by Richard Fox
Aignar shook his head.
“And I thought dealing with Roland’s hormones were a problem.”
There was a slam of fists against a table, and a Dotari male stood up. He was larger than the others and wore a pilot’s overalls. He glared at another Dotari across the table and his quills furled out as he hissed. The other Dotari—the plugs at the base of his skull marking him out as armor—rose to his feet slowly, then beat his hands against his chest.
The Dotari table suddenly burst into action as one half grabbed the pilot and the other manhandled the armor in opposite directions, the air alive with a cacophony of squawks and chirps. As quickly as the din erupted, it ended as the two factions left through opposite doors.
“What the hell was that?” a Ranger lieutenant asked from behind Aignar.
Cha’ril kept her head down and chewed through her bowl as fast as she could manage.
“Aignar,” she said as she chewed, “what are your opinions of this? Please be honest.”
“I’m starting to wish the Ibarras had captured me instead of Roland.”
Chapter 5
The hood over Roland’s head cut out all light and sound, but he felt his seat shudder as whatever transport he was in came to a stop. The half-mask over his mouth kept his jaw clenched tight and muzzled. Some armor soldiers used the seclusion hoods to fall asleep when out of armor, their bodies so used to the sensory deprivation that resting was almost impossible outside the wombs.
Roland noted the count of this newest transition—9,482—and added it to his running total. This was the fourth time he’d been put into an air car, tube transit, and elevator. Keeping him blind and deaf would hide most everything of value he could learn about his surroundings, but at least he could gauge time and distance with his count.
Naturally, he assumed the guards were walking him in circles a few times to defeat such a tactic, but Roland felt the need to do something constructive.
A rough hand gripped him by the elbow and pulled him up slightly. He stood, the heavy shackles around his hands and ankles limiting him to a shuffle as the second guard took him by the arm and led him forward.
Roland felt a slight breeze tug at the hood and moist air caress his bare hands. A few minutes—and several direction changes—later, the guards jerked him to a stop. His hood came off and Roland blinked hard as his eyes adjusted to harsh lights.
“Wait outside,” a man said.
There was a snap of a closing door and the lights dimmed. Before Roland was a man in his mid-forties, bald but for a ring of hair over his ears and around the back of his head. He wore an army uniform, the ribbons and design the same as the Terran Army, but the badges were different and a gold braid ran from his left shoulder to beneath his armpit. He had five stars on his shoulder, a rank not used by Earth since the end of the Ember War: marshal.
“I will show you trust and respect,” the marshal said. “You will keep that trust and respect so long as you return the courtesy. Understand?”
Roland tried to work his jaw, but the muzzle tightened in response. He nodded.
The marshal waved a hand over the gauntlet screen on his left arm and the muzzle and restraints fell to the floor. Roland rubbed his jaw and looked around. They were in a small antechamber with marble floors and lacquered walls. A simple wooden door was behind the marshal.
The Ibarran officer turned around, and Roland saw a pistol strapped to his thigh. The man handed Roland a long coat from where it hung over a leather and chrome stool.
“I am Davoust. You’ll appreciate this later,” the marshal said.
“What do you want with me?” Roland took the coat but didn’t move to put it on.
“It’s not me that wants you. Do us all a favor and don’t play games with her,” Davoust said.
“If you think I’m going to help you—be a pawn in your war with Earth—you should’ve kept me blind, deaf, and dumb. Less trouble,” Roland handed the coat back to Davoust.
The marshal glanced down at the proffered coat, shook his head slightly, then touched his palm to the doorknob and the door swung open. Davoust motioned for Roland to follow him.
Inside was a circular room, the ceiling four stories tall and domed. Shelves made up the lower levels of the walls, discordant colored spines of books and journals belying the organization of the room. The upper walls were computer banks, humming and emitting cold mist from their cooling systems.
In the center of the room was a wide holo tank. A network of golden lattices enclosed the only other person in the room, a shadow inside the holo tank, arms moving about like a conductor leading a symphony.
