by Richard Fox
“Mommy! Daddy!” Ben fell into his parents’ arms and the four hugged each other.
Tim Dinkins looked up at Roland and mouthed a thank-you. Roland nodded and turned to a group of anxious-looking scientists. One held up an empty specimen jar. Roland dropped the severed hand inside and the scientists practically giggled as they looked it over.
“Anything else you can tell about the specimen?” asked a woman in a lab coat.
“It didn’t die when I cut its head off,” Roland said.
She looked up from her data slate. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘cut off’?”
“Yes. With my sword,” Roland said.
The woman swallowed hard and backed up a step.
“It stopped talking after I crushed its skull.” Roland lifted his foot and extended his anchor tip out of his heel. “There might be some of it on there.”
She covered her mouth and ran off.
“What?” Roland kept his foot up as another scientist scraped gray matter off his spike.
“You get her number?” Aignar asked as he walked over.
“You find out what our next mission is?”
“Squat and hold until transport arrives. The captain’s working the mission details now,” Aignar said.
“I’m low on ammo and I need to recharge or hot swap my batteries.” Roland put his foot down as the scientist left with the sample.
“Cap said we’ll get that on the transport. We move soon as they hit dirt,” Aignar said. “I didn’t get all the details, but I heard ‘Ibarra’ a couple times.”
Roland looked over at Sobieski, standing in the middle of an ad-hoc communications node bristling with directional antennae.
“The captain’s Templar,” Roland said. “Should we tell him about the sword? This Morrigan person?”
“You go over Gideon’s head and he’s liable to crush yours with good reason,” Aignar said. “If the Corps had suspicions about the Templar, even aspirants like us, they’ll only get worse after this. You give even an impression we’re loyal to anything but the chain of command and you’ll look guilty.”
“If Gideon goes straight to General Laran with this—”
“He’d jump both Sobieski and Colonel Martel. Gideon’s a hard-ass. He may not like the Templar, but he’s as straight as they come.”
Roland touched the hilt on his leg.
“Politics. Hated it in school. Didn’t think I’d ever deal with it in the Armor Corps.”
“It’s more for the big brass. Line grunts like us get to focus on killing bad people and breaking their nice things. But…look at that.” Aignar said, pointing to the edge of the flight line, where the rescued children were looked over by doctors and run through decontamination spray boxes. “Families. Families made whole because you refused to fail them. Imagine the hell those parents would have gone through if those alien shitheads got away with those kids. War is shit. Death. Destruction.” He cocked his head toward the chaos of the wrecked supply yard. “We’re lucky to get through it with scars and nightmares. But you, kiddo, you were a goddamn hero today. When those bad days come, and they’ll come, don’t ever forget this moment—the smiles on those kids’ faces.”
“You were there too,” Roland said.
“The Saint was with us. Maybe we can go to her shrine when we get back to Mars.”
Roland thought back to the small cave where Kallen was interred within her armor and he tasted her “tears” again.
“We should…I would like to see her again.”
Over the spaceport, four corvettes descended from orbit.
“Dragoons,” Gideon came over the IR.
“Always ready, sir,” Roland said.
“The Scipio picked us up in orbit. Report to her soon as she lands. We are needed.”
Chapter 17
The maintenance rig around Roland’s armor almost felt like home. A team from the Scipio’s crew worked to ream and recharge his armor, operating with none of the finesse of the Iron Dragoons’ dedicated team of Brazilian armor tenders. Master Chief Henrique had cross-trained this group of navy ratings. Roland could almost hear the chief’s colorful Portuguese euphemisms as the sailors struggled to load a fresh case of gauss shells into Roland’s ammo stores.
The rest of his lance stood in their bays, recharging off the ship’s batteries. Gideon was off their network, online with Captain Sobieski and the other commanders.
“But what did that big ugly mean about ‘humanity’s sins,’?” Aignar asked. “This is our first contact with them. It’s not going great, but it sounds like he’s talking about something else.”
