by Richard Fox
“A what?” Cha’ril asked.
“Beacon with limited text capability,” Roland said. “Knows its location when released, helium balloon will take it over any terrain—to include this crap of a hurricane—and broadcast a message to any satellite or ground station in line of sight. That must be how Lowenn knew they were in danger, and that they had a gamma-level artifact.”
“I’m beginning to doubt the Vishrakath killed them,” Cha’ril said. “No bullet wounds. They had the time to type out a distress signal with key information while under attack? Something isn’t right.”
“Poison,” Gideon said. “Some residue on their faces and hands. My bio sensors are on fire.”
“Not Vishrakath,” Aignar said. “But how we found the bodies…is. Came across a few mass graves on Cygnus. All like this. Piles on top of their gear, the stones.”
A rattle of snapping bones sounded in a copse of swaying trees and tall ferns. Roland switched to his thermals, and a bright patch of warmth shone out from behind the foliage.
“Cha’ril, check your—” The bright patch burst out of the bushes. His optics washed out as something splattered against his helm. He switched to the secondary cameras on his chest and caught sight of a blue and gray striped animal the size of a car just before it slammed into him. The impact staggered him back a step.
The creature’s wide, needle-tooth mouth clamped down on his left forearm and shook it from side to side hard enough to force a groan from the servos. Roland hauled his arm into the air, and hooked claws the size of scimitars ripped at his chest and legs. Roland struck the creature at the base of its neck, snapping the spine with a crack. It went limp, jaws still embedded in his armor.
Two pairs of black eyes on limp stalks lolled to the back of its flat head. The jaws slackened and it fell to the ground in a heap. Green slime sloughed off his arm. He lifted a hand to his marred optics, and a finger snapped open. Nitrogen mist sprayed out and froze the muck solid in an instant. He slapped the side of his head and the ice fell away.
“Nice of you to help,” Roland said.
Two more of the beasts lay at Cha’ril’s feet, her blade unsheathed from the housing and dripping black blood. She pried open the jaws of one with the flat of her blade, then pressed a digit to the side of its mouth. Green fluid spurted from a gland.
“Rather toxic,” she said. “Think we’ve found our killers.”
“Seemed intent on eating me…but the whole team is back there,” Roland said.
“Either of you see a stasis chest over there?” Gideon asked.
“No, sir,” Roland said.
The lance leader walked over and nudged one of the dead creatures with his foot.
“Good that you didn’t use your gauss weapons—might have alerted the Vish that we’re here,” he said.
“Yes, sir. That was our plan,” Roland said as he brushed dried venom off his arm.
“Found this.” Roland held up a small device between his fingertips. “Tracker unit for a stasis chest. Things cost almost as much as a starship, can’t have them getting lost.”
“The Vish were here,” Aignar said. “They must have taken the chest.”
“What’s the range on the tracker?”
“Higher we go, better chance we’ll have.” Gideon’s forearm snapped open and he dropped the tracker into a small chamber. “We need a mountaintop.”
Chapter 20
The four climbed a steep slope, trudging through driving rain and gusts of wind that would have knocked an unarmed human flying, until Gideon stopped at a flat summit. Roland stayed ready to keep going; this wouldn’t have been the first false stop up this cloud-covered mountain.
The lieutenant held up the arm with the tracker inside, and waited.
Roland opened a private IR channel to Aignar.
“What do we do when we find the Vishrakath?” Roland asked. “If the wildlife killed the pathfinders, then we’re not exactly at war with the Vish, are we?”
“We kill them,” Aignar said. “All of them. Vish consider anything but their leadership caste expendable—they extend that same courtesy to us.”
“And if we come across one of their leaders?”
Aignar shifted his perch against a cliff face. His arm blade snapped out, then retracted just as quickly.