When the door shut behind Roland, he noticed a pair of large and armored legionnaires holding gauss carbines, standing on either side of the doorway.
Roland had some confidence he could wrest the pistol away from the marshal, but trying to overpower the two legionnaires was a losing proposition—as long as he was out of his armor.
“He talks too much, doesn’t he?” came from inside the holotank. Roland recognized the voice from the Qa’Resh artifact on Oricon where he’d been captured. Stacey Ibarra.
The golden lattice degraded, revealing more and more of the person inside. She was silver, just like Marc Ibarra, her hair frozen in place in a short cut that extended halfway down her neck. Her body was a simple jumpsuit, detailed but the same color as the rest of her body. The golden lattice collapsed into a glowing flake, then lowered into the side of the holo tank.
She made her way down the curved stairs of the dais, her feet beating against the stairs with a metal-on-metal ding.
Roland’s breath fogged as she drew closer and a chill wrapped around his body. He gripped the coat in his hands tightly, feeling foolish for not heeding the marshal’s counsel.
“Look at you,” Stacey said. “Always a surprise to see the heart of an armor soldier in person. Only human inside those amazing suits.” She stopped a few feet away, her doll-like face betraying no emotion, but Roland could feel the soul behind her blank eyes.
“I didn’t think you’d be so young. I expected a few years on you at least. Your other armor friend didn’t put up much of a fight against Nicodemus. You at least gave him some sport,” she said.
“What happened to Aignar? To the rest of my lance?” Roland asked, shivering.
“They all left the Qa’Resh station before I had Oricon’s atmosphere crush it into dust. The Qa’Resh built things to last, but they didn’t build them that tough.”
“Why spare them? We’re at war and—”
“I am not at war with Earth!” She jabbed a finger at Roland’s chest, then bent her finger back into a fist and lowered her arm. “They are at war with me.”
“I saw what you did to the Cairo. Raw footage doesn’t lie,” Roland said. “You ambushed that ship and murdered her crew, then dumped it into an ocean world, hoping we’d never find the evidence.”
“Oh that,” she said, tossing a hand next to her head. “Did your masters tell you that the ship, the Leyte Gulf, was part of a squadron attacked by Earth—an unprovoked attack, I might add—and that the Leyte Gulf was the only survivor? That it fled to the system where the Cairo was hunting for it? Earth started this fight. The Leyte had vital information to bring me. That she repaid a blood debt on her way home was something of a bonus.”
“So you’re the victim here.” The side of Roland’s mouth pulled into a brief sneer as stiffness crept into his fingers and toes and pain needled along the edges of his ears.
“Earth could have left us well enough alone. We have…mutual problems.” Stacey backed up and turned to a holo screen along the walls.
Marshal Davoust nudged Roland’s arm. Roland scowled and put the coat on. The fabric heated up and pushed the chill away.
Stacey put her palm up to the holo screen and pictures flowed across the projection so fast they were almost a blur.
“We worried you wouldn’t be of much use to us,” she said. “But then the colonists on Oricon
simply would not stop talking about a team of armor that rescued children from the Kesaht. Then the wheels began turning…”
The holo screen stopped on a picture of a sword, longer than Roland was tall, Templar Crosses built into the hilt and pommel. Text boxes popped up along the blade’s edge. Roland recognized it immediately as the sword given to him by Ibarran legionnaires, one that originally belonged to an armor soldier named Morrigan. Stacey’s bodyguard, Nicodemus, had taken it after crushing Roland in a fight on the Qa’Resh station.
Stacey touched one of the text boxes, and a double helix of DNA appeared on the screen.
“Plenty of blood on your sword,” she said. “And this one here is different from any we’ve seen before. You came across the leadership caste of the Kesaht, didn’t you? The ones called Ixio.”
“I’m not going to help you.” Roland straightened up. “You and your pack of traitors have done enough damage to Earth. You goaded us into a fight with the Kesaht and—”
Stacey raced toward Roland and grabbed him by the front of his coat, hefting him off the ground with ease and shaking him.