“The Ibarras have interacted with them in the past,” Cha’ril said. “Perhaps they committed some diplomatic slight or killed a Kesaht leader. Such things have happened before.”
“The Ixio had human bodies in its lab. The Ibarras knew how to fight them,” Roland said. “I’d think the Ibarras wrote a check that Earth gets to cash, but he accused us all of xenocide. I don’t know when, where, or why the Ibarras would exterminate an alien species. Seems a bit far-fetched.”
“Humanity destroyed the Xaros,” Cha’ril said. “Annihilated their Dyson sphere and sent their drones into the nearest star.”
“That was the old Alliance,” Aignar said. “Us, the Dotari, Ruhaald, Qa’Resh—before they up and vanished—don’t know why these Kesaht would single us out. I don’t see any of the Xaros in these Kesaht. The Xaros wiped out every intelligent species they encountered. That Ixio was talking about some grand union through brain implants. Doesn’t fit.”
“So the xenocide he’s talking about probably isn’t the Xaros…then who?” Roland asked.
Aignar turned his helm to Gideon.
“The lieutenant got hurt pretty bad by the Toth,” Aignar said. “Still totes around some of their claws. But he never mentions them. No one ever talks about the Toth anymore. They showed up around Earth, demanded proccie tech and that we hand over a significant portion of our population. Sure, 8th Fleet—may the Saint preserve them—kicked their ass and sent them packing, but High Command doesn’t even list them as a threat species. We don’t even train to fight Toth targets.”
“The Breitenfeld carried out a punitive mission against Toth leadership soon after the incursion,” Cha’ril said. “They killed the senior Toth overlord and rescued a number of prisoners from the planet…Nibiru, I think it was. The Toth were said to have descended into civil war after that. Then the Qa’Resh destroyed all the jump engines before they vanished. The Toth are very likely stuck in their home systems with no means for faster-than-light travel.”
“The tech for making Crucible gates was disseminated across the old Alliance…if they had it, we would have encountered them again,” Roland said.
“The Toth were not part of the Alliance,” Cha’ril said. “Therefore, they did not receive the Crucible technology. The answer is evident. No species would willingly contact a race of slavers and murderers. We are well aware of what the Toth do to prisoners.”
“There were some crazy stories from the end of the war,” Aignar said. “Especially from the Breitenfeld’s crew. Weird energy beings. Giant machines feeding off suns.”
“Didn’t the Breitenfeld’s crew get preferential colony assignments after the war? I don’t think any of them are on Earth. Who was there at the end?” Roland asked. “Colonel Hale went on that deep-space colony mission. Admiral Valdar is on some secret assignment…”
“Miss Bailey was badly injured at the last battle,” Cha’ril said. “She says she doesn’t remember much of what happened.”
“The Ibarras were there,” Aignar said. “I bet they know everything.”
“We might have a chance to ask them,” Gideon said. “Our mission plan is coming through. I’ll share it in a moment.”
“Sir, what happened to the Toth after the Ember War?” Roland asked.
“This is relevant, how?” Gideon asked.
“Something the Ixion said to me while he was ranting about ‘fal
se minds and weed bodies’—”
“Stop,” Gideon said. “Are you sure he said that? Those exact words?”
“I’m sure,” Roland said. “Do they mean something?”
“It’s…nothing, just jogged some old memories.” Gideon’s armor brushed fingertips across the helm, tracing his facial scars. “The Toth are a low-threat priority. We train for fights we’re likely to have. Not theoreticals.”
“But what happened to them?” Aignar asked. “It’s like they vanished.”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Gideon said. “We have enough enemies without picking fights with old ones. You three ready for our real-world mission or do you want to keep playing ‘what if?’”
The lance remained silent for a moment.
Gideon activated a holo projector in the ceiling of the Scipio’s bay, the gas giant Oricon Prime and her moons forming over the hellhole. An icon for a small flotilla of corvettes and destroyers popped up between the colony moon and the pale-brown planet. A dashed line for the flotilla’s course ran over the planet’s north pole.
