by Richard Fox
“All of them will choose Mars over failure. I know it.”
Gideon swiped across the screen.
“Cut,” he said. “Too hesitant in hand-to-hand combat. Gunnery skills are subpar.”
“Cut,” Tongea said, “without prejudice. Let him try again in a few years.”
Gideon swiped again.
****
Roland had his hands and feet braced against the floor as he pushed up and bent at the hips, sweat running down his face.
“Thirty seconds to go,” Aignar said from his desk, “eight more push-ups to max the PT test.”
Roland dropped his hips down into a plank position and did two more repetitions. His arms shook halfway through the third and he collapsed against the floor.
“Last one didn’t count,” Aignar said.
“You think?” Roland mumbled into the floor.
A pair of white envelopes slid beneath their door and a shadow moved in the hallway on the other side.
“Uh oh…” Roland pushed himself up and wiped sweat from his forehead. Aignar walked over, the bare metal of his cyborg feet clicking against the floor.
“Staring at them won’t change what’s inside,” Aignar said. “But you read yours first.”
“No, you read yours first. You’re a damn robo-jock in the rigs. They wouldn’t cut you.”
“I know. That’s why I want you to read yours first. You stay on to the next phase of training, I know I’m good to go.”
“We read them at the same time.” Roland picked up the thin envelopes and ripped open Aignar’s before he handed it over.
Roland turned the small paper square over in his hands. Every last mistake he’d made in the past months replayed through his mind. No matter what was in the envelope, at least he’d made it further than he ever thought possible.
“Here goes,” Roland said, tearing off a side and plucking out the folded message. He read it with one eye shut, then looked up at Aignar.
“I’m going to Mars,” Aignar said.
“So am I.” Roland let out a deep sigh.
“Hot damn,” Aignar said and extended a fist to his roommate. Roland smacked his knuckles against Aignar’s and pulled back his hand with a yelp of pain. Shaking his hand out, he cursed through gritted teeth.
“Dumbass,” Aignar said. “If you just broke your hand, I’ll bet the cadre will change their minds.”
Roland opened and closed his fingers and shook his hand again as he glanced at the letter.
“We’re leaving tomorrow out of Phoenix? Guess we’d better pack,” Roland said.
“Phoenix…” Aignar looked over his message, then typed out an email on his slate.
Chapter 13
At a food truck on the corner of Thomas and Arcadia, a robot sprinkled cilantro over three small chicken and onion soft tacos and handed the plate to Cha’ril. She joined Masako and Roland—both of whom were already eating—at a nearby bench. The three wore the Armor Corps Class A uniforms: deep-green jackets and trousers with a Sam Brown leather belt around their waist and a strap over one shoulder.
“You don’t have any problem eating chicken, Cha’ril?” Roland asked.
“Why would I?” She rolled her taco tight and ripped half of it away with her beak. “Because I share avian characteristics? You have carne asada. Masako has the adobo pork special. Both of you are eating mammals—or you would be, if any of this was actually meat.”
“She’s got us there,” Masako said.
“Roland is correct that this is a superior mobile kitchen,” Cha’ril said. “You are an adequate guide.”
“Wow, faint praise from Cha’ril, I’m moving up in the world,” Roland said. “The owner grows his own vegetables, a step up from the ersatz stuff out of the nutrient factories.”
“Our last day on Earth for who knows how long,” Masako said. “What else does Phoenix have to offer?”
“You two should overconsume alcohol again,” Cha’ril said. “The other Dotari are most curious as to this human behavior.”
“No,” Roland and Masako said together.
Masako put her half-finished plate aside and touched her stomach.
A dozen yards away, a stretch limo came to a stop and the driver door opened. A woman in a neat suit, hair tied into a severe bun, and sunglasses walked toward them and Roland thought he recognized her from somewhere.
“Excuse me,” she said to Roland in a firm voice, “but are you a former employee of Deco’s?”