“You think they’ll stop with us!” she screamed. “Do you know what they’ve done!”
The cold from her fists stung through the fabric and made Roland’s breathing painful.
“My lady…” Davoust said.
Stacey dropped Roland to his feet and gave him a not-so-gentle push backwards, but the marshal stopped Roland from losing his footing.
Stacey’s still features stared at Roland, and he could feel hatred burning inside her.
“You know what happened to the colony on New Caledonia?” she asked.
“Where?” Roland rubbed his chest, kneading warmth back into his flesh.
Stacey reached back to the holo screen and her fingers tapped out a code in the air. The dais changed, and the large field came to life and showed a burnt-out village, the streets littered with dead men, women, and children.
“Little over a year ago,” Marshal Davoust said, “phase 1 colony from Earth in the Orion arm along the edge of Crucible space. Resupply convoy found it like this. Eight hundred sixty-three dead…two hundred and nine missing.”
“No, never heard of this,” Roland said.
“Of course not.” Stacey walked into the holo tank and knelt next to a dead woman clutching a bundle in her arms. She ran her hand along the woman’s head, then set her other hand on the bundle. “It was just before the second Terra Nova expedition. President Garret couldn’t have his good news story preempted by a story about human beings murdered in cold blood. Typical of him.”
She stood and traced a circle with a fingertip. The holo sped ahead and stopped next to a partially collapsed building. In the rubble were black plates of armor, their edges stained with gray goo.
“Officially,” she said, “the attack remains under investigation, with no clue as to the identity of the attackers. But you know now, don’t you, Roland?”
“That’s Rakka armor. They’re the Kesaht’s foot soldiers. They decompose rapidly after they’re killed…”
“And Earth should have figured that out by now,” the marshal said.
“Why would they attack us that long ago?” Roland stepped away from Davoust. “Did you all kick that hornets’ nest and lead them to the colony?”
“We encountered them only a few months ago,” Stacey said. “And they were just as hostile. Willing to talk now?”
Roland hesitated. He’d fought the Kesaht, seen their fleet in action, and recognized them as a potent enemy on par with the Vishrakath and Kroar. If the Ibarrans had information that Earth could use…
“Only if you’ll send me back,” Roland said. “Send me back to Earth with everything you know about the Kesaht. Every bit of information. Promise that and I’ll tell you what I know about the Ixio.”
“Hardly a bargain for us.” Stacey came down from the dais and extinguished the holo with a metallic snap of her fingers. “We’d get that information eventually.”
“Not without risk to our agents on Earth,” Davoust said.
“But is he worth keeping?” she asked the marshal.
“Détente behar dugu. Lurra gehiegi behar da. Armadura hau besterik ez izatea zer behar dugu,” Davoust said.
“English, please,” Roland said.
“I accept your terms,” Stacey said. “Tell me about the Ixio and we’ll return you to Earth with everything we know. Their tactics. Fleets we’ve encountered.” She extended a hand to him.
Roland grit his teeth and shook her hand. It was like pressing his hand to a glacier. His flesh flared with pain before going numb. He pulled back and gripped his stiff fingers.
“Their home world,” Roland said.
“See,” Stacey said, wagging a finger at him, “that’s a good question. We don’t know where it is. The Kesaht were never part of the old Alliance. How a new race managed to access the Crucible network is something of a mystery. There, I just gave you something. Now tell me about the Ixio.”
Roland took a deep breath and wondered just how big of a mistake he was about to make. He told them how he and Cha’ril first learned of a third Kesaht species during a hasty autopsy of a Sanheel, then about encountering one of the tall biomechanical aliens named Tomenakai aboard their battleship.
“It wanted the children,” Roland said. “Human children. Said they were important for whatever kind of ‘unity’ the Kesaht provide with their skull implants. The children weren’t aberrant like the adults, who he said were ‘false minds in weed bodies.’ Then I—”
“Stop,” Stacey said, giving Davoust a quick glance. “He said those words, ‘false minds in weed bodies’ exactly?”
