by Richard Fox
“I never thought I’d prefer being strapped down in the cargo bay,” Roland said.
“Don’t know about you, but I’m about done with cargo anything.” Aignar raised his helm and looked back to the moon. “I see the other Mules and our escorts. No contrails. We’re on anti-grav thrusters now.”
Ahead, the Kesaht battleship continued its course, skirting the moon on the way to the Crucible gate. The flash of the 13th Fleet’s rail cannons and Kesaht plasma bolts crisscrossed space near the Crucible. The gas giant loomed beyond the battleship, like a baleful eye watching the conflict.
“Fleet said they tracked the shuttle with the kids to that battleship.” Roland accessed the tracker in his forearm, checking that it was fully charged and integrated into his system.
“Damn big ship for the four of us to go poking around,” Aignar said.
“The tracker will narrow down where to look on the ship,” Roland said. “Just hope we can fit in their hallways.”
“Those Sanheel are our size, shouldn’t be a problem…Why do you think they want the kids so badly? The Kesaht pulled a battleship off the line to make the pickup. I’m no ship driver, but that doesn’t strike me as the best tactical decision.”
“Doesn’t matter. They’re counting on us. Their parents are counting on us.” Roland touched the sword hilt still locked to his leg.
“What’re you going to do with that when we get back to Mars?” Aignar asked.
“You think the big brass will let me keep it?”
“You think they’re going to let you walk around with concrete proof that armor’s gone renegade? Unless you want to trade it for a nice hand receipt from the military police, we need to find a sailor unburdened by scruples to get it to Mars for us.”
“I doubt Gideon would buy that I dropped it somewhere and don’t know where it went. He used to be enlisted like you. Knows all the same tactics that straight commissioned officers don’t know yet.”
“And Cha’ril would narc on us in a heartbeat,” Aignar said.
“She’s been acting strange lately,” Roland said. “Ever since her leave to Dotari was cancelled, she’s been…”
“Prickly? I noticed. Maybe she’s got a boyfriend back home.”
“She won’t even say why her leave was cancelled. Not for performance or behavior issues, that’s for sure.”
“Some Dotari political thing?” Aignar asked. “They seem pretty stable on their home world, but up until a few days ago, I thought everything was hunky-dory for Earth. Now…where is the Ibarra fleet? You have any idea where those legionnaires went?”
“One fight at a time, right?”
“The recruiter never said the Armor Corps would be boring.”
The turret gunner tapped against his cupola, then toward the rear of the Mule.
A hand reached over the edge and slapped against the hull, locking a magnetic hand grip onto the metal. A crewman crawled over the edge and snapped another mag lock attached to his knee onto the Mule. He lugged a case up over the edge, then crawled toward Roland.
“You look nervous,” Aignar said.
“I hate…EVA,” the man said. He was sweating profusely, soaking a cloth band around his forehead with impressive speed. “First, I had to put together an anti-grav impeller while on ascent. Now I get to carry this damn heavy thing to you while that dickhead Gurski films me and laughs his ass off.”
In the turret, the gunner had his data slate out and was indeed laughing, the sound hidden behind the vacuum of space.
“Because he knows I hate EVA,” the crewman said, creeping forward, “and he knows it’s supposed to be my turn in the turret.” He stopped and passed the case to Roland. The armor removed an anti-gravity generator with a giant handle welded to the frame.
The crewman pressed his middle finger to the turret, which made Gurski laugh even harder.
“Where’s mine?” Aignar asked.
“Yes, sir.” The crewman crawled back to the edge of the Mule. “On its way.”
Gurski rotated the turret around for a new selfie with his struggling crewmate.
“Aignar,” Roland said.
Aignar tapped a finger against the turret twice. The gunner’s head snapped to one side and he went pale as Aignar’s helm stared at him. Aignar opened his hand as wide as the gunner’s head, then pinched the fingertips together. Gurski pocketed his data slate. The armor jerked a thumb toward the approaching battleship, and Gurski nodded so fast Roland thought he’d break his neck. Then the turret turned toward the fore of the Mule and the gunner focused on his duties.
