by Richard Fox
“Our parents were refugees,” Araki said. “Fled Chinese occupation to America. There was a regiment that fought in the Second World War made up of second-generation Japanese. It fit for our lance, though we weren’t recruited out of an internment camp like the original Nisei regiment.”
“Sounds like someone I know.” Morrigan jabbed an elbow into Roland’s ribs.
Nicodemus entered the briefing room, walking with a slight limp. His complexion was ashen.
“You look like ass,” Morrigan said. “Not good ass either.”
“I’m fine,” said the other Templar. “Full medical scan cleared me for duty.”
“You got banged on Nunavik,” she said. “If you come that close to redlining, you’re supposed to be taken off the line to recover.”
“Cleared for duty,” Nicodemus said. “Just finished a holo with the family…my wife is very close to her due date. I arranged for more household droids, but that’s not what she wants from me.”
“No way to win this one,” Morrigan said.
“We win whatever fight we’re being sent to and come home fast,” Nicodemus said. “Though the baby will come when the baby will come. They’re selfish that way.”
Roland thought back to Cha’ril, who he last heard was expecting. When Aignar shared that news with him, they were the last kind words his former lance mate ever said to him.
A sergeant major, part of the Ibarran Armor’s staff, came into the room and stomped a foot as he braced himself against the wall next to the door.
“Room, atten-shun!”
Roland clicked his heels together and brought his shoulders back slightly, locking hands against the seam of his trousers.
Colonel Martel and General Hurson went to the stage. The general spoke quietly to Martel for a moment then left.
“Be seated,” Martel said as the lights dimmed and a holo wall came to life behind him. “Armor, we have a critical mission. Lances Templar and Nisei will accompany an…envoy to Ouranos, a world on the spinward side of the Perseus arm.”
A map of the galaxy came up, along with an overlay of areas claimed by the Milky Way’s species. The Terran Union had patches of control across the galaxy, along with a wide berth around Earth. Ouranos was far from Earth space, just on the edge of a wide swath of magenta.
“Who are the Cyrgal?” Roland wondered out loud. He shut up as Martel looked at him.
“Ouranos is a protectorate world,” Martel said. “While Bastion was the home to the old Alliance, a number of ambassadors’ species went nearly extinct, with only the ambassador surviving. Some of those survivors escaped Bastion’s destruction and made it home. New Bastion placed those worlds in a protectorate status, and there are only a half dozen across the galaxy. The Terran Union protects the Karigole, for those Ember War historians.”
The holo zoomed in on Ouranos, a blue and green world that could have been Earth’s cousin. A dashed outline of a humanoid form came up next to the planet and dashed lines traced from the form’s head and feet to a point just off the coast.
“The last Aeon should be here,” Martel said. “Lady Ibarra has tasked us with retrieving the Aeon and returning her to Navarre. I’ll now turn this briefing over to the envoy.”
Roland felt a chill breeze as a man in a legionnaire uniform with no insignia and full face helmet walked onto the stage. The man didn’t move with the confidence or alertness of a legionnaire…this man had a swagger to him.
“Oh no,” Roland said.
Marc Ibarra removed his helmet and Nicodemus slammed a fist against his seat.
“Hello, hello!” Marc handed the helmet toward Martel, who didn’t take it. “Some old faces out there in the crowd, I see. Nicodemus! Bet you never thought I’d get out of that cell after you arrested me! And there’s my boy!” He wagged a finger at Roland and Roland wished he could melt into the back of his chair and disappear.
“Did you two get matching prison tats?” Morrigan whispered to Roland and he grumbled a nonresponse.
“We’re off to meet my old pen pal, an Aeon by the name of Trinia,” Ibarra said. “But I’m a little ahead of myself. When a Qa’Resh probe first contacted me on Earth, the plan to use a time skip on a fleet and retake Earth and the incomplete Crucible was drawn up. Now, I could only save a small fraction of Earth’s population, and that wasn’t going to be enough to stop the Xaros when they came back. You all lived through that bit.