“Low-frequency radio pulse in three…” Gideon opened a data connection with the other armor and the tracker in his arm pinged. A split second later, the stasis case responded and an icon in a wide, dashed circle appeared on Roland’s UI. The case sent another pulse and the circle shrank. He waited for the next pulse, but received only silence.
“The Vish broke the case?” Cha’ril asked.
“Or they’re jamming it,” Gideon said. “Either way, we know where it is…they’re close to the eye.”
“Here…” Roland zoomed in on his map and found the remains of a road through a swamp leading toward an eye. “They have to cross through this area to get to the eye. Ambush.”
“Not a lot of cover to hide behind in a swamp,” Aignar said.
“Shame on you, human,” Cha’ril said. “Did you learn nothing on Mars?”
****
Gray light wavered through the open viewport on Roland’s breastplate. What little sunlight made it through the raging hurricane diffused to a hazy memory of daylight by the time it passed through the two yards of swamp water over Roland. His armor was powered down completely; not even his womb’s life-support systems were active. He could survive for days on his hyper-oxygenated amniosis.
They’d been in place along the road for hours. The interlocking hexagons had eroded over the years, leaving gaps between the bricks. The shoulders had fallen into the swamp, forming a lumpy bed beneath the water for Roland to lie on.
I wonder who the Baradans were, he thought. Did they know future races would fight over the scraps of their empire as they were dying out? Did they extinguish themselves in the face of a Xaros invasion, maybe hoping something would outlast the drones, give them some kind of immortality? But hoping someone remembers you doesn’t strike me as the best plan.
He shook his head, swishing the amniosis across his face and churning the liquid through his womb.
Too much thinking for a combat mission.
As an electric blue eel with long, fin-tipped arms crawled across his view port, a wide eye with a horizontal iris looked into his armor.
Who’s the more alien here?
When a sharp thump passed through his armor from the ground beneath his back, Roland brought his armor online. He felt two more thumps and burst out of the water, mud and weeds running down his armor.
A pair of Vishrakath hover tanks and a dozen soldiers were on the road. The lead tank’s turret wavered between Roland on one bank of the collapsing road and Gideon on the other. Cha’ril and Aignar were on Gideon’s side, flanking the Vishrakath and forming a textbook L-shaped ambush.
The armor aimed their cannons at the road just short of the surprised Vishrakath. Roland felt the shock of their sudden appearance melt away as the aliens pulled close to their tanks, weapons ready but not trained on the armor.
We could have crushed them in an instant, Roland thought. But this is what Gideon wants.
A hatch flipped open on the lead tank, and a Vishrakath with a golden-embossed bandolier rose up, letting off a brief flurry of clicks from its mandibles.
“Move,” his suit translated.
“You have something of ours,” Gideon said, sidestepping directly into the path of the Vishrakath leader’s tank. “Give it to us and you’re free to go.”
“We have salvage, recovered from this extinct culture and ours by the Hale Treaty,” the tank commander said. “Do you want the subsection read to you?”
“Paragraph nine, clause ‘c’ of the recovery and exploitation section gives full possession of any items to the living culture that possesses it,” Gideon said. A blue line rippled down the Vishrakath’s pale flesh.
“It was not in human p
ossession when we found it. Your people were dead. Not our doing. We drove off the animals, paid respect to their remains.”
“That is the only reason you and the rest of your kind aren’t dead right now,” Gideon said, the rotary weapon on his shoulder spinning back and forth.
Roland and the other armor cycled bolts into their gauss cannons.
“Give us the artifact,” Gideon said. “This is my last courtesy to you.”
The water around Roland’s knees rippled. He activated a camera on his back and saw a pair of Vishrakath walkers coming through the rain, their limbs pulled tight to their bases, floating on an anti-grav field. Their legs stabbed into the road and the water lapping over the edges. Massive cannon arms unfolded and came to bear on Roland and Gideon.
Roland turned toward the new threat. As armor, he never thought he’d be outgunned by anything short of a starship, and the two Vishrakath walkers did not seem as intimidated as the alien foot soldiers.
