by Richard Fox
“You could…could…act like you care.” Roland sat on his bunk and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands laced behind his head. “It’s not fair. She was better than all of us. Why did it have to happen to her?”
“War isn’t fair, either,” Tongea said from the open doorway. He waved the candidates down before they could stand to attention. “Candidate Yanagi had a hemorrhagic stroke. Complications like hers are rare, but not unheard of. We identified her as a high risk early on, disclosed everything to her, but she chose to continue selection.”
“Why did you let her take the risk?” Roland’s hands gripped his bunk with white-knuckle intensity.
“We are armor. We are the force of decision on any battlefield. Shying away from something just because it is dangerous is not our way,” Tongea said. “The Corps needs soldiers, and we will take any with the desire and ability. Yanagi is brave, and had her system taken to the plugs, she would have made a fine member of any lance. She’ll have her implant removed and then we’ll return her to Earth.”
“What? That’s it?” Roland sprang to his feet. “You’re just going to toss her aside like she’s nothing?”
“Roland…,” Aignar said.
“Shaw, what would you do if Yanagi earned her spurs, the two of you joined the same lance, and she died in battle right next to you?” Tongea asked. “There,” he continued, picking up a towel from the sink in the room and tossing it to the floor at Roland’s feet, “she’s dead. Vishrakath walkers are coming for you. What do you do?”
“I—” Roland flinched back as Tongea’s punch stopped an inch from his nose.
“We cannot suffer because we’ve lost someone we care about.” Tongea pulled his hand back.
“I lost squad mates on our first drop,” Aignar said. “No time to mourn during a battle. Got to buck up and drive on.”
“I’m willing to die for my lance but I shouldn’t care about them?” Roland asked.
“There’s a time and a place,” Tongea said. “You push back the pain until you can mourn. Lose your iron before then, you put the rest of your lance—and the mission—in jeopardy.”
“I’ve no mission. No lance. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.” Roland flopped his hands against his sides. “Can we at least see her?”
“She’s in surgery and will be in an induced coma for days to come.” Tongea shook his head. “At times like these, I find comfort in my faith.”
“Like any of that will make a diff—” Roland stopped as Tongea’s expression lost what little compassion it had. He felt Aignar’s icy glare against the back of his head. “Forgive me, gentlemen. I’m not one for faith.”
“Candidate Aignar, you know the Saint?” Tongea asked.
“I do, sir.”
“Come with me.” Tongea opened the door for the veteran. Roland sat back down and unstrapped his boots as Aignar practically flew out of the room to be with the cadre member. Tongea turned to leave, then paused. The Maori’s head tilted down, then he slowly half-turned to Roland.
“Candidate Shaw…I feel…I feel as though you should come with us,” Tongea said.
“I’m not one for prayer. Like I said.”
“You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Perhaps you will find your faith with us. Come.”
Roland, his hands in the middle of undoing the second strap, sighed. The Armor Corps honored the fallen; he’d seen the statues at Memorial Square enough to know that. Honoring Masako somehow would be better than staying in the room and feeling sorry for her…and himself. He redid the straps on his boots and followed Tongea.
****
Roland and Aignar sat hip to hip in the back of a small personnel tram, Tongea in the front. The enclosed tram whipped through airless tunnels, propelled along magnetic rails. The hyper-loop railway system ran through several levels of Olympus, a warren of tunnels connecting every last weapon emplacement, habitat and hangar.
“Sir? Where are we going?” Roland asked after the tenth silent minute of travel.
“Why did we win the Ember War?” Tongea asked, not bothering to look at him.
Roland traded a frown with Aignar, who shrugged at him.
“We had technological help from the Qa’Resh and that probe of theirs that worked with Marc Ibarra,” Roland said, his mind struggling between old homework assignments and pondering what the cadre was really asking. “Then there was the Dotari/Ruhaald fleet that allied with us to make the assault on the Xaros Apex and—”
“Providence,” Tongea said. “There are many who believe Providence—divine intervention—saved us, and the entire galaxy. The ship present at many pivotal moments during the war, the Breitenfeld, do you know what her motto is?”