“Just what the Ibarras want with this system was a mystery until a few hours ago,” Gideon said. “When the Ibarras first arrived in system, they had this exchange with the governor.”
Two pictures came up in the holo, one of a recorded video of Governor Paletress, a woman in her late forties with short bobbed hair, the other a still silhouette of a person’s head and shoulders.
“Where is it?” A wave form matching the words appeared beneath the silhouette. “Your survey records from six days ago show exactly where it is. Stop toying with me.”
“Admiral…Faben, was it?” Paletress sighed heavily. “As I’ve told you, we don’t process the raw data. We; we simply compile and send it on to Earth for analysis. Three hours before you arrived, High Command restricted the data with a clearance level I’ve never seen, and one neither you nor I have the codes to unlock. Your demands are most irregular and I don’t see how—”
“You still have the raw data,” Faben said. “Send it to me.”
“Admiral,” the governor said, putting a hand to her face, “the data is encrypted. There’s no way you can access it without the key cipher. My programmers say that even with a quantum dot—”
“Send it. To. Me.”
“I will not.” The governor squared her shoulders. “This system is under the colonial administration. It is not under military jurisdiction, and even if it was under my control to release it to you, I wouldn’t give it to you, even on the off chance you might choke on it.”
The governor looked offscreen.
“Another Crucible wormhole.” She narrowed her eyes and one corner of her mouth pulled back in a smile. “Let’s hope it’s the alert fleet I requested from Earth come to teach you some decorum.” The governor’s eyes narrowed, then she went pale. “What are those ships? Who are they? Jackson, run a full scan and—”
The two frames blinked off.
“You can piece together the story up until now,” Gideon said. “The Kesaht landed troops on Oricon and the Ibarras fought a running battle for three days until our fleet arrived. Fleet intelligence went looking through the data the Ibarras asked for and found it had been accessed not long after we arrived.”
“The Ibarras put spies on the moon,” Roland said. “They must have landed them along with their legionnaires.”
“Not just the moon,” Gideon said. “An infiltrator’s been discovered on the fleet. Intelligence thinks there’s a significant risk of there being more spies, or sleeper agents, within the fleet’s proccie crew.”
“But the true born aren’t suspect,” Roland said. “That’s why the admiral’s sent the armor on this mission? We can be trusted.”
“That wasn’t put out in the mission order,” Gideon said, “but I agree with your assessment.”
Aignar looked down at the hilt on Roland’s leg.
“The fleet’s computer techs found that the data the Ibarran commander demanded was no longer encrypted at all. The storage units were a bit older…and built by the Ibarra Corporation,” Gideon said.
“They built themselves a back door into the system,” Cha’ril said.
“The data was from a probe doing deep radar scans of the gas giant,” Gideon said. The holo zoomed to the north pole, an ivory white storm several times the size of Earth. A blinking black square appeared near the center.
“What is it?” Roland asked.
“An anomaly is all we know right now,” Gideon said. “From what the probe could detect, it out-masses the Crucible gates and there’s probably more of it beneath the storm layer.”
“It must be an artifact of a dead species,” Aignar said. “Nothing like that has ever been found in a gas giant. The gravity, and…this was buried in a report for bean counters on Earth to look at? I thought the Path Finder Corps would jump all over this.”
“The probe’s software classified it as an error,” Gideon said. “How the Ibarras learned about it before the data scrubbers on Earth begs a number of questions.”
“More spies,” Roland muttered.
“Soon after the Ibarrans accessed the data, their fleet changed course for Oricon Prime.” Gideon zoomed in closer on the anomaly. A grainy black dome appeared in the snow-white storm.
“We don’t have as far to go and are faster. Captain Tagawa is certain we’ll beat the Ibarras to the finish line. Our mission is to secure the artifact. Prevent the Ibarras from leaving with anything of value.”
“How would the Ibarras get away with it?” Aignar asked. “Damn thing’s bigger than the Crucible gate.”
