by Richard Fox
“They seem a bit twitchy,” Aignar said.
“We’re in an enemy position,” Gideon said. “They must not know what happened out here—or that help’s arrived.”
“Some welcome,” Roland said.
“If we wish to avoid another rail shot,” Cha’ril motioned to a nearby stand of trees, “perhaps we should signal our intentions.”
Aignar planted a foot against a tree trunk and snapped it apart with a quick tug. He broke another and held the two trees like batons.
“My semaphore is weak,” he said. “Anyone remember how to send ‘Don’t shoot me’?”
“Wave the tree tops over the slope,” Gideon said. “They should get the message.”
****
On a holo map of Oricon, a dashed circle pulsed over Auburn.
“Scopes saw the armor disembark from their insertion torps,” Strickland said. “That high G of a maneuver didn’t look pleasant, but if anyone can shrug off that level of abuse, it’s the armor.”
“But no contact from that first lance?” Lettow asked.
“Negative. I’d say it’s from whatever’s scrambling commo in the atmosphere, not any issue with the landing,” Strickland said.
“Launch the rest of the armor to Auburn City,” Lettow swiped the picture aside and brought up a high altitude image from a probe. All their initial surveillance drones had failed to report back after entering the atmosphere. The next batch swung around the moon and sent back decent images. The colony’s main city looked largely intact, with some damaged buildings still smoking. The drones had picked up several work crews moving around the city. The colonists were still there, but they weren’t able to talk to his fleet.
“Aye aye,” Strickland said.
Lettow zoomed the holo tank out and looked over the system. His fleet hadn’t progressed far from the Crucible gate. The Ibarra ships and the unknown aliens were still moving apart, though the aliens seemed to be in less of a hurry than the other humans.
Amber light lit up around the inner wall of the holo tank. The holo shifted to the Crucible, where tiny flashes of light sparkled between the great black thorns making up the gate.
“What the hell?” Lettow magnified the gate and saw cracks running along the thorns.
“Explosives,” Strickland said. “Are they trying to destroy it? That’s insane. We could be trapped here forever.”
The flashes died away and Lettow felt a ball of ice in his stomach. He opened a channel to his captains.
“All ships, come about and return to the Crucible,” Lettow said. He watched as cracks grew through the thorns…then slowed to a halt. The gaps began closing of their own accord, but far slower than the speed at which the damage was done.
“The control nodes are wrecked,” Strickland said. “We couldn’t go back through if we tried. The Xaros built them to self-repair, but I don’t know how long that will take.”
“And no one’s getting in or out until that happens.” Lettow shook his head. The game had just changed.
He opened a channel to Commander Rusk, his chief engineer.
“Commander, get survey teams onto the Crucible as soon as possible. I need an estimate on when it’ll be operational again,” he said.
“And Oricon? The enemy?” Strickland asked.
“We lose the Crucible and we’ll have worse problems than whatever they’re up to,” the admiral said. “I need to know more by the time we have the gate up and running. Either the armor will get it to us or someone will decide to start talking.”
****
The Iron Dragoons waited outside the barricades as a truck pulled a gate open. A length of metal pitted with scorch marks and bullet strikes fell free and clattered against the ground, and a man and a woman in heavy jackets and holding standard-issue gauss rifles stood in the middle of the road just within the hasty barricades.
Villagers crowded around side streets, struggling to catch a glimpse of the armored warriors.
Gideon led his lance inside. He knelt to one knee in front of the pair, bringing his helm almost eye level with them.
“Did you find them?” asked a heavyset man with a thick beard. “The others said you were out there looking, but we haven’t heard anything for hours.”
“This day just gets weirder and weirder,” Aignar said on the lance’s private IR channel.
“I am First Lieutenant Gideon, Iron Dragoons, 2nd Regiment of the Terran Armored Corps,” Gideon said. “We made Crucible gate transit nine hours ago and planetfall not long ago. I do not know who, or what, you’re talking about.”
