Terran Armor Corps Anthology

by Richard Fox

  “If the Ibarras could control almost every adult on Earth and the fleet with the snap of their fingers, they would’ve done it a long time ago. They must’ve altered the code in the last few batches of proccies once the Hale Treaty was signed.”

  “The more I think about this, the worse it gets,” Kutcher said.

  Lettow looked back at the cell. A medic stood up from Ruiz and shook his head.

  “Go through the entire fleet’s naissance files. Find the others that might be compromised, but keep this quiet. We’ll detain them all at once.”

  “Detain them for…”

  “Treason.”

  ****

  Lettow’s legs ached, one shoulder was stiff, verging on pain from the countless hours leaning against his holo tank. The Ardennes was in high orbit over Oricon Prime, the 14th’s artillery ships and strike cruisers in formation with the flag ship. His cruisers and other ships—those still in fighting shape—trolled along the gas giant’s upper atmosphere, scanning the depths for where ever the Ibarrans were hiding.

  Ducking into the upper atmosphere of a planet was risky for any ship, damn near suicide if done on a gorgon of a world like Jupiter or Hades III. Oricon Prime’s upper layers weren’t as relatively benign as Saturn’s, but it wasn’t a garden spot.

  What Oricon Prime did have was scale. It would take his fleet days to do a thorough search.

  At least there was no way the Ibarrans would slip back through the Crucible gate. Not while he held high orbit.

  “First probes are coming over the horizon,” Strickland said. “No sign of the Ibarrans.”

  “I doubt they’d be so careless as to anchor where we could spot them that easily,” Lettow said. “Stagger probe orbits. Don’t give them a window to where we’re not looking.”

  “Already executed, sir. Just like you said earlier.”

  Lettow rubbed a hand over his face. How long had it been since he’d slept?

  A message popped up on Lettow’s screens; Kutcher with an urgent message.

  “Strickland, bring me the butcher’s bill,” the admiral said.

  “Aye aye.” He left the holo tank and went to the forward bridge to speak with the ship’s XO.

  Lettow opened Kutcher’s call on his screens where the rest of the crew couldn’t see who he was talking to. The intelligence officer had the same poker face as ever.

  “Well?” Lettow asked.

  “The rest of Ruiz’s sleep cell are dead,” Kutcher said. “Same system shut down that killed Ruiz. No one spoke to them, so I doubt there was any subliminal triggers. That all expired within five minutes of each other leads me to believe they were programmed to destroy themselves after they were activated.”

  Lettow swallowed hard. There was little left to be learned from dead men and women.

  “You’ve found anything else to connect them to the Ibarrans?”

  “Nothing. They may have been sleeper agents without even knowing it.”

  “And what about the rest of the fleet? How many fall in that same naissance window as the cell?” Lettow asked.

  “It’s hard to get an exact count after the casualties from fighting the Kesaht, but at least ten more. We round them up now and we run the risk of triggering their poison pills. Medical did an autopsy on Ruiz, there’s no physiological reason they could find for why she died. Tentative cause of death is stroke.”

  “I want full surveillance on everyone you identify. Anything you even suspect is out of the ordinary…detain them at once.” Lettow scrolled down the list of names. His finger hovered over one in particular.

  “You’ll have more as I find it, sir,” Kutcher said.

  Lettow stabbed his screen and ended the call as Strickland walked over, a white-backed data slate in his hand. He glanced at the screen just as Lettow brushed his hand over the list of suspected sleeper agents and deleted it.

  “Everything all right, admiral?” Strickland asked.

  “No…it’s never a good day when you review casualty lists.” Lettow took the slate from Strickland and his other hand went to the pistol holstered on his belt.

  His operations officer was on Kutcher’s list. If the theory that the Ibarras had made the procedurals from that time period into sleeper agents…why hadn’t they activated Strickland? What were they waiting for?

  Lettow unsnapped the holster flap; he could draw it in a split second if need be. The admiral struggled with what to do to Strickland. Remove him from the bridge? Wait until he acted out of character, then shoot him? Do nothing?