“The Qa’Resh had an idea to repopulate the Earth and that’s where Trinia came in. She is a biologist—one with thousands of years of experience—and I was able to feed her enough data through the Qa’Resh probe back to Bastion where her lab was. It took several decades of work, but she broke the code on how to grow an adult human in nine days and put a trained mind into that body. She was the mind behind the procedurals. Granted, I did all the hard work on Earth gathering data and—”
“What do we need a biologist for?” Nicodemus asked.
“We don’t need a biologist, per se.” Marc touched a lectern and frost spread out across the front. “We need someone with a deeper understanding of Qa’Resh technology. The Qa’Resh worked in the smallest possible increments. All about quantum states and designations. What’s fascinating about that mindset is that once you’ve mastered the base of their language, you know it all. For instance, I don’t speak French, but if you put a line of that language on the screen, I can read it aloud. I won’t know if I asked what’s for dinner or just propositioned your cat, but the words will come out. With Qa’Resh, if you can read it, you understand it. All of it. You grok.”
Roland frowned at Morrigan, who shrugged her shoulders.
“And what do we need this super reader for?” Marc pulled his hand away with a snap of ice and brushed frost out of his palm. “I’m glad you asked. Slide.” He said the last word to Martel.
The colonel stepped away from the lectern.
“Fine, fine.” Marc reached over and swiped a hand over a screen hidden in the stand. A grainy image of a ship floating in space appeared on the holo wall. The alien vessel resembled a conch shell, with long spines tipped with silver metal and a white marble hull. An Ibarran carrier appeared next to the ship for scale; the alien ship was easily five times larger.
“We call it the Ark,” Marc said. “It is the single-greatest piece of Qa’Resh technology left over after their exit off this plane of existence. If we can seize control of this, the balance of power will forever change in the galaxy. Jump-engine technology. Energy weapons we saw used during the last battle with the Xaros that could annihilate fleets in an instant.”
“Where is it?” Morrigan asked.
“Stac—Lady Ibarra knows where it is,” Marc said. “And…she’s not shared that with me. Or anyone else. But she also knows her comprehension of Qa’Resh technology isn’t enough to fully utilize this ship. The Ark isn’t of much use to us if all we can do is turn the lights on and off.”
“Why will this Aeon help us?” Kataro, one of the Niseai, asked.
“I have something to offer her,” Marc said, “something no one else in the galaxy has. You let me worry about that part, yeah?”
“You sure she’s alive?” Nicodemus said. “The Xaros destroyed Bastion a long time ago.”
“Aeon are naturally long-lived,” Marc said. “And two years ago a Kroar raiding force arrived in system. None of the Kroar survived. The Cyrgal reported the incident and that the Aeon was unharmed to New Bastion.”
“You think these Cyrgal will be happy to see us?” Nicodemus asked.
Marc raised his hands and rotated them from side to side.
“Tough to say. Tough to say,” he said. The image on the holo wall changed to a bipedal alien with a hairless, leonine head. A simple tunic covered the torso and cloth wrapped around the legs and arms—one of the two sets of arms. The bottom pair were mechanical and had the same four fingers as the true hands.
“Cyrgal are a bit of an enigma,” Marc said. “Their territory spanned several star syst
ems and they had a population in the hundreds of billions before the Qa’Resh contacted them. They’ve been very slow to expand since the end of the war, but they take their duty of protecting Ourous very seriously. Their culture and politics are fractious, to say the least. Clans and extended tribes are constantly in a state of low-level conflict with each other. Trying to get them to agree on anything is almost impossible, but there are two exceptions: when threatened, they will work together quite handily, and they all take certain aspects of their religion as a matter of life and death.
“The Aeon—oddly enough—fits into their belief pantheon as some sort of creator figure. So long as we don’t come in guns blazing, we should have enough time to convince Trinia to leave with us before things get too hairy,” Marc said.
“The Cyrgal are effectively neutral in the Vishrakath-led war against Earth and our Nation,” Martel said. “Lady Ibarra would prefer we avoid drawing them into the conflict, but securing the Aeon is our number-one priority.”