Gideon stayed rooted in place.
“I’m done conversing with you abominations,” the tank commander said. “You will move or…wait…that mark…You were on Cygnus.”
One of the walkers moved forward, and power cables running up from the base of the cannon arms to the walker’s midsection came alive with a hum.
“We lost that world because of you,” the tank commander said.
“Roland,” Gideon sent over a tight IR beam, “on my mark you—”
The lead tank fired a bolt of plasma that caught Roland in the side and tore through his armor, kicking him forward and onto his knees. As he tried to get up, his armor felt sluggish, the sound of plasma blasts and gauss cannons erupting around him.
His ribs burned in pain, suffering along with his armor.
Unfurling the shield on his left arm, he got one foot up in front of him. The nearest walker leveled a massive cannon at him.
Roland felt the impact on his shield like the slap of a god’s hand against his chest, and the sharp tingle of pain across his limbs as the impact ripped him across the decaying road and into the water.
He drifted, his armor and body refusing to heed his mind’s commands. A single point of light opened in the distance and cold fear replaced the pain in his body.
Is this…am I…
The light grew brighter. He tried to pull away, but there was no escape.
“Roland,” a woman said. “You have to get up.”
Out of the blinding light, a figure in a wheelchair morphed into being, her face hidden behind a veil of gossamer stars. She looked into his eyes and her head tilted to the side.
“Fight.”
The world snapped back. Roland’s UI flashed damage reports, but it was still functioning. He lay half in, half out of the water. Both walkers were between him and his lance battling between the two hover tanks.
Rolling onto his hands and knees, Roland tilted to one side and saw that his left arm ended in a mangle of twisted metal just below the elbow. He steadied himself against the ground and sent out a radar pulse.
Lurching to his feet, he raised his anchor foot up and slammed it into the middle of the road. He went to one knee and brought his rail gun off his back and over his shoulder. Slapping a round into the breach, he angled his gun toward the nearest walker.
“I am armor.” Roland unleashed the rail gun and the thunderclap of the round accelerating off the vanes echoed across the valley. The hypervelocity bullet split the top of the walker like an ax.
Roland pulled his anchor and charged the remaining walker, aiming his gauss cannons at the missile pods on the back of the Vishrakath machine and pounding the armored compartment until a single bullet pierced through. The explosive cores of the micro-missiles erupted with a ripple, shaking the walker back and forth like the needle of a seismograph during an earthquake.
The walker charged power to a cannon aimed at a burning tank where Cha’ril and Aignar had taken cover.
Roland sprinted forward and unsheathed the blade in his right arm. He chopped down and severed the walker’s rear leg, tilting it backwards and angling the cannon blast into the hurricane above.
The walker recovered and swung a cannon at him like a club. Roland ducked forward, then leaped up. His remaining hand crushed the edge of an armor plate. He kicked off the side of the walker and rammed his anchor into its side.
Roland reared back and rammed his blade into the walker. The alien machine jerked and slapped a cannon at him. Roland knocked the blow aside and plunged his sword home again, twisting it to the side and roaring as he ripped it up and into the crew compartment. His blade slid free, covered in alien blood.
The walker trembled, then settled to the ground, cannons digging into the loose bricks.
Roland pulled his anchor free and dropped down, stumbling against the walker’s leg but raising his gauss cannons.
“Everyone…OK?” he called out. Dead Vishrakath littered the ground. Both tanks were smashed, the rear tank’s turret blown away and lying on its side in the swamp.
“Over here,” Gideon said.
Roland found the three standing around the Vishrakath commander, its legs broken and body torn open, bleeding into an expanding pool.
“I showed…your kind mercy,” it said.
“And that is why I will end your suffering,” Gideon said, and crushed the alien’s head with his foot.
“Find the case,” he said to the other armor. “Roland…” —he looked over the damaged armor— “status.”