“Gott mit uns,” Aignar said, his throat speaker struggling with the words. “God is with us.”
“We should not have won the war,” Tongea said. “The Xaros should have destroyed the surviving fleet after they scoured the Earth and the rest of the solar system of every last trace of humanity. The Battle of Ceres was a shoestring tackle. The second Xaros invasion…the assault on the Apex. Miracles. Every last one of them. Marc Ibarra had a plan, one he set into motion decades ago, but one that had many flaws to it. We should have lost. But each time the Breitenfeld was put against impossible odds, she and her crew prevailed.”
“I’m sure Admiral Valdar would explain how every battle was won without divine intervention, sir,” Roland said.
“Do you think the admiral was without faith?” Tongea asked.
“I…wouldn’t know.”
“He came to Mars when we built the tomb. Paid his respects to the Saint and the others. Valdar told Martel…no, that’s not for you yet. Here…” Tongea reached under his seat and tossed the two candidates dark hoods. “Only the Templars know the location of the tomb.”
Roland looked at the hood and suppressed a chuckle. Aignar jabbed an elbow into his arm and Roland put the hood on with a shake of his head.
He felt the tram make several turns, then slow to a stop. Cold, dry air washed over Roland as the tram door whined open. Tongea tugged the hood off Roland’s head.
A rough-hewn tunnel on one side of their unmarked stop led to a brass door guarded by a pair of armor, each holding a sword taller than Roland in front of them, the tips buried between their feet.
Scenes of armor fighting Xaros drones, Toth warriors and aliens Roland didn’t recognize were embossed on the brass door. The images ended with two armor beside a damaged suit lying in Martian soil.
Tongea got out of the tram and beat a fist against his chest.
“Who goes there?” one of the armor asked.
“Pilgrims,” Tongea said. “We seek the Saint.”
“They have not taken their oaths,” the other armor said, the voice feminine.
“The circumstances are…dire,” Tongea said.
“I want the Saint to help someone,” Aignar said. “She’s in the hospital. The Saint gave me strength once. Now Masako needs that same gift.”
One of the armor looked at Roland.
“I don’t…I would do anything to help her,” Roland said, looking down at his feet.
There was a snap of locks disengaging, and the brass door swung open. A narrow corridor led into darkness.
Roland followed the other two through the doors, each containing a fractal silver lining pressed between armor plates. The doors slammed shut behind them.
On either side, chambers the size of an armor suit were carved into the Martian rock, empty spaces extending down the corridor. Tongea and Aignar fell to one knee, their heads bowed in prayer.
Roland backed away and looked at an eye-level nameplate with raised letters next to the first empty chambers. The left side of the plate was smooth, shinier than the rest, and gave a brief history of a soldier named Vladislav. Inside the chamber was a set of unfinished hooked wings with broad white feathers partway down the spines. The set was large enough that it could have only been fit to a suit of armor, not a soldie
r on foot. The next chamber had another set of wings and a nameplate for an Adamczyk, his date of death the same as the first.
Tongea got up and ran his fingers down the smooth side of the second name plate.
“When our bodies are missing, we inter a memento mori, something to remember the fallen,” Tongea said quietly. “The Hussars wished to complete their armor, but they were lost before they could finish.”
Roland turned around. The other side of the tunnel chambers held white tunics and red crosses.
“These are…these are all the soldiers from Memorial Square. The ones that died fighting the Xaros Masters at the last battle,” Roland said.
“That’s correct.” Tongea tilted his head to the darkness at the end of the tunnel.
They passed chambers that held different mementos: a small carving of an armor soldier, a cane, and a threadbare shirt with Dotari writing stitched into the hem. An electric candle activated as they neared the darkness, illuminating a life-sized statue of a woman in a wheelchair on a chest-high base, her hands folded neatly on her lap, head tilted downward slightly. Behind the statue, a damaged suit of armor stood in a chamber, a broken sword gripped in one fist. Red dust and old, dried blood marred the armor.