“Armor, this is your pilot,” came from the Mule. “We are one hundred seconds from your release point. What’s your status?”
“Your EVA just delivered the second impeller,” Roland said. “He needs to get inside or the blowback might send him Dutchman.”
“Love my job.” The crewman muttered, crawling away a little faster. “Love my job. Love my job.”
“It’ll take us at least ten minutes before we can reorient for a pickup,” the pilot said. “We’ll wait for your signal after that. Good hunting.”
Roland activated the impeller and felt a slight tug as the anti-grav waves formed.
“Release in ten…” the pilot said. Roland lessened the mag lock between his forearm and the anchor point on the Mule and braced his feet against the hull. “Three…two…one…go!”
Roland stood up to a crouch and activated the impeller. It accelerated, dragging him along with it. He looked back and saw Aignar catching up to him and the Mule turning back to Oricon.
“Really wish they’d had some proper jetpacks in that supply yard,” Aignar said. “At least the navy had breach charges for us. I’m not sure why Gideon wanted Cha’ril to carry the denethrite, and not me.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Roland said flatly.
The battleship grew nearer and Roland angled the impeller toward the sharp edge along the side of the hull. He zoomed in on open missile tubes, point defense emplacements, and fighter bays with crescent-shaped fighters held fast on their launch rails. If the Kesaht saw the armor on approach, there wasn’t any sign of a response.
Gideon and Cha’ril waited at the rendezvous point, both lying with their backs and feet against the hull. Roland swung the impeller away from the ship and pulsed the anti-grav, slowing him to the point where he set down on the hull with hardly a sound. Aignar landed a few meters away.
Roland felt the thrum of the battleship’s engines through the hull, the irregular hull plates making him feel like he was on a cliff looking up at a peak of a shattered mountain.
“Cha’ril, set the charge,” Gideon said. “Roland, let’s hope that tracker’s still working.”
“On it.” Roland accessed the tracker and brought up the control menu on his HUD. He readied the PING command and looked over the edge to the other half of the battleship. A glass pyramid at the center of the slope stuck out like a sore thumb.
“If I had to guess…” Roland activated the ping and waited as the tracker cycled through radio frequencies. A blob of light came up on his HUD, six dots just below and to port from a cannon battery.
“I would have guessed wrong,” Roland said. “There’s only six returns. Still nine children unaccounted for.”
“Scan again before we breach,” Gideon said. “Cha’ril, you set?”
“Denethrite locked down and detonator set,” she said. “I gave you all the trigger codes before we left the ground.”
“Think this will be enough to destroy the ship?” Aignar asked.
“Terrans used half as much denethrite in the warheads that took out Toth cruisers and Xaros constructs,” she said. “This is overkill. Not that I’m complaining. Explosions are meant to make a statement.”
“Move out.” Gideon said and then flipped over the edge, using his impeller to skim along the battleship’s surface. Roland followed, scanning for any sign they’d been detected while he maneuvered around the uneven hull.
G
ideon came to a stop in a small defilade next to the battery. He locked his impeller to the hull and pressed his palm against the dull red metal. Tiny spurts of atmosphere escaped around his fingertips as probes burrowed into the ship.
The Dragoons locked their impellers to their backs.
“They’re running under atmo…stupid,” Gideon said. “Damn amateur hour if they get into a void fight with their hull full of oxygen that can fuel fires and a medium for blast waves to blow the ship apart. No wonder they haven’t overrun the 13th.”
“Yet,” Cha’ril said. “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
Roland zoomed in on the glass pyramid, where several Sanheel worked in different tiers. One wore a golden sash over its chest and had red-colored lanterns fixed to the armor over where the leg joined the rest of the alien’s body.
“The captain, I presume,” he said. “Doesn’t look like they’re in any state of alert.”
“Found a corridor.” Gideon pointed to the edge of the defilade. “No burn cord, the explosion would put the hostages at risk. Use a breach-and-seal kit.”