Roland swallowed a bite of carne asada—hard. “Yes, I was.”
“Mr. Standish would like to have a word with you.” She pointed back to the limousine.
“Standish?” Cha’ril’s eyebrows perked up.
“You’re all welcome,” the woman said.
“Can we—” Masako stood up, still holding her food.
“Food is expressly forbidden within the vehicle,” she snapped.
“Julie!” Standish called from an open window. “Stop scaring them.”
“Can’t a girl just be a little hungry?” Masako left her lunch on the bench and walked to the limo with Cha’ril and Roland. The door slid open to a leather couch stretching around the interior of the vehicle.
Standish, wearing an Italian-cut suit and shoes that looked like they cost more than Roland would ever make in the military, waved them inside.
“Yes, darling,” Standish said into a phone pressed to his ear, “I’m sure we need the bathroom redone in Art Deco…What karat gold plating? How about twelve…Because it’s not the guest bathroom, that’s why…Does it have to be off-world marble? OK. OK. I’ve got a meeting with some clients…Love you too. Kisses.” He pulled the phone away, gave off a long sigh and pointed a finger at Roland. “Never argue with a woman when it comes to her nest. Just smile and nod and pretend you’re interested.”
Standish rapped on the glass partition behind him.
“Julie. To Vinny’s.”
Masako sat with her hands clenched tight to her waist, staring at Standish, almost starstruck. Roland and Cha’ril looked around the limousine, admiring the deep leather seats and golden embossed ceiling.
“Well, would you look at you,” Standish said to Roland. “Made Armor Corps. Well done, kiddo. Well done.”
“Thank you, Mr. Standish. You didn’t have anything to do with me getting in, did you?”
“Ha!” Standish stomped a foot to the floor. “You think I’d risk pissing off the Corps by putting my thumb on the scale? Good way to get your head crushed like a grape, doesn’t matter who you are. No, my boy, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself for where you’re at today. Good luck on Mars. The easy part’s almost over.”
Standish leaned toward Cha’ril. “Now, a little birdy told me someone from Takeni came to visit her.” He raised an eyebrow. “Someone with a father that has a good deal of clout with the Council of Firsts.”
“Yes…” Cha’ril’s quills bristled slightly. “If that was improper, I meant no—”
“Where is my statue?” Standish asked. “I sent one to the Dotari almost two years ago. Nice one. Twenty feet tall. Italian marble. Why don’t I see it anywhere on the news feeds from New Abhaile? Where did they put it?”
“Sir, you sent a statue…of yourself…to the Dotari?” Roland asked.
“Is there some reason they wouldn’t want one? You have seen the remastered cut of Last Stand on Takeni with yours truly in it?”
“Of course,” Roland said. Masako elbowed him in the side. “Much better than the original.”
“My father did mention this,” Cha’ril said. “The Dotari don’t erect…statues. We do not honor the living that way, but a memorial ganii tree would be appropriate. Later.”
“How much later?”
“After you’ve died.”
“Then where the hell is my statue?”
“Still in the shipping container, I believe.”
Standish threw his hands in the air and sank against the couch.
“After all I did f
or the Dotari…my own fault for not knowing the culture. Guess I’ll have it brought back to Earth and set up next to the lap pool.”
“Mr. Standish,” Masako said, “we’ve heard some stories about you.”
“If you’re working with a lawyer, I will neither confirm nor deny anything.”
“No, sir, nothing like that. Did you know the Iron Hearts?”
“Knew them? They saved my bacon on more than one occasion. When Kallen and Bodel decided they were going to pull Elias out of his redline, they came to me for help. There were some allegations of grand theft, kidnapping, misappropriation of military hardware after that, but none of it was ever proven,” Standish said, wagging a finger at her.
“Saw Elias and Bodel with the rest of the armor in that circle around the bomb that ended the war,” he continued. “Don’t think I’ve ever had a prouder—or sadder—moment in my life. What do you want to know?”