Aignar stopped, his breath coming faster and faster.
“This is Saint Kallen, of the Iron Hearts,” Tongea said. He motioned to a pair of worn patches in front of the statue. Aignar went to his knees, his face turned up to the statue’s, cyborg hands pressed together awkwardly.
“She wasn’t at the last battle,” Roland said, looking over the damaged armor from where he and Tongea stood behind Aignar.
“She was there…in spirit,” Tongea said. “She died here on Mars. I remember the day Elias and Bodel carried her armor back to Olympus. Chaplain Krohe’s tended to the souls of those remembered here…It was Elias who asked that his final deeds be witnessed so that he would be found worthy to fight at Kallen’s side in the next life. The veneration of the Saint formed soon after that. We take the Templar oaths to ask for her intercession, so that if we are lost to the void like those who faced the Xaros Masters at the end, our souls may find their way back to God.”
“How did she ever become armor?” Roland asked. “She wasn’t in that chair when she joined?”
“She rolled up to Fort Knox the day the Armor Corps announced they would take candidates who were physically ineligible for other service. Carius told her to leave, that she had no chance of being selected. She waited outside for three days. Didn’t move. Didn’t take food or water. Then Elias and Bodel, back when they were just bean heads, got a weekend pass. They decided to stand beside her outside the main hall. Got her to eat something…Carius finally let her in. She’d been paralyzed as a child, but she could wear her armor through the plugs.
“She came down with Batten’s Disease years later. Refused treatment. Refused to leave her armor even though it was killing her.”
“She didn’t leave…because of the other Iron Hearts. They’d have to fight without her and she refused to abandon them even though she knew it would kill her,” Roland said.
“You’re learning.” Tongea pointed to a chamber flanking Kallen’s statue. Inside, a bloodred faceplate larger than an armor’s helm with thin eye slits hung from a chain bolted to the rock. The outer edges were deformed, as if gripped by a giant hand. “That is the last-known remnant of the Xaros Masters. Elias took it as a trophy after he defeated the one designated ‘the General’ on Takeni. Elias left nothing else behind to use as a memento mori. More of the General remained after he was killed on Phoenix, but those remains were…lost to us.”
Roland went closer to the chamber with the Xaros artifact. The mask seemed to quiver ever so slightly and the smell of ozone and smoke hung in the air. This was the face of the enemy that had killed his parents, murdered billions of human beings and an unthinkable number of innocents during their march across the stars. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Thanks to Earth, and the Armor Corps that he was almost a part of, the Xaros were gone forever. He had the privilege to stare at the bones of a dead star god and the Xaros, the nemesis of every sentient being in the galaxy, were extinct.
He felt a presence behind him. He turned, but Tongea and Aignar were where he’d left them. Roland looked across the empty chambers, at the places where the dead soldiers should have been interred in their armor, and felt a knot in his chest.
The Iron Hearts, Templar and Hussars had all given up their lives to secure that final victory over the Xaros…and Roland had gone on a single walk in his armor. The crush of sadness and insignificance weighed on his heart, a feeling he’d had during the long lonely nights in the orphanage.
I’m still nothing… he thought.
Aignar’s knees ground against the floor as he got up. He wiped tears away on his upper sleeve, then jabbed at the worn spots with a stiff hand.
“You, Roland.”
“I don’t know if I should,” he said.
“Do it for Masako,” Aignar said.
Roland took a deep breath, unsure of the right way to honor this saint, or if he risked some sort of curse by parroting Aignar’s faith. He knelt in the same place and felt his cheeks flush as he tried—and failed—to remember a single prayer from his youth. His shoulders sank.
Saint Kallen, I don’t know Latin. I don’t know how the Templar honor you. I don’t even know if I really believe in any of this, but my friend Masako Yanagi is in a med bay somewhere. Her dream of becoming armor is gone and her body…it’s not good. Aignar, a bunch of others, they all say you’ve helped them get through tough times. If you can, help Masako. Whatever…grace could ever have been used on me…give it to her.