“They’re just going to let us waltz up to this god figure and skip away with her?” Morrigan asked.
“I can be very convincing,” Marc said. “And let me add this. Without Trinia, we would have lost the Ember War. Period. Humanity would be extinct. We would not have survived the second Xaros attack without the procedural technology, and without that win, we would have never brought the fight to the Xaros Masters and destroyed them. Bastion would be thinking up another Hail Mary play to survive the Xaros drones’ advance without her work and without our spilled blood. So we owe Trinia. We owe her the chance I’m going to give her.”
Chapter 5
Roland, in Armor, stood with his lance in a Warsaw munition bay. A hundred-foot-long missile with four compartments built into the base of the nosecone radiated steam and heat as massive servo arms lifted a heavy plate off one of the compartments. A frame within could hold an Armor soldier with little room to spare.
“Nothing like a tactical insertion torpedo to make an entrance,” Roland said.
“The Cyrgal defend the Ouranos system,” Martel said. “Their military is organized around massive capital ships to fend off invasions, not raids. The Warsaw won’t do a slingshot orbit pass like she did to get us off Mars.”
“There’s no such thing as a tactical extraction torpedo,” Roland said. “How are we getting off world?”
“Makarov’s keeping that close hold,” Nicodemus said. “She’s not let us down before.”
“She doesn’t trust us?” Roland asked.
“It’s not a matter of trust,” came from a smaller stairway built for normal-sized crew. Marc Ibarra made his way onto the platform, followed by two of Stacey Ibarra’s much larger bodyguards. “It’s a matter of loose lips sinking ships.”
“Well,” Morrigan said, turning her helm to the silver man, “if it isn’t the traitor that tried to tell our enemies Navarre’s location and the Lady’s plans. Come to lecture us on operation security. What a day.”
“If Stacey can put things in the past for the greater good,” Marc wagged a finger at Nicodemus, “I can get over having my personage being manhandled by a brute like him. You know he slapped that metal mitt of his over my face for hours before he chucked me into a cell? If I had a sense of smell or needed to breathe, I might never have recovered.”
“You know how we’re getting off Ouranos?” Roland asked.
“Well…not exactly.” Marc shrugged. “I can hazard a guess but speculation only introduces doubt into an operation, as does ambiguity, so let’s not overthink this. However we’re getting off world, the means are so delicate that if Trinia or the Cyrgal get word of it, it won’t work.”
“This does nothing for my confidence levels,” Morrigan said.
“All you’ve got to do is keep the Cyrgal away with your fearsome reputation and big scary guns while I work my magic on Trinia. Now, a little direction. Ready?” Marc held his hands up and made a rough square like he was looking through a camera. “Give me ‘crush your head’! Yes, excellent. Now, how about ‘I’ll rip your limbs off and beat your friend to death with them’?”
Morrigan stepped toward Marc but Nicodemus stopped her with his arm.
“This’ll be a breeze,” Marc said. “So, where’s my torp?”
“You’ll ride with Roland,” Martel said.
“He’ll what?” Roland asked.
Marc craned his neck up and looked into the open compartment.
“You don’t breathe,” Martel said. “You don’t have internal organs or a blood supply affected by acceleration or high-g maneuvers. We’re not even sure how much damage your…body can take. The Terran Union has a few prototype insertion torps for Strike Marines, but recreating that tech for you is a waste of time and resources.”
“Gee thanks.” Marc put his hands on his hips. “So how do I—”
“The shock frame’s been adjusted to accommodate you,” Martel said. “Roland won’t deploy with a Mouser heavy rifle. I’ll carry it for him.”
“Why him? Maybe I should go down with the Nisei. They’re loading up in the other bay. I’ll just—” Marc backed away and one of the bodyguards nudged him in the small of the back with his rifle.
“He’s the junior lancer,” Martel said. “He always pulls the shortest straw.”
“Of all the traditions to carry over from the Terran Armor Corps…” Roland went to the opening and crawled inside, like he was a bullet loading into a breech. Crash frames closed against his legs and shoulders. Were he not used to being inside an armored pod filled with amniosis fluid, the claustrophobia would have been palpable.
