The Siege of Earth (The Ember War Saga Book 7) (6 page)

The range was a cave the size of a basketball court. A wide rubber mat filled the rear half while the firing range took up most of the rest. Suits of armor stood shoulder to shoulder against the wall, their breastplates open, pilot cradles empty. The unarmored soldiers clustered around the holo wall where Xaros targets flew in a deep illusion of the Martian surface, watching as two soldiers in armor marked with runes engaged targets.

Bodel and Kallen, in armor, watched the other soldiers use their forearm cannons and shoulder-mounted rotary guns to tear through a swarm of drones coming over a hilltop.

Elias turned a corner to enter the range. Anger flared in his chest as none of the soldiers but Kallen noted his arrival.

No awareness,
he thought.

He walked up to the firing line and stepped into the holo envelope. The range linked up with his suit. As soon as the synch was complete, his suit would provide recoil the same as if he was firing live ammunition. The progress bar filled slowly.

Elias twisted his helm around and looked over the seven unarmored pilots.

They were all Dotok. Their blunted beak mouths hung open as they all looked up at Elias with eyes wide against their broad faces. Something nagged at Elias as he scanned their faces and matched his roster to the English name patches sewn to their uniforms.

Hair. They all still had thick strands of dark hair coming off their scalps. Traditionally, a soldier shaved his head the day they had the surgery to install the neural plugs at the base of their skull that linked to the armor. Those newly minted—and completely bald—soldiers earned the nickname “bean heads.”

Elias turned his attention back to the range. He swung the rotary cannon up from his back and felt it snap into the shoulder mount. He felt a pinch against his flesh-and-blood shoulder, a psychosynaptic reaction to a change in his suit.

“Range. Calibration.” Elias raised his forearm cannon and waited for the holo field to shift to known-distance targets, bull’s-eyes every few tens of meters. A reticule popped up on his vision. As he moved his gaze around, the rotary cannon moved to match. He raised his forearm cannon and tested moving the two reticules around each other.

“Firing line,” he said to the armor next to him. “Time trial. Engage all targets. Count down from five.”

The range popped the count down over his vision.

His weapons activated and Elias tore through the targets, sweeping the rotary gun up one side, his forearm cannon up the other. When the last target exploded, Elias’ completion time flashed up in the holo range. Three point two seconds. The other armor finished in a little over eight seconds. Murmurs of surprise came from the other Dotok pilots.

“Range. Cease fire.” Elias lowered his weapons. “You two didn’t use simultaneous fire. Why?”

“The neural load is dangerously high,” the nearer suit said, the voice female. “We try to fire both weapons at the same time and we risk a redline.”

Elias’ hands clenched into fists.

“‘Try,’” Elias let the word hang in the air. “Is the Dotok nervous system inferior to a human’s?”

“Not at all, sir,” the other armor said, this one sounding young and male. “Our synch rates are almost twenty percent better than—”

“Then why aren’t you pushing yourselves?”

“It’s…risky,” the female said.

Kallen started toward her, but Bodel put a hand up and stopped her.

“If you’re not willing to push yourself in training, you will not push yourself in battle,” Elias said.

“We score higher than all the human pilots on every test,” the younger one said.

Elias pointed to two unsuited Dotok. “Armor up. Now. All four of you against me on the mat.”

Elias went to the far end of the fighting mat, pacing back and forth as the other two Dotok loaded into their wombs and plugged into their armor. The four Dotok armor hesitated at their edge of the arena.

“Rules?” one of the newly chosen asked.

“Range, set threat condition black,” Elias said. A green icon popped against his vision. The suit would let the armor push to the limits of their capabilities, but stop them from inflicting any serious injury. There were safer settings, but Elias had never used them.

The four Dotok stepped onto the mat and set into a fighting stance.

The female looked at her fellow combatants and asked, “When do we—”

Elias charged forward and punched her in the abdomen. The sound of steel on steel rang like a bell across the room. Elias dug his fingers around the edge of her armor plates and hurled her against the Dotok armor standing next to her, sending them both to the ground in a jumble of limbs.

Elias’ torso whirled around on its hip actuators and smacked the back of his fist into the shoulder of a lunging Dotok. Elias sidestepped the disrupted charge and drove his spike into the attacker’s back. The spike bounced off the armor, Elias’ strength limited by the rules of the match.

“Killing blow,” sounded through the room. The Dotok flattened against the floor, the armor locked.

The still-standing Dotok leaped into the air, spike extended and poised to strike as he descended on Elias. Elias activated the aegis shield on his forearm and segments of the shield unfolded into a kite shape in a split second.

Elias knocked the Dotok’s strike aside with the shield and thrust his own spike up and into the falling armor. Elias’ spike collapsed into the housing, saving the Dotok pilot from being impaled.

“Killing blow.”

Elias ducked forward and kicked a leg back, catching the female Dotok in the chest. She stumbled back and caught the tip of Elias’ spike beneath her armpit.

“Killing blow.”

Elias grabbed her deactivated armor by the throat as it fell and threw it at his final opponent. The last Dotok caught her and came to a stop. Elias bashed his shoulder into the pair and sent them flying back.

Elias raised a foot over the prone Dotok and slammed his heel toward the alien’s chest. Elias’ suit overrode his command and shifted his heel to the side and into the ground hard enough to break through the flooring.

“Killing blow.”

Elias’ shield and spike retracted into their housings.

“Pathetic,” Elias said. “You think test scores matter. You think your rank against each other matters. It does not. You all lack a killer’s instinct and I do not know if I can find it inside you. Get up and get off my mat. The next four of you, suit up.”

