on time,” the commander said to the candidates. “I’m Tagawa, welcome aboard my ship. Not the first time she’s been worked over by the yards, but the old girl needed the attention. The Scipio is part of the new rapid-reaction task force forming on Ceres. Our primary weapon is you tall sons of bitches. Got just enough room to squeeze you four in, and not much else. Our trip’s as much for shaking out the bugs as it is to see how cranky my crew gets hot-bunking and sharing a single shower. Embark at your leisure, but we leave in ten minutes.”
Gideon tapped a fist to his chest lightly and the commander turned her attention back to her crew.
“Follow me.” Gideon led them up the ramp and into the repurposed cargo space. The ship’s sole Mule transport and EVA vehicles were gone, replaced with four armor maintenance bays, coffin-like structures with scaffolding running chest-high across from where their suits would stand. Racks of armor weapons, spare parts and crates of ammo filled most of what space remained; the only gap on the floor left a round hatch uncovered.
The scaffolding folded up and shifted out of the way as they marched into the armor bay.
“Your first cemetery,” Gideon said. “Welcome.”
“Awful small ship to carry armor,” Aignar said. “When did High Command decide this was a good idea?”
“The good-idea fairy must have done the rounds at the headquarters under Camelback Mountain,” Gideon said. “Regardless, this is the next step in your training. Get in your coffins and let the techs give you the once-over. Dismount for checks at med bay, then calisthenics once we’ve broken orbit. For those of you who’ve never been on a navy ship before, just stay out of the crew’s way.”
Roland backed into a coffin and the apparatus scanned his armor, feeding the data to him. Tubes and power lines connected to his suit and the scaffolding unfolded back into place. A short walkway extended to the armor’s waist. He cycled down his suit’s power and relaxed. His armor’s HUD pinged with a system update; a new suit-to-suit communication link caught his attention as he skimmed the patch notes.
Roland opened a channel and invited Aignar
and Cha’ril.
“Here we go again,” Aignar half-sang a soldier’s marching cadence through a private IR channel, “same old stuff again.” His head and shoulders came up in a window to one side of Roland’s vision. The Aignar in the window wore his Ranger uniform and looked from side to side. “Figures that the techs upgrade everything right as I figure out how to use it.” The veteran’s mouth actually moved when he spoke, and the speaker in his neck was gone.
“Aignar…your lips are working,” Roland said.
“What the devil…” Aignar touched his mouth and throat. “Odd. My freak show’s still in the same spot.”
A window with a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman opened.
“The ship’s internal comms has a VR emulator,” the woman said with Cha’ril’s voice. “Dotari ships have had such a system in place for generations. Seeing who you’re talking to on other vessels increased the empathy levels…there must be a rendering error—both your mouths are open.”
“Cha’ril? Is that you?” Roland asked.
“Of course it’s me. Do you think there’s another Dotari crammed into this vessel somewhere? Aignar, honestly. If we were dismounted, I swear your mouth would catch flies. Let me check my camera settings…” She let off trills and snaps in her own language.
“What is this bovine feces?” The humanized Cha’ril prodded her hair.
“I don’t know…you look kind of hot as a human,” Aignar said.
“I am sending a user feedback form. Right. Now.” Cha’ril’s window closed.
“She mad? Oh, she’s mad,” Aignar said.
“If you could avoid pissing her off for five minutes, we might do better during trials,” Roland said.
“We all show our love in different ways. Would you look at that? We’ve got ourselves our very own hell hole.”
“A what?”
“The hatch. Air-assault-configured Mules have hell holes for fast rope and grav-cushioned drops. Hitting a hot landing zone through one of those is a significant emotional event when you’re in Marine power armor. Can’t wait to see what Gideon’s got in store for us.”
“Fun times,” Roland said with little enthusiasm. “I’m going to drift.” He closed the channel and accessed his message folder, but there was nothing there. He checked his sent folder and glanced over the many messages he’d sent to Masako. All had been read.
Roland shut down all his feeds and tried to drift away in the abyss, but his mind kept churning.
****
“Roland.”
He heard the word, but wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming inside the womb. He stretched his legs slightly and noticed a blinking cursor in the darkness. He brushed his mind across it and a still photo of Cha’ril—as a Dotari—opened up.
“I hacked the comms,” she said, “and sent another user feedback form detailing the fault in their coding.”
Roland brought his systems online and checked the Scipio’s telemetry feeds. They were in the void, on course for Ceres still a day off.
“You woke me up for this?”
“Aignar and Gideon are both adrift,” she said. “I received a message during our last data synch with Olympus…I’m unsure if I should share it with you, as human language seems to leave a great deal to interpretation, even though this English of yours seems to be four distinct languages mashed together solely to confuse new learners.”
“You’re going to have to share the message with me now.”
“I was asked not to, but I did agree to the request. Dotari obtain confidentiality before sharing secrets. I will feign cultural ignorance if her humors are upset.”
Roland felt a tinge of fear through his heart.
“You heard from Masako?”
“That your hormone levels were so elevated around each other leaves me to believe you had feelings for her, a distraction that I’m certain impacts your efficiency levels. Aignar’s passion doesn’t extend beyond breaking things.”