“So I just…” Marc hopped up beside the compartment. “A ladder or—unhand me you oaf!”
Nicodemus grabbed Marc around the waist and slid him next to Roland, who put his arm around Marc’s shoulder.
The compartment closed over them and bars wedged Marc against Roland’s side. Weak red light filled the tight space.
“We will never speak of this,” Marc said.
“I always wanted my own little sidekick,” Roland said.
“I am over a hundred years old and would be the richest person in human history had Garret not used eminent domain to—”
“I think I’ll call you George,” Roland said. “I will hug you and squeeze you—”
“Let me out!” Marc wiggled against Roland, but he was held fast. Frost crept over Roland’s Armor.
“Pat you and love you and…you know what? It is getting a little weird.”
“You think?” Marc stopped struggling. “How do we get out of these things?”
“The torp dumps us out. Sometimes at a velocity that allows me to manage a graceful landing. Sometimes.”
“Just don’t use me to cushion your fall, you hear me, Roland?”
The torpedo rotated clockwise, bringing around the next compartment for a Templar to load up.
“Roland?”
“I promise nothing.”
****
The Warsaw materialized out of a wormhole not far from a poorly formed moon; its axis was off, like a giant had gripped the celestial body and twisted it against itself. A squadron of destroyers and frigates followed, forming a cordon around the Ibarran carrier.
A pair of torpedoes shot out the ventral tubes just beneath the internal flight deck and arced around the moon. On the bridge, Admiral Makarov brought her holo tank to life and watched as the local system materialized before her.
“Guns, any activity from the moon?” she asked.
“Negative, ma’am. This moon’s surface is unstable, doubt the locals can even keep passive sensors functioning down there,” the gunnery officer, Eneko, said.
“They’re going to notice the graviton waves from our entrance,” the XO, Commander Andere said. “We came in right on top of the Lagrange point…which just shifted out of alignment with the Crucible we did our offset jump through.”
“Our intelligence was correct,” Makarov said. “The Cyrgal are sloppy. They left a back door for us t
o slip in through…now we’re being hailed. Maybe they’re not that clueless.”
“Launch the alert fighters?” Andere asked.
“No.” Makarov brought the hail up in the holo tank and frowned as there were eight different channels part of one frequency. “Our arrival’s riled them up enough. Now we deescalate.”
Makarov opened the hail, and windows with Cyrgal faces formed a row in front of her face. The males were larger and gruff-looking, and most of their faces were similarly lined and scarred to such a degree that Makarov suspected they were of the same age. The females had a thin layer of fur and shawls over their heads with beads and small coins woven into the edge.
“Terran vessel,” a male said, “this is protected space. Your arrival here is unauthorized and unwelcome. You will set course for the Crucible at once and—”
“I am Admiral Makarov of the Ibarra Nation vessel Warsaw,” she said. “We stand apart from the Terran Union. We are here to establish diplomatic relations with you and—”
“Where is the rest of your kindred?” a female asked. “Does this Ibarra Nation insult us with a xeren?”
The channel froze but remained open.
“Damn me for not anticipating this.” Makarov waved her XO and a legionnaire sentry over. “Take your helmets off and stand on either side of me. Cyrgal are group decision makers. They never send just one of them to do anything. That xeren they mentioned—”
“Ibarran?” A Cyrgal male with a cybernetic eye spoke. Only his window was active; the others were still frozen. “You are not xeren?”
“There is no concept of this for humans. I am with my executive officer and my-my chief of internal discipline. Decisions are relayed through me and as such—”
“Then our kindred will be represented in full,” the cyborg said with a sigh of relief. The other seven windows reactivated. “We are Kul Rui Gassla, confederated with the Forssui aboard the Concord of Might. This confederation is bound by blood and immutable.”
“Good to know,” Makarov said. The brief from the intelligence section had neglected to mention any of what this Cyrgal has just laid out. She muted the channel and turned to Anderre. “Get the intelligence officer up here. Now.”