Roland looked up and into the face of the statue. Kallen’s sharp features and kind eyes stared down at him. Then, in the corner of an eye, a bloodred tear formed and ran down the side of her face.
Roland fell back and scrambled away, his heart racing in his chest as his mind frazzled, trying to comprehend what he’d just seen.
“She favors you,” Tongea said.
Roland pointed at the statue, his mouth agape in shock, then he heard the sound of a drop of water striking stone. A patch of wet rock over the statue dripped onto the statue’s head, just behind an ear.
“What does it mean?” Aignar asked.
“Some of the order believe it’s a sign.” Tongea narrowed his eyes at Roland. “Those that receive a tear are destined to die in their armor.”
“That’s not what I asked her for,” Roland said.
Tongea pulled him to his feet, then brought him to the base of the statue.
“There are some that come here for years and never receive this gift,” Tongea said. “Don’t let it go.”
Roland lifted a hand to the statue’s chin and touched the side of his forefinger to the drop quivering against the stone. He brought the tear to his lips…the taste matched the smell of Martian soil.
“Time to leave,” Tongea said.
****
Later, during the long, quiet ride back to their barracks, Aignar leaned over to Roland.
“When you put the tear to your lips, how did you know to do that?”
“I didn’t…just felt right.” Roland shrugged. “How you feeling?”
“I haven’t been like this since my son was born,” Aignar said. “I’m happy. For the first time in years. Truly happy. You?”
Their tram sped through two stops before Roland answered.
“Lost.”
Chapter 17
Roland pressed his armor against a steep hillside and the back of an arm against the sharp edge, bending an elbow backwards. The targeting cameras integrated into his forearm cannons made a quick sweep of the small valley on the other side of the rock. A pole with a limp green flag stood in the middle of the open area. He sent a picture through an IR link to Aignar and Cha’ril, both taking cover nearby.
“Looks clear,” he said.
“That’s the problem,”
Cha’ril sent back. “Sensors in orbit detected a defending element during the last sweep.”
“So who do we believe?” Aignar asked. “Our own lying eyes or some vacuum breather that’s been spoofed a dozen times during the trials?”
“The blue team must have left their flag undefended, doubled up on their assault element and hoped to overwhelm our defenders before we realized they were screwing with the satellite. Again,” Roland said.
“But if they know we know—”
“Grab the flag and take route Echo back to our base,” Roland said, cutting off Cha’ril. “Aignar on overwatch. Go in three…two…one.”
Roland spun around the side of the hill and ran toward the flag pole. His armor took great leaping strides, tiny thrusters in his shoulders firing to keep his armor from rising too high over the ground. Data fed from his passive sensors and into his eyes, creating an overlay through the vision centers of his brain. He “saw” from the perspective of the optics in his helm.
He ran on, his metal limbs never tiring, the hum of adrenaline in his ears.
A target icon popped up to his right. He brought both his shoulder and forearm cannons to bear on the boulder where his sensors read a power signature. Cha’ril cut toward the other side, covering Roland as he sidestepped around the boulder.
A battery pack pulled from a gauss cannon was wedged into the side of the boulder, a piece of metal bent between the leads.
“That’s how they spoofed the satellite,” Roland said. “They’re not here.”
“Less talking, more winning.” Cha’ril swung her shoulder cannon toward the flag.
“Aignar, we good?” Roland sent through the IR as he ran to the flag. He slowed, waiting for an answer.
“Aignar?”
“Must have lost line of sight, we’ll pick him up on the way out,” Cha’ril said.
Roland skidded to a halt in the ankle-deep sand next to the flagpole. He felt a slight tremor through his heels.
“What is that?”
An arm burst out of the sand and smashed into the back of Roland’s knee. He toppled backwards, loose sand spilling over his optics. He rolled over and came face-to-face with a double-barreled gauss cannon, sand pouring down the side.