“Roger, sir.” Roland opened a small case on his lower back and removed a compact metal frame. He snapped it open with a flick of his wrist and stretched it out to a square just large enough for his shoulders to fit through. He pressed the frame against the hull for a moment, and a small drill spike bored into the dull red surface. Cutting lasers ran up and down the four sides, sawing into the hull. Air hissed out of the cuts, then a square breach fell into the ship.
Roland jumped into the ship, minding the thin metal lines still gripping the outer hull section pressed to the deck. The Kesaht corridor was wide, with slightly raised walkways on the sides and two sets of cargo rails running along the floor. He pinged the tracker again, and five signals returned to him, all in the same location.
Air rushed past him, escaping through the breach. The whoop of emergency sirens grew fainter as the air thinned to almost nothing.
“Clear,” Aignar said as he jumped down. The breach kit lifted the hull section back up and sealed the gaps along the edges with foam that hardened instantly.
“I’ve got them,” Roland said. He ran down the corridor and thanked the Saint that the Kesaht built their ships to accommodate the larger Sanheel. He had barely enough room to spread his arms while on the Scipio, and getting around the much larger Ardennes in his combat configuration was a chore.
Air pressure returned, forced through vents along the ceiling. Roland heard the clunk of a door opening around a corner. He took the corner at speed and bore down on a half-dozen Rakka carrying welding tools and wearing helmeted void suits.
The Rakka were stunned at the sudden appearance of the towering armor charging right for them. Roland thought that he would have likely reacted the same way if he was told to go repair a hull breach and was greeted by an alien mechanical monstrosity.
He used their brief shock to close the distance, then crush five of them against the bulkhead with a single kick. One ducked away from the blow and tried to scamper away. Roland slapped a hand over its head and crushed its skull. He picked up one of the Rakka welding tools, a metal pole with a torch at the end, and jammed it into the doorframe where the engineer team had come from. He wedged another torch into the other side.
“Should buy us some time,” he said to his lance.
The whoop of the warning siren changed to a high-pitched double chirp. The passageway’s lights changed from white to red, then back and forth, over and over again.
“I don’t know Sanheel shipboard operations,” Aignar said, “but let’s assume they know we’re here.”
“Keep moving,” Gideon said.
Roland heard grunts and barked commands farther down the connecting hallway. Rakka rushed around a corner and fired on Roland, the bang of their rifles echoing off the walls. Bullets bounced off Roland’s chest and the side of his helmet. He deployed his shield from his left arm and ducked behind it to protect the sensitive optics in the helmet that the Rakka were aiming for. He brought his rotary cannon up and over the edge of his shield and let off a two-second burst that shredded the oncoming Rakka.
He backed up and turned to follow the rest of the lance. The aliens weren’t returning fire—his attack had been effective.
At a T-intersection at the end of the corridor, Cha’ril and Aignar had their shields out, firing their gauss cannons around the corners. Gideon had one hand pressed to the ceiling, his probes scouting the surrounding structures.
A Sanheel rifle shell struck the deck and ripped through the utility lines beneath the plating. A fountain of water spurt into the air and was quickly burnt into steam by another Sanheel shot.
There was a thwack as an alien shell hit home. Cha’ril pulled back from her spot against the wall, a spike a foot and a half long embedded in her shield. She swept her cannon arm down the shield and broke the spike, leaving the metal tip still embedded, then stuck her twin-gauss cannons around the corner and fired off a double shot, earning a scream of pain from down the hallway.
“We can get to the children’s location,” Gideon said, “but both options are full of hostiles.”
Roland activated the tracker, and three dots appeared, all on just the other side of the wall. A realization sent a chill through his heart.
“They’re killing them.” Roland ran past Gideon through the line of fire, and smashed a fist against the bulkhead separating him from the chamber with the kidnapped children. His first blow tore through the wall, and he gripped the breach with both hands and pulled. The tear widened with a screech of metal. Inside were dark boxes the shape of coffins and glass pods along the walls filled with deep-blue fluid.