“Earth is here,” the woman said. “About God damn time. If it wasn’t for the Legion, the Kesaht would have taken all of us, not just the children.”
“I need you to start at the beginning,” Gideon said.
“I’m Tim Dinkins, project head and foreman out here,” the bearded man said. “This is my wife, Sally. Auburn City put out a general alert a few days ago when the Kesaht fleet arrived. They started landing troops and all our commo with the city went down. Then we lost contact with work crews and the primary-school field trip out at Lorraine Falls. The Legion is out there looking for them…they. They didn’t say anything to you? Our two boys are still out there. Forty-seven children in all. They didn’t say anything to you?”
“What happened after you lost contact?” Gideon asked.
“The Legion showed up. I thought they were doughboys the first time I saw them, but they’re just that damn big,” Dinkins said. “They helped us get organized and fought off the Kesaht for days. Then they all left a few hours ago, said reinforcements were on the way and they’d find our missing children and work crews.”
“How is this news to you?” Sally asked. “I did my stint in uniform. I know how crazy things get in a fight, but I don’t understand how armor—armor—can drop into a war zone blind.”
“A moment…” Gideon stood up and switched to the lance’s IR channel.
“They don’t know the Ibarras went renegade,” Roland said.
“Isn’t exactly common knowledge,” Aignar said. “Doubt these Legion-types showed up and gave them a primer on their politics.”
“If they’re renegades, why would they fight to protect these other humans?” Cha’ril asked. “I am a novice at human history, but your internecine splits are rarely peaceful.”
“The Kesaht and Ibarrans show up at the same place and at the same time,” Gideon said. “Not a coincidence.”
“What about the missing children?” Roland asked.
“That’s our best chance of figuring this out,” Gideon said. “If we find the lost, they’ll be with the Ibarrans or these Kesaht. Either way, we’ll get answers.”
“Bet they can tell us more about this Legion,” Aignar said. “Probably best to keep that we’re here to rein in the Ibarras close to the chest. Let’s not guess which side this outpost would take if they had to choose.”
“Fair enough.” Gideon went back to the Dinkinses.
A young man with a rail sniper rifle strapped to his back pushed his way through the crowd. He went pale and tried to elbow his way back when he saw Roland’s helm fixated on him.
“You,” Roland boomed from his speakers as he pointed at the sniper.
The sniper froze and the crowd backed away from him.
“I’m sorry!” the sniper squeaked and he lowered his head like a dog about to be struck. “Your optic popped up at the last place we saw the Rakka massing and I thought…that…”
“Do your sights have combat footage?” Roland asked.
“My what?” The sniper looked up sheepishly.
“Vortex mark 9 sights. They keep a recording of thirty seconds before and after every shot for evaluation.” Roland bent down and brought his helm close to the sniper.
“I admit it was me, okay? Just don’t crush my skull. I missed!”
“I want to see the enemy.” Roland reached for the rifle on the man’s back.
“Don’t touch that!” the snip
er shouted. “Don’t you ever touch my Fanny without asking!”
The crowd, which had been watching intently before, fell silent.
“You named your rifle…Fanny?” Roland asked.
The sniper’s head bobbed up and down. “I did. Yes. It seemed like a great idea up until this exact instant.”
Data wires popped out of the base of Roland’s wrist.
“Connect me to your optics,” Roland said. The sniper slung the bolt half off his back and plugged the wires into the boxy sites.
“What’s your name?” Roland asked.
“John Johansson. But everyone calls me Jo. And I’m really sorry I almost shot you.”
“I’m Roland. There’s a fog in war. One we do our best to see through. I’m just glad that you missed. Shoot straighter next time you see a …Rakka or a Kesaht.”
“The grunts are the Rakka. The whole bunch of alien shitheads are the Kesaht,” Jo said.
Roland’s computers downloaded the last of the sniper’s footage and shared it with the rest of his lance. He drew the wires back into his armor and stood up.