“That’s right. Then he went off about how we must be ‘redeemed’ for our crimes or we must be purged. Then I cut his head off and crushed his skull.” Roland shrugged slightly.
“It fits the theory,” Davoust said. “The shield tech. The cloaks.”
Stacey half-raised her arms, then let them fall to her sides. She turned to the holo tank, then back to the marshal. Pressing her hands over her face, she then drummed her fingertips against her metal body, making high-pitched tings like the toll of small bells.
“No…no, no, no, this isn’t my fault.” Stacey looked around, as if she didn’t know where she was.
Roland stiffened, his instincts sensing a threat.
“We didn’t have a choice!” Stacey screamed, the words echoing around the room and the force of her words stinging Roland’s ears. “I had to do it! We kept it from the rest because we knew they’d try and stop us. But when it was over, Valdar…Valdar blamed me. Me!”
She grabbed Roland by the back of the neck and jaw. He grunted in pain and tried to pull away, but her grip was like his armor’s.
“Ken didn’t judge me.” She shook her head from side to side as Roland beat at her arms. “Ken understood. Is he gone? Did he stay for me like I asked?”
Roland tasted ice in his mouth as his spit froze.
“Guards!” Davoust grabbed Stacey by the forearms and tried to pull her off Roland. A power-armored guard lifted her hand off Roland’s neck and yanked Roland back, tossing him against the wall.
Roland touched his ice-cold jaw and watched as the two guards pinned Stacey’s arms and legs and held her against the floor.
She wailed, a cry caught somewhere between grief and madness. She pulled an arm free and struck one of the guards in the chest, blasting him back and sliding across the floor.
“I had no choice!” Stacey struck at the other guard, who caught her by the wrist, the power armor’s servos and pseudo-muscles straining against her raw power.
Davoust grabbed Roland by the back of his jacket and dragged him out of the room. The door closed, and Roland heard Stacey screaming…followed by the crash of metal being bludgeoned into scrap. Roland lay on the floor, staring at the vaulted ceilings as pain pulsed through his face and neck.
The marshal knelt near Roland, keeping a hand to the soldier�
��s chest.
“Are you hurt…badly?” Davoust asked.
Roland tried to open his mouth, but it was locked in place. He managed a pitiful grunt.
Davoust looked at the flesh on his palms, stained white with frostbite.
“She has her moments,” Davoust said. “When they tell Earth about this, know it doesn’t matter to us. She is our lady. She loves us. She will save us. And we will die for her.”
****
Stacey sat against a broken computer bank, sparks falling against her skin, leaving tiny black smudges that faded away seconds later. She stared at the dais in the middle of the room, her unblinking eyes locked on the flickering holo tank.
Hunks of broken machinery were strewn across the floor, like the aftermath of a hurricane.
Her two guards huddled against the door, blocking it with their bodies. One was on a knee, a broken arm clutched against his side. The other stood up, his helm broken and blood dripping from a broken nose.
“Hamish. Tyrel…I’m sorry,” Stacey said.
“Are you well, my lady?” asked the one with the broken nose.
“I am now. Would you…would you take Hamish to the infirmary? I need a minute.” She got to her feet and brushed herself off.
“We cannot leave you,” Hamish said.
“I shouldn’t have made you so well.” She went to Hamish and reached out to touch him, then pulled her hand back. “Look what I’ve done to you both. Just go. Leave.”
“We cannot—”
“Then summon the doctor!” Stacey stamped a foot against the ground, cracking the marble.
Tyrel nodded and touched the screen on his forearm.
Stacey walked slowly to the dais. She ran her fingertips along the edge and tapped out a code against the side. There was a hiss of hydraulics and the dais rose out of the ground. A clear cylinder came up, its contents hidden momentarily by steam that faded away.
Inside, a young woman was frozen in stasis, her chest covered in blood from a bullet wound. Blood stained a hand reaching for help, spilled down the sides of her mouth and hung frozen in time within the chamber. Stacey, her mind and soul trapped inside the metal shell, looked at her true body, her mortally wounded flesh and blood.