“If you have something from Masako, then you’d better share it or I will plug myself into your suit and get it myself.”
“I see my assumptions about you were correct. Sending.”
Her picture shrank away and a video file opened up in its place.
Masako, sitting in a hospital bed, smiled meekly at the camera. Her hair was gone, replaced by a red bandana. Her face was worn, tired. She rubbed her left hand up and down her other arm.
“Hey, Cha’ril, I’m in Hawaii.” Her smile broadened slightly. “The recovery center here is really impressive. Have my own team of docs and an on-call bot that will bring me real food if I ask. Couple soldiers and Marines here from Cygnus. They got hit fighting—I just lost a roll of the dice.”
She picked up a scratching stick with her left hand and rubbed the edge against her right leg. Her other arm didn’t move. At all.
“They took my plugs away,” she continued, her smile vanishing. “Not ‘no,’ but ‘hell no’ would I ever be armor after my…episode. The docs are talking about neural grafts to make everything work the way it used to, but it takes time to get those out of the vat. If the grafts don’t work, then there are nerve bridges, artificial neurons, stem-cell therapy…lots of reasons to believe I’ll be 100% normal-ish when I do leave here.
“Dr. Eeks is not advising on my treatment.” Her face wrinkled with anger. “Which is fine by me. She’s not real popular around here. A detailer came by this morning, promised me any career and assignment I wanted. I’m getting a good dose of the Medical Corps right now…maybe I’ll stick with it. Everyone’s so bubbly and optimistic around here. After the cold shoulder we got from the cadre all the time every time, I’m a little suspicious. Maybe they’re trying to butter me up before more bad news…maybe I’m just being paranoid.
“Do me a favor—don’t show this to Aignar or Roland. Aignar doesn’t need a reminder of his…situation. God bless him, I don’t know how he survived hospitals for so long as a patient. Roland might—might make a rash decision—and I don’t want him to see me like this when I’m such a mess. Keep them both focused on getting through training. I’ll catch up with you all in the future. There’s a whole galaxy out there for us to explore, but the military can be a small world, sometimes.”
Masako reached toward the camera and turned off the video. Cha’ril appeared again.
“I have not replied,” the Dotari said. “Should I tell her you saw this? I am unsure how angry she will become.”
“Don’t mention me,” Roland said. “Masako made her decision.”
Cha’ril’s image flickered.
“Roland, human coupling is rather different than Dotari relationship cycles. I thought you two were enamored with each other. Why have you both chosen to forgo contact?”
“If you think I’m an expert on relationships, I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“She mentioned a ‘rash decision.’ Are you contemplating breaking into her hospital while in your armor and taking her to find other treatment?”
“That’s not rash, Cha’ril; that’s ridiculous,” Roland said. “Thank you for sharing that.”
“Was it helpful to you?”
Roland closed the channel. He felt the plugs in the back of his skull, the umbilical connecting him to the womb and to his armor. Of all the cadre and other armor soldiers he’d ever come across, none wore a wedding ring. Only Aignar ever mentioned children.
He’d chosen armor. Knew the level of commitment it demanded from those that became armor. With Masako gone, he realized just how much he’d given up to join the Corps. To cut off so much of adult life the day he arrived at the SEPS building in Phoenix…he realized that making that decision so close to his eighteenth birthday was terribly shortsighted.
Part of him wished he’d never met that stranger outside Memorial Park, never heard about the heroes immortalized in stone. His mind wandered to Saint Kallen’s tomb, remembered her gentle face.
She had volunteered for armor training, fought countless battles and chosen t
o keep fighting beside the Iron Hearts when she could have taken an easy way out. Roland felt a wave of shame come over him as he realized just how selfish his thoughts were.
He was armor. He’d given up a part of his life not for gain, but as a sacrifice. There were still younger children back at the orphanage. If he fought, and fought well, perhaps no other parents would die defending their children. Families—families that remained whole—could endure.
He gripped his arms against his chest, feeling the press against his skin.
Maybe he was just trying to justify a truly rash decision. There certainly wasn’t a chaplain on a vessel the size of the Scipio. He longed to share these doubts with someone, but doing that with his lance mates or Gideon felt like weakness.
If only Chaplain Krohe was here…or Tongea.
He called up a music player and blasted a song through his plugs and into his cerebrum.
Chapter 18
Their asteroid home tumbled slowly through the void. Roland, his back pressed to the dusty surface of an ancient impact crater just big enough for his suit, tested his anchor’s grip on the rock beneath his feet. The smear of the Milky Way passed through the stealth shroud lying over his armor, fixed to the asteroid with tiny hooks as the lump of slate-gray rock and dust orbited Ceres. The interplay of the passing moon, Luna, Earth and the universe writ large had been fascinating when the armor first took their positions around the sub-moon.
“Time,” Roland said.
“Nineteen hours and thirty-seven minutes,” Aignar answered. “Cha’ril’s turn.”
“You two should be alert and ready for the target, not playing these useless trivia games,” the Dotari said from the other side of the rock.
“This trial—like all the others—didn’t come with a duration,” Roland said. “We can either discuss something or lie here, under sensor shrouds, and wonder if the Scipio and Gideon forgot where they left us.”