“If there’s someone else with footage from the battle, please bring it over,” Roland said.
Jo gave him a thumbs-up and ran back into the city.
Roland watched the most recent video and was surprised that the sniper managed to spot the optic as it peeked around rocks along the ridgeline. He went to the next file.
The clip began with the rifle pointed down at the inner wall of the barricade. The snap of gauss weapons and a hissing slash of energy weapons sounded through the background.
“Controller in this sector!” a deep voice boomed. “Take it out, Jo!”
The rifle swung up and across a soldier in black armor. Roland paused the feed and went back frame by frame until he found a decent image of the soldier. The power armor looked little different from the combat suits worn by the Rangers—thick armor plates over a pseudo-muscle layer that boosted the wearer’s strength and made wearing the heavy armor possible. The soldier carried an oversized gauss rifle, not of any design Roland had ever seen before. His face was hidden beneath a matte-black visor; the only marking on his armor was of an eagle within a laurel on his left shoulder.
So this is a legionnaire, he thought.
Roland’s computers measured the legionnaire from the camera angle and gave the man’s height at over six and a half feet tall. Unarmored weight at two hundred twenty pounds—by his build, none of it fat.
“They’ve got some big boys,” Aignar said. He sent an image capture from another video. Eight of the legionnaires, all similarly large and imposing, firing through the barricade. Roland magnified a section in the background. A legionnaire lay dead in a pool of blood, chest armor mangled.
“Sir.” Roland said and sent the picture to Gideon.
“Did they leave any wounded behind?” Gideon asked the foreman.
“No,” Dinkins said. “Any that were hurt managed to walk out of here. They flash-burned their dead and took the ashes with them. Not sure when the army started doing that.”
“Look at this.” Cha’ril sent a picture to the lance: a mob of red-armored aliens with wide, hunched shoulders charging toward the town, all wielding rifles connected to their arms and torsos with glowing cables.
“Those must be the Rakka,” Aignar said. “Armor looks like the mess we found earlier. They don’t look like they’re invertebrate goo creatures…some sort of biological reaction on death?”
“Not a trait we’ve seen in any sentient species,” Cha’ril said. “A failsafe? Xaros drones disintegrated upon destruction. Kept anyone from ever reverse-engineering their technology.”
“Then there’s this.” Aignar sent another screen capture: a taller, straight-backed figure behind the charging Rakka, partially obscured by tree trunks.
“Doesn’t look like the same species,” Roland said. “Maybe an evolved leadership caste? The Toth overlords were vastly different from their warriors and menials.”
“Being a brain in a jar makes you vastly different than most anything,” Aignar said.
“Could these be separate xeno-types working in concert?” Cha’ril asked. “That would be unusual. Only humans have ever integrated other species into their military units with my people and the Karigole.”
“Interesting observations aside,” Roland said, “why is there no record of them? They’re using the Crucible jump gates. Every race that can do that was part of the old Alliance. We had to co-opt Xaros technology to use the network and build new gates. These Kesaht just show up out of thin air? Something doesn’t add up.”
“They either possess Xaros-level technology,” Cha’ril said, “or someone in the old Alliance gave them the technology.”
“I don’t see a sky dark with killer drones, so let’s assume the former,” Aignar said.
“Listen up,” Gideon said, breaking away from the foreman, “the locals said the Ibarras destroyed any Kesaht transports they found in the air during the initial fight. Given the terrain and that they haven’t seen anything else go for orbit, there are two likely places we can find the missing colonists.”
Two shaded circles appeared on Roland’s map overlay, both in opposite directions from the work camp.
“If we find the missing, we’ll likely find the Ibarras and the Kesaht,” Gideon said.
“What’s the priority?” Roland asked.
Gideon was silent for a few moments, an uncharacteristic hesitation from the lieutenant.
“The civilians,” he said. “The Ibarrans fought and died to protect them. I won’t let a pack of traitors do our job for us. Secure the prisoners and bring them home. Detaining the Ibarrans is secondary. You’re authorized to use lethal force if they resist.”