  Damn the Ibarras, he thought. This is what they want. Suspicion all around. Lack of trust will wreck a command just as badly as a missile strike.

  He read through the casualty numbers. Over four thousand confirmed dead. Two thousand still unaccounted for. Hundreds more badly wounded. Auburn City was in no shape to take in his wounded. Those that could be moved were being loaded onto the fleet’s medical frigate, Hope, for immediate transit back to Earth.

  He slapped the list against the side of the holo tank. The bridge crew went silent and glanced at him from their work stations.

  “Sir?” Strickland stepped between the admiral and the crew.

  “Did the Ibarras cause this?” He rapped the slate against the holo tank again. “Or did they do us a favor by destroying that battleship and forcing the Kesaht to spring their ambush too late to hurt us?”

  “I doubt they were doing us any favors,” Strickland said. “They’ve got their own agenda. No one minds when their enemies bleed each other dry.”

  “They’ll see just how much fight we’ve got left soon as we find them,” Lettow said.

  An alert flashed through the holo tank. Lettow put his hand on his pistol as Strickland went to his station.

  “Got a quantum field fluctuation…” Strickland said.

  “Earth find a way through the Crucible?”

  “That’s…odd. The fluctuation’s not from the Crucible. It’s just inside the Oricon Prime atmosphere. Redirecting probes. The Beijing and her group are the nearest ships.”

  “Alert them but don’t send them just yet. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

  Oricon Prime rotated slowly within the holo tank. A single point pinged just over the dawn’s edge on the far side of the gas giant. The first of several probes passed over the anomaly.

  A window opened over the point, and video from the probe streamed in. A black whirlpool several kilometers wide spun in the clouds, twisting two color bands together.

  “That’s impossible,” Strickland said. “From the sensor data…it looks like a worm hole formed there. But we don’t have that technology anymore. The Qa’Resh disabled all the jump engines after the war.”

  “And yet,” Lettow looked at the whirlpool, its force already dissipating back into the clouds, “and yet our own eyes tell us differently.”

  The Ibarrans beat me, he thought. They played me like a fiddle while they found whatever is it they came for and got away scot free. If we’re not at war with the Kesaht now, we will be soon. Earth won’t have the time or resources to hunt them down, and neither will the Kesaht.

  Lettow straightened up, then re-secured the flap on his pistol.

  Strickland gave him a dour look.

  “Continue the search,” Lettow said. “We’ll return to Earth soon as we’re sure the Ibarrans are gone. I’ll be in my quarters preparing a summary for my court martial.”

  Chapter 19

  Aignar stood in front of a raised bench. Three individuals listened as he struggled to talk through the speaker in his throat. Two, a woman with a lined face but the bearing of a Marine sergeant, and General Laran of the Armor Corps, sat impassively. In the center, the President of the Terran Union, Garret, looked increasingly agitated as Aignar spoke. Behind the armor soldier was a small group of officers.

  Aignar’s metal fingers twitched, clicking against one another.

  “…and then they left with Warrant Officer Roland Shaw,” Aignar said. “Lieutenant
Gideon recovered my armor soon afterwards.”

  The woman with the lined face leaned toward the edge of the bench.

  “Ibarra had no environmental gear?” Torni asked.

  “No, ma’am. She was…she’s not human. Somehow.”

  The woman looked at the president and Laran. “I doubt she was on Oricon looking for a cure to her condition.”

  “What happened to her?” Aignar asked.

  “During the course of the Ember War, a number of humans were…altered,” Torni said. “Some adjusted better than others. Stacey Ibarra suffered a rather traumatic incident. There were concerns for her sanity before they rebelled. I’m not sure if she’s finally lost her mind.”

  “Did she say anything about the Kesaht?” General Laran asked. “Anything at all?”

  “No, ma’am.” Aignar shook his head and felt his prosthetic jaw sway.

  “Any update on the Qa’Resh artifact?” President Garret asked Torni.