“My womb is banged up, but the seals are good.” He touched the hole through the right side of his armor, then a massive dent on his helm. “I can still” —he turned around, as if he’d find the apparition behind him— “fight.”
“Got it.” Cha’ril held up a cube from a compartment on the back of a wrecked tank.
“Bring it here,” Gideon said. He pointed to Aignar, then to Roland.
Aignar grabbed him by the shoulders and ran a scan laser down Roland’s battered breastplate.
“You took one hell of a hit,” he said. “Thought we’d lost you.”
“Aignar…I saw her. I saw the Saint.”
Aignar froze for a moment, then put a hand to the back of Roland’s helm.
“I believe you…but keep this between us for now. OK?”
Roland’s helm bobbed up and down.
“Aignar?” Gideon asked as he mag-locked the stasis case onto Cha’ril’s back.
“His womb isn’t compromised. Synch rating is low, but the damage report he gave is sound,” Aignar answered.
“Can you transform?” Gideon asked Roland.
Roland shifted his treads out of the leg housings and settled back on his hips. His left leg caught on the way down, servos whining against each other. Aignar bashed a fist against Roland’s leg and it fell into place.
“Well done, Dragoons,” Gideon said, “but we’re not done yet.”
****
As they approached the eye, the wind and rain slackened. Sunlight glared down the sharply defined cloud walls, and stratified bands flowed around the eye.
The armor slowed down and shifted out of their travel configuration. In the distance, buildings covered in vines stood within the sunlight.
“Is it me, or does this seem unnatural?” Aignar asked.
“Everyone always complains about the weather,” Roland said. “Looks like the Baradans decided to do something about it.”
“If there’s a force field,” Cha’ril said, “can we get through?”
“Those Vishrakath tanks had to have come from here,” Gideon said, taking a tube off his back and touching one end to a port on his arm. He dropped it into his grenade launcher and it spat into the air with a thunk. A balloon popped out of the tube and it shot up and disappeared within the clouds.
“Extraction will be here soon,” the lieutenant said. He cycled rounds into his gauss cannon and ran forward.
Roland kept up, his gait awkward with half an arm missing and a slight limp in his left leg.
He flexed his left hand within the womb and got a stinging rebuke from his armor.
“Stop, or you’ll redline,” Gideon said. “If you upset the resonance between your suit and your plugs, it could form a feedback loop that’ll fry your brain.”
“Sorry, sir,” Roland said.
“Watch your sector,” Gideon said.
They crossed the city’s threshold, a deep dam directing water from the hurricane around the city and to the ocean on the other end of the eye. A stone bridge with a pair of tall statues on the near end extended over the gap. Moss covered the statues, both bulky humanoid shapes with wide heads and spindly arms. They almost looked like frogs to Roland.
Gideon radar-pulsed the bridge, then raised a hand.
“It’ll hold, but one at a time,” he said and ran across.
Roland went next and took cover next to a vine-choked building, columns of stacked amphibian-looking heads on each corner. He glanced around the roof to the crystal-clear azure skies above, the calm in sharp contrast to the passing storm. Dark pinpricks appeared above the calm, growing larger as they descended.
“Here come the birds,” Roland said.
“You’re right,” Gideon said, “but they’re not ours.”
A zoomed-in video feed came up on Roland’s UI. Domed ships on clusters of thrusters crossed beneath the upper edge of the hurricane. Pairs of Vishrakath fighters trailed the larger landing ships.
“Are they here because they heard us call for an exit,” Aignar asked, “or to pick up the other team?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Gideon raised his cannon arm. “Three of us will engage with rail cannons. Roland on overwatch. Let’s find their landing zone. It’ll be the easiest place to shoot them down…and probably where our flyboys will want to land.”
They ran through the city, the buildings rising in height as they neared the center. The vines stopped growing after the third story. Every building corner had the same set of statues, all flat-headed and double-eyed, frog-like humanoids holding spheres in their over-long fingers.