“And the Kesaht?” Cha’ril asked.
“Unless it interferes with our other missions, kill them on sight.” Gideon racked gauss shells into his forearm-mounted cannons. “The camp will send up an IR relay balloon. I want hourly updates through pigeons if you’re out of IR line of sight, contact reports as soon as you can send them. Roland, Cha’ril, search the eastern area. Aignar and I will go west. Good hunting.”
****
Admiral Lettow reached into his holo tank and slowly turned the image of the damaged Crucible gate around. The cracks in the great construct’s thorns were still visible. Work crews in vac suits flit around the damage like flies on the wounds of a felled animal.
“Commander Rusk, status report,” Lettow sent to the chief engineer on the Crucible.
“Omnium stores around the gate are intact.” A woman in a vac helmet came up in the holo tank. “We’re feeding that into the damaged thorns, kind of like calking over a leak. Should accelerate the self-repair sequence by several days. But we’re finding secondary devices all over the place. Explosives ordnance disposal teams are defusing them as soon as we find them.”
“And the nature of these devices? Human or alien?” Lettow asked.
“Both, sir, which is the damnedest thing. Some are textbook sabotage devices out of Strike Marine training. Easy to deal with. Alien ones are limpet-type devices, cling right onto the spikes. They’ve some anti-tamper systems, but the engineers found a bypass easy enough. Not the most complex devices we’ve ever seen.”
A picture of a crab-like device at the end of a spike tip popped up.
“Any danger of a remote detonation?” Lettow asked.
“We’ve got scramblers up. EOD isn’t worried, but if they start running, I’m going with them.”
“I want that gate repaired and safe to use as soon as possible,” Lettow said.
“Should have the surface and interior swept in another few hours,” Rusk said. “The control nodes were badly damaged. Not a lot we can do about those but wait.”
“I want regular updates. Lettow out.”
“Why would the Ibarras and these new aliens both rig the Crucible?” Commander Strickland, Lettow’s operations officer, asked.
“Keeps rei
nforcements out,” Lettow said. “We came through and tossed a monkey wrench into their plans. I’d bet the aliens thought we were their backup, same as the Ibarras. Now we’re all stuck here together.”
“And whoever damaged the Crucible cut off our cavalry,” Strickland said.
“I’d wager some very frustrated ship drivers on the other end of different Crucibles are trying to get in here,” Lettow said.
“Admiral,” the ensign at the communications station stood up and waved, “we’re being hailed by the Matterhorn, the Ibarran ship. Audio only.”
“About time,” Lettow said. “Put it through.” He swiped the Crucible to the side and pulled up the system map. The Ibarra fleet was still orbiting Satsunan, well out of firing distance from the alien fleet. The aliens were on a slow vector passed Oricon and toward the Crucible. At their current velocity, Lettow and the 14th wouldn’t have to deal with them for days.
A blank silhouette of a person’s head and shoulders appeared in the holo tank.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice asked. “Who’s there?”
“This is Admiral Lettow of the Terran Union Navy. Identify yourself.”
“I am Admiral Faben.”
Lettow’s brow furrowed. He wagged a finger at Strickland, who began tapping furiously on his control screens.
“Faben…” Lettow said. “I’ve been in the navy for several decades. I don’t recall ever hearing about an Admiral Faben.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of you either. So we’re even,” Faben snapped back.
Strickland tossed a screen capture into the holo tank. A list of every admiral in the old Atlantic Union and the new Terran Union appeared. There was no Faben on the roster. Lettow signaled to him to keep searching.
“I think we’re done with pleasantries,” Lettow said. “Faben, your fleet is on open mutiny. You have attacked naval ships and murdered their crews. You’ve engaged in unauthorized hostilities with an alien power. You will surrender immediately and prepare to receive my security teams to take command of your ships. There is no need for violence, but any disobedience will be met with appropriate force.”