  “It sank into Oricon Prime a few hours after the last of our armor was recovered,” she said. “Admiral Lettow hasn’t been able to find any trace of it since then.”

  The president picked up a gavel and slammed it against the bench. Data slates bounced against the bench top. He pointed the gavel at Aignar and one side of the president’s face twitched. Garret pushed his chair away from the bench and left through a door in the back of the room. Torni and General Laran followed him after an awkward pause.

  Aignar turned around, his prosthetic feet dragging against the floor. Colonel Martel, Captain Sobieski, and Tongea rose from their seats.

  “Sir, any update from Mars? Gideon and Cha’ril?” Aignar asked Martel.

  “She’s through medical,” the colonel said. “No long term issues. She’ll be back in her armor by the end of the day.”

  “And what about Roland?” Aignar asked. “Where did they take him? What do they want with him?”

  “We don’t know where the Ibarras are hiding,” Martel said. “But we will find them. The Corps never leaves a soldier behind.”

  “You left some details out,” Tongea said, “about Nicodemus.”

  Aignar glanced back at the empty bench.

  “Is he really one of us?” Aignar asked.

  “We knew Nicodemus,” Martel said. “Brave man. A warrior,” he touched the red Templar cross on his uniform, “and deeply devoted to the Saint.”

  “Nicodemus had the cross on his armor,” Aignar said. “I don’t…I don’t understand how someone who keeps to Saint Kallen could leave Earth and follow the Ibarras. I haven’t stood the vigil yet, but I thought we took an oath to defend all of humanity, to be the light against the darkness.”

  “It’s an oath to an ideal,” Martel said. “Nicodemus and the others left because they decided the Ibarras carried the mantle to protect humanity.”

  “Why? Why would they think that?” Aignar asked.

  Martel looked at Tongea and Sobieski. The two men nodded quickly.

  “Aignar,” Martel said, “what do you know about the Hale Treaty?”

  Chapter 20

  Tomenakai made his way up wide stairs that narrowed to golden doors at the top. He’d walked these stairs many times before, always marveling at the craftsmanship carved into each step. The journey began with the moment the Sanheel and Ixio first communicated over archaic radio waves, master sculptures from each race had carved the other, the undeniable unity of their races captured in the subtext. While Tomenakai was critical of the Sanheel artist’s inability to capture the noble visage of that great Ixio scientist, he kept his criticism to himself. Such was not in the spirit of unity.

  His new body was stiff, heightening the sense of dissociation that came each time his mind transferred between husks. To be thrust into a raw body so soon after a passing close to the veil of death was normally an auspicious honor. But now…

  The tale of the Kesaht peoples continued as Tomenakai and Primus Gor’thig marched higher. The First Meeting. The celebrations as their two peoples built cities on the other’s planets. Images of Ixio and Sanheel were notably absent from the steps depicting the Ash Time. To imply that either side was responsible for the conflagration was not in the spirit of unity. Not that such carvings were necessary to remember this moment in Kesaht history. The irradiated wasteland beyond the grand domes was reminder enough of what happened when the Ixio and Sanheel acted of their own accord.

  Gor’thig pressed closer to Tomenakai as the steps narrowed to the Great Unity. Tomenakai’s cyborg body always tingled when he passed over this spot. Then the Rakka Inclusion, then a missing section as artists across the Kesaht Hegemony worked to perfect the moment of their savior’s appearance, then the steps became blank. The Kesaht’s future was up to those that walked this path to the birthplace of their sacred union.

  Once, Tomenakai had dreamed of his deeds added to the steps…now he feared his failures would be immortalized instead.

  A pair of saurian guards crossed crystalline halberds over the door. While their six limbs and body composition echoed the Sanheels’ form, Tomenakai found few other similarities between the savior’s guards and one of the Kesaht’s founding races.

  “No weapons,” a guard hissed. A forked tongue flicked between sharp teeth at the Sanheel’s ceremonial sword on his front hip.

  “We were summoned,” Gor’thig said.

  “Summoned for failure,” the other guard said. “Failures are not trusted in his presence.”