A Sanheel spike ripped the anti-grav impeller off Roland’s back. He kicked at the bottom of the gap he’d opened and created an opening big enough for him to get through. He stepped past one of the pods and snapped his gauss cannons to one side.
Two children sat on a raised dais at the end of the chamber, both hunched forward, their hands cuffed. The third sat on the lap of a humanoid alien that had thin limbs that would have brought it to eight feet tall if standing, and almond-shaped eyes that wrapped around its temples. Glittering cables ran from the base of its skull to a heavy collar that drooped over its shoulders and down to the middle of its chest. It stroked the hair of the child on its lap, who winced every time the alien touched it.
One of the coffins was half-open; inside was a girl maybe eight years old. Her eyes were closed, and hair floating around her face like she was underwater. Light glowed around her from inside the box.
“My, my,” the alien said, “the stories of your ferocity are true. Amazing that such aggression can evolve from something as innocent as this.” It wrapped a long finger around the boy’s neck.
From the hallways, the sound of gunfire died away.
Roland advanced into the chamber, cannons leveled at the alien’s face.
“You want to see fury?” Roland asked. “Hurt one more child and you’ll get to see it firsthand. I’ll turn your corpse into a testimony of just how angry we can get.”
“I’ve not hurt anyone,” it said. “I am Tomenakai, of the Ixio, of the great Kesaht unity that will welcome humanity, if only you submit.”
“Then what did you do to her?” Roland glanced at the girl in the box.
“Stasis,” Tomenakai said. “These broodlings are so afraid. It will make the journey home so much easier for them. I told them of the gift we were going to give them…once we work past a few biological issues.”
“They’re going to put computers in our brains,” said the boy sitting at Tomenakai’s feet. “Take away our thoughts. Make us do what they want.”
“Submission for peace,” the alien said, “the end of conflict, the end of want. Sanctuary from all fear and desire. You will realize how noble our offer is, especially in light of humanity’s crimes. Your genocide. If base savages like you can be redeemed, the whole galaxy can live in the paradise the Kesaht ca
n provide.”
“I am taking the children with me.” Roland stepped closer to the dais. “That will happen. Killing you is optional.”
Tomenakai gripped the child’s throat a bit tighter and opened his mouth to hiss at Roland. Fangs extended from its mouth. Roland lowered his gauss cannons and brought his hand just over the hilt mag-locked to his leg.
“But I need them,” the alien said. “Human adults have failed to accept our unity. The false minds in weed bodies are too aberrant. The solution lies with your young. If they can be brought into unity and absolved of your race’s crimes, then you all can be redeemed. If not, then all of humanity must be purged.”
Shadows emerged in the pods. Humans floated into view, all with their skulls exposed, cybernetic parts fixed to their brain matter. All had their mouths open in silent screams.
The children began whimpering.
“Failure is the price of science,” Tomenakai said. “If I examine the union between your brain and your armor, the solution might—”
Roland snatched the hilt off his thigh and lunged at the Ixio, activating the sword and snapping out the blade. The tip stabbed through the alien’s neck and burst out the back. Roland twisted the sword and popped the alien’s head clean off. He chopped the blade down and severed the hand gripping the little boy’s neck.
The boy jumped off the alien’s lap and ran to the boy on the dais, who unwrapped the hand from the other’s neck and threw it away. The two boys hugged each other, the younger almost bawling into the other’s chest.
There was no blood from the alien’s body; only clear fluid seeped out of the cuts.
“This will be remembered,” came from Tomenakai’s head where it lay on the dais. “The final act of humanity’s damnation!”
Roland put a foot against the alien’s head.
“Our salvation will never come from you.” Roland said and then stabbed his anchor spike through the alien’s head, splattering it across the dais.
The snap of gauss cannons resumed.
“Roland!” Gideon shouted. “We can’t hold them off forever!”
Roland went to the three children and bent down.