“What were they like?” Roland asked.
“Never met a group of people more devoted to each other than the Iron Hearts,” Standish said. “You three are going to be armor once you reach Mars. Maybe there you’ll figure out what made them like that, because for all my years as a Marine, I never saw anything like what Kallen did for Elias.” He tapped his temple with a finger. “She went into his mind and pulled him out of the darkness.
“I know one other person who was that far gone but made it back, but we don’t speak about that. You all still hungry? We’re going to my favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian place.”
****
Aignar sat on a park bench in his Class A’s, looking across Memorial Square. Passersby noticed him, their eyes lingering on his ribbons and the speaker embedded in his neck. Unable to smile in return, Aignar nodded to those whose gaze lingered.
“Dad?” a young voice asked.
A light-haired boy with blue eyes leaned over the bench.
“Joshua.” He opened his arms and the nine-year-old ran around the bench to hug his father. Aignar enclosed the child inside his arms, but didn’t press his artificial hands to the boy’s back.
“You look…better.” Joshua shied away from his father and sat on the bench, kicking his dangling feet and staring out across the park.
Aignar squeezed his hands into fists, the servos whining.
“Better prosthetics, more lifelike. Not like when you saw me in the hospital with the metal fingers. I know they scared you.”
“I was seven. Now that I’m nine I’m not afraid of little-kid stuff.”
“This is as good as its going to get,” Aignar said. “The doctors can’t fix me anymore.”
“Why are you still in the army?” Joshua asked. “Mom says they’ll let you go. You could get a job in San Diego near us. We could be together all the time. Did Mom tell you I’m in soccer? I’m the best goalie in the league.”
Aignar felt a swell in his chest.
“I can’t leave yet, son. There’s still more I have to do.”
“What? You went and fought those Vishy aliens. They hurt you…why do you want to go back out there? What can you do?” Joshua looked at his father’s prosthetics and crossed his arms.
“You remember what I told you? Before I left for Cygnus with the Rangers?”
“That there are monsters out there like the Xaros that killed Grandma and Grandpa…and you’re going to make sure they never come to Earth.”
“I have to go back out there, son. For you. For your mother. For everyone.”
“When will you come home for good?”
“I don’t know, son. But I’ll come back to Earth and see you whenever I can.”
“What will you even do?” Joshua tapped a foot against his father’s metal shin.
“Come with me.” He stood up and motioned to the armor statues in Memorial Square. “I’ll tell you a story.”
Chapter 14
Sol Conveyance–class ships, like most everything in the Terran military, were not built for comfort. The mass-produced cargo and personnel ships were nearly fully automated. The small handful of crew spent their time monitoring the robots and computer systems that ran the ship, and supervising the robots and computer systems that fixed the other robots and systems when those broke down. The ships were assembled by the dozens in the shipyards locked in Mercury’s shadow, and dispatched across the solar system.
The fleet of ships connected every planet on an established timetable like busses in a busy city, which made the Terran Logistic Command’s job a good deal easier.
Roland and the rest of his class had boarded Aries 12-12 a few hours ago, and sat through a somewhat dated presentation on safety and emergency procedures before being released to their bunks and the rec room full of aged board games and a sputtering holo big-screen.
One of the few redeeming qualities of the Conveyance-class ships was the forward observation deck located over the prow. The crews normally kept them shuttered to cut down on micro-meteor strikes (which they’d have to repair), but a pleasant smile and kind request from Masako had convinced the sailors to open the deck for the armor candidates.
Roland stood close to the curved glass that wrapped around the deck, one hand clenched on a handlebar as he watched the Earth turn. The edge of a swirling hurricane stretched over Florida. Running lights flickered in the distance from shuttles rising out of the planet’s gravity well to Titan Station as it rose over the horizon.
“First time in orbit?” Masako asked.
“That’s right. You?”