The two armor soldiers that stoked his ire got to their feet as the simulation released them. Elias read the English letter names on their chests: Caas. Ar’ri.

No, can’t be
,
he thought. He knew those names, Dotok children he’d met on New Abhaile, the Dotok city on Takeni where the world’s population sought refuge. He remembered carrying them in his arms to an evacuation center and promising to protect them from the monsters assaulting the city.

Now the two would fight beside him in the coming battle.

No different. I wouldn’t have done anything different,
Elias thought.
The Xaros will not show mercy, neither must I.

****

Kallen’s womb lowered from the inside of her armor and popped open. Bodel caught her and gently removed the plugs from her skull. He lifted her emaciated frame into a waiting wheelchair and wrapped a shawl over her shoulders. Kallen’s head lolled to the side.

“How is she?” Elias asked.

“Passed out again.” Bodel touched two fingers to the side of her throat and frowned. “Heart rate’s a bit erratic…but getting stronger. She could have taken another neural booster, even a hit of adrenaline to stay awake. She’s getting worse, Elias.”

Kallen had been diagnosed with Batten’s Disease, a neurological disorder that had afflicted many armor soldiers in the past. The symptoms were easy to identify and the disease was reversible in its earliest stages. But Kallen was a quadriplegic, had been since she was a little girl. There had been no warning for her as the disease progressed. According to the doctors on Earth, she was well into the terminal phase.

“We knew this would happen,” Elias said.

Bodel gently pushed her head back and ran a towel through her hair.

“Doesn’t make this any easier for me.” He gave Elias a dirty look. “Shouldn’t be for you either.”

“It isn’t, Hans. We promised to keep her in armor for as long as possible. It’s what she wants.”

“It will be me—don’t you get that? It will be me that takes her out of her armor the last time. That has to take care of her body. I’ve been doing this for her for so long…but it’ll be soon. She’ll be just like this, but she’s won’t wake up. It has to be me…but I don’t want to do it.”

Kallen’s eyes fluttered. She opened and closed a bone-dry mouth and brought her head up. Bodel placed a straw against her lips. She took a long sip of electrolyte water and gave Bodel a smile.

“Hans, have you been crying?” she asked.

“No.” Bodel stepped behind her wheelchair before she could get a better look at him.

“Elias, you didn’t kill any of our bean heads, did you?” she asked.

“I sent them back here with their tail between their legs. There was some improvement,” Elias said.

“If you could get out of your armor, I think Aguilar would have kicked your ass for all the repair work he and his techs have to do,” Bodel said.

“I regret nothing,” Elias deadpanned.

The door to the cemetery opened and two Dotok came inside. Elias zoomed in on their coveralls to read their nametapes. Caas and Ar’ri.

The two came up on the catwalk running at the stored armor’s waist height.

Caas’ beak clicked several times, glancing between Kallen’s open armor and the woman in the wheelchair.

“Forgive us,” Caas said. “We are looking for the Iron Hearts.”

“You’ve got us,” Bodel said.

Ar’ri looked around his sister’s shoulder at the two. His head cocked from side to side.

“Truly?” he asked.

“We are armor,” Elias said, his voice thundering from his speakers, causing the two Dotok to jump as if the catwalk had suddenly electrified.

“Elias?” Caas recovered and put a hand to her chest, then bowed slightly.

“We came to thank you and to beg forgiveness,” Ar’ri said.

“For?” Kallen asked.

“You three are the reason we volunteered for the armored corps,” Caas said. “We thought we’d serve on the
Vorpal
or as pilots once we were old enough to serve. But when word came that we could be like you…we had to try.”

“The human recruiters were very happy to see us,” Ar’ri said. “It seems Dotok can more easily integrate with the armor’s neural links and we do not suffer from clouds row phobia. Closet foopia. The word. After so many generations aboard starships, we are used to tight spaces.”

“Recruiters are always happy to see anyone who can help make their quotas,” Bodel said.

“You are not pleased to see us?” Caas asked.

“You were children the last time we saw you. Now you’re…grown,” Elias said.

“Outside your armor…” Ar’ri hesitated, “you are not what we expected.”

“And what did you envision?” Kallen asked.

“We knew some Marines. Mr. Standy, Torni, Orozco. They are—” Caas’ foot scratched at the catwalk.

“Not cripples,” Kallen said. “Tell me why Elias would have murdered you on that mat if the computer hadn’t saved you.”

“Our training was deficient,” Caas said quickly.

“No.” Bodel shook his head and wiped a bit of spittle from the slack half of his mouth. “He was pushing you.”

“Your body doesn’t matter in the armor,” Kallen said. “Your mind is the killer, the armor the extension of your will. In the armor you are more. Faster. Stronger. Able to withstand harsh environments and take down the hardest targets. We don’t wear the armor because we are weak. We are armor because we are strong enough to push ourselves further and harder than anyone else.”

“Few soldiers could ever make it through selection,” Bodel said. “Armor was expensive, difficult to build and maintain. We were never weapons that could be mass-produced. But the few of us that fought made the difference in every battle.”

“We aren’t worthy.” Caas’ shoulders slumped. She backed up and turned away.

“Who are you?” Elias asked.

“Trooper Caas,” she said.

“No.” Elias leaned out of his coffin. A panel on his breastplate popped open. Elias’ true eyes opened slowly. “Who are you?”

“Armor,” Ar’ri said.

“I am armor,” Caas said slowly.

Elias touched a finger to her sternum. “No one wants the armor, no one gets their plugs, unless they’ve got iron in here. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Caas said.

“You came in here to apologize for something?” Bodel asked.

“For our poor performance,” Ar’ri said.

“You won’t be sorry against the Xaros. You’ll be dead,” Kallen said.