“Such structures have been encountered before,” Gideon said. A holo of a sphere with circular gaps in the surface appeared. Beneath the outer layer spun a similar inner shell, beneath that was another, and another. “Qa’Resh primogenitor technology.”
“That’s what the Vishrakath were after on Barada,” Roland said. “They risked a full-scale war for it.”
“That was a fragment. This…is considerably more,” Gideon said.
“Turn it off,” Cha’ril said. “It makes my head hurt.”
The spinning object faded away.
“Admiral Lettow will move the entire fleet to secure the area once the Crucible is repaired and reinforcements from Earth arrive,” Gideon said. “The Ibarras don’t have the ships to stand up to our line, but he’s not going to risk leaving the gate vulnerable and them locking us into the system again. The corvettes will insert us into the relict. Then we hold tight until the fleet arrives.”
“And if we encounter the Ibarras?” Roland asked.
“Our orders remain. They surrender or they will be destroyed.”
****
The Scipio rocked as it descended through the polar storm. Roland had his feet locked to the deck, looking down through the ship’s hellhole and into what looked like a blizzard raging just beneath the ship. The rest of the Dragoons formed a circle with him around the hole.
“Think we should ask Captain Tagawa how she’s doing on the bridge?” Aignar asked. “I feel like we’re in a Mule flying through a hurricane.”
“I think she was dead serious about ripping your head off and defecating down your neck if you bothered her again,” Cha’ril said.
“Scipio’s a good ship,” Gideon said. “Trust her and her crew.”
“Easy to trust when you’re just along for the ride,” Aignar said. “Not like you have any other options.”
The ship wobbled from side to side. A supply crate broke loose from its moorings and went skidding across the deck at Roland. He slapped a hand down and stopped it dead in its tracks.
Roland looked up, then shifted his weight from foot to foot. The turbulence was gone.
“Landing zone in sight,” Gideon said.
Through the hellhole, an azure plain emerged from the storm. Thin fractals appeared and disappeared just beneath the surface.
“Whoa…” Aignar said.
“Each time I
see one of our starships, or an orbital archology,” Cha’ril said, “I think that our species have come so far, accomplished so much. Then this reminds us all that we are nothing but children…playing with our toys on the grand stage of history.”
The Scipio slowed and came to a stop a few dozen yards over the surface.
“Tagawa here. Anti-gravs are encountering some sort of interference. I can’t risk going any lower. You good for a little drop?” the captain asked.
“Drop is no issue. Recovery is,” Gideon said.
“We can run winch lines. Better than the catch wires on Nimbus,” she said.
“You’ve got a loose cannon down here.” Roland slapped his hand against the supply crate.
“We’ll have it secured before we scoot back to the fleet,” she said. “Be prepped for at least thirty-six hours before we return.”
“We’ll stay busy.” Gideon said and dropped through the hellhole.
Roland jumped down. Oricon Prime’s gravity exerted slightly less pull than Earth’s and he landed with a hollow bell toll as his feet struck the azure metal. Roland moved away from his landing spot and readied his gauss cannons.
In the skies above, corvettes dropped armor across the surface. The vistas were immense, the horizon of the gigantic structure far more than the three miles Roland was used to on Earth. The storm of ivory-colored gas raged over the artifact, but Roland felt nothing against his armor.
“Nitrogen,” Gideon said. “Atmosphere is nothing but pure nitrogen. Half the pressure of Earth standard.”
“I would say that’s impossible, considering this gas giant is mostly hydrogen and helium, but here we are on some ancient civilization’s…what is it? Science station?” Roland asked. Cha’ril and Aignar dropped in behind him.
“We’ll find out.” Gideon looked up at the Scipio. “Tagawa, can you read me?”
“For once,” she said. “We’ve got tight-band coms back to the fleet from here. Destroyer Kearney will drop a relay buoy in geostationary orbit. You need us, we’ll come running. Good luck down there. Scipio, out.”