“My parents took us on a family trip to Luna when we were kids. Nothing like the threat of dying in hard vacuum to make a six-year-old learn to love the void,” she said.
“You see it in vids and pictures all the time,” Roland said, “but like this…it’s beautiful.”
“Curious that humans developed on a planet with so much water,” Cha’ril said. “The Ruhaald home world has even more land mass than Earth, and they came from a very different evolutionary background.”
“You’re lots of fun to have around, Cha’ril,” Aignar said. “There a way to translate ‘Debbie Downer’ into Dotari?”
“I am not moved to poetry,” she said. “The view from my arrival to Earth was very similar to this.”
The ship turned to port, and Ceres came into view with the Crucible star gate.
“There it is, boys and girls,” Aignar said, “our key to the rest of the galaxy.”
“How many times have you been through?” Roland asked.
“Four…” Aignar touched his faux-chin with the back of his hand. “Three that I remember. Traveling through a quantum wormhole is not fun.”
“It takes some getting used to,” Tongea said from the doorway behind them.
The candidates snapped to attention.
“Shaw, zoom in on the Crucible,” the cadre ordered.
Roland touched his index fingers to the glass and pulled them away from each other, magnifying on the Crucible. Tongea came over and adjusted the view screen. Up close, the Crucible was basalt-colored spikes, each hundreds of miles long, formed into a giant crown of thorns. The thorns moved against each other, forever in motion like a sea urchin in a tide pool.
“Why does it do…that?” Roland asked.
“The individual thorns manipulate the quantum field within the gate,” Tongea said. “This gate is connected to all the others across the galaxy, to include the new ones built by the races that were part of the old Alliance. The Minder also uses the gate to create a wave fluctuation that stops other gates from opening a wormhole too close to the system or from using our gate. Our ships on other worlds transmit codes to come through.”
“A ‘Minder’?” Masako asked.
“That’s what she calls herself,” Tongea said. “Deck. Lights.”
The observation deck went dark. After a few seconds, Roland’s eyes adjusted and he could see the deep field of stars beyond Ceres. A crushing sense of smallness came over him as he realized just how far the universe reached, and just how insigni
ficant he was in comparison.
Masako gave his hand a quick squeeze, then pulled away.
“What did we ever learn about the Xaros?” Masako asked. “They were technologically advanced enough to build giant drone swarms that wiped out most of humanity, moved Ceres into orbit around Earth, and built the Crucible gate network. Is there really nothing left of them after the war?”
“According to the Minder, the Xaros fled their home galaxy after some sort of a cosmologic disaster,” Tongea said. “They sent their drones to cleanse the Milky Way of all intelligent life before their world ship arrived. The Breitenfeld and armor,” Tongea touched his knuckles to his lips, “destroyed the world ship and the Xaros Masters. We’ve found no trace of the drones or their leadership since then, but the Crucible gates remain. The only direct interaction we ever had with their masters was in combat. The Iron Hearts defeated a master called the General, killed it during their second battle.”
“Did you know them?” Cha’ril asked. “Or the pair of Dotari who joined their lance at the end of the war?”
“I knew them. Fought beside them in Australia before they’d earned their spurs. I volunteered for the final mission to the Xaros world ship, but old Colonel Carius didn’t choose me or my lance.”
“Did you know it was a suicide mission when you volunteered?” Roland asked.
“Every armor soldier volunteered for that mission. Carius took only the best of us—his Templars, the Hussars…and the Iron Hearts.” Tongea’s face fell. “We are less without them.”
A tremor passed through the Crucible.
“Watch,” Tongea said. “See how the spikes are moving now?”
A white point of light formed in the center of the gate and blossomed into a thin field. A battle cruiser and several smaller escorts materialized out of the wormhole and arced away from Ceres toward Earth.
“The Nixon,” Tongea said, “back from her recon mission so soon?”
“What was she looking for?” Cha’ril asked.