  “We cannot question his wisdom,” Tomenakai said, dropping a hint to his companion.

  Gor’thig unsnapped his sword belt and handed the weapon over.

  Gears turned in the walls around double doors. The gold doors slid into the walls, and a gust of air rushed over Tomenakai. The smell of rot and disease stung his nose, but he did not show any outward sign of unease. If Gor’thig, with his more developed sense of smell could keep his composure, Tomenakai would do the same. Such was the spirit of unity.

  The savior was as Tomenakai always found him; working. Stasis pods filled the back section of the savior’s chambers. Open pods with a cross section of the galaxy’s known intelligent species were placed in a semi-circle around the savior’s laboratory. A Naroosha spawn leader, little more than a pink lump of flesh with hook-tipped tentacles, floated in a null field over the lab. Robot arms performed surgery on the creature, adding cyborg components to its flesh. If the creature was in any pain, Tomenakai was unsure. Sometimes the subjects screamed while the savior worked. Sometimes they did not.

  “Pathetic,” the voice came from behind the laboratory. Tomenakai went to his knees and bowed his head. Gor’thig followed suit, albeit with some reluctance.

  The savior ambled around the lab. His people were once called the Toth, and he had ascended to a more perfect form when his entire nervous system was installed into a tank that moved on four mechanical limbs.

  “Master Bale,” Tomenakai opened his hands over his knees, an old gesture of contrition, “the operation met with difficulty.”

  “‘Difficulty?’” The Toth overlord’s nerves writhed within his tank. “I warned you against underestimating the humans. Told you that wiping out a few outlying colonies and capturing a few small ships was nothing compared to what the humans are capable of. Was I somehow unclear when I described how they destroyed my home world?”

  “Their evil is well known,” Gor’thig said.

  “And yet you thought you could defeat them ship to ship. Soldier to soldier. How well did that work? Tell me?” Bale asked.

  “We lost most of the expeditionary fleet,” Gor’thig said. “Our fighter craft were inadequate, our ships too brittle, our ground forces had some success until the humans’ accursed armor arrived.”

  “And we both suffered a corporeal dislocation,” Tomenakai said.

  “You were both killed!” Bale’s fore limbs hammered against the floor. “If your immortalis implants hadn’t functioned properly, you would both be lost to the unity forever.”

 
“And we thank you for the gifts,” Gor’thig said.

  “They are a mistake for frontline commanders,” Bale said. “What is the incentive to win if there is no consequence for losing?”

  Tomenakai lifted his head.

  “The consequences were severe. Ships lost, Ixion and Sanheel lessers dead with no hope of recovering their gene codes or soul cores. Entire broods of Rakka—”

  “Fodder!” Bale shouted. “The Rakka are nothing. The lesser officers will be replaced in days. Your failure is twofold. The Terrans on Earth know. They know of you and they will come for us all. Are we prepared?”

  Gor’thig’s mouth moved before he spoke.

  “The armadas are nearly complete. But if we are so clearly overmatched when the Terrans are in force—”

  “Then we are not ready,” Bale said. “I’ve worked tirelessly for so many years to prepare for this threat. Worked so hard to improve your cybernetics, build your fleets, the great work of constructing our own Crucibles…all put into peril because of your incompetence.”

  “While I will never question your wisdom,” Tomenakai said, “please enlighten my ignorance. Why did you send us to Oricon?”

  “Your second failure,” Bale said. “The Ibarran faction got what they were after, didn’t they?”

  “We were…indisposed during the final stages of the battle,” Tomenakai said.

  “Then we must assume the Ibarrans found the map to the Qa’Resh weapon. The humans once used such a device to murder every Toth but me. I am the last of my kind because of them. If the Ibarrans find another—one even stronger than the first—they will destroy every last race in the galaxy until only their false minds and weed bodies are left.”

  “Then we must attack,” Gor’thig said. “We can capture more Ibarrans, learn where their leaders are hiding. To wait here for them to kill us all is madness.”