Ferrum Corde

  Ferrum Corde

  Terran Armor Corps Book 6

  by

  Richard Fox

  Copyright © by Richard Fox

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

  ASIN:

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  Read THE EMBER WAR for Free

  Read ALBION LOST, another Richard Fox universe!

  Chapter 1

  The silence felt wrong. A strike carrier’s flight deck was the beating heart of the ship, always moving as fighter craft came and went while crew prepped other craft. The stillness—the emptiness—of the space struck Roland as an affront to the ship’s purpose.

  Especially a ship as storied as the Breitenfeld.

  He turned slowly, taking in the details of the unmoving lifts, the spars of the superstructure across the ceiling, the faint smell of incense…though he wasn’t sure if that last sensation was a trick of his imagination.

  His gaze lingered on a line of bullet holes in a bulkhead. Bloodstains on the deck.

  “I can’t believe we’re here,” Morrigan said. “You know what happened here, don’t you, Roland?”

  “This ship won the Ember War,” Roland said. “Took the battle to the Xaros Masters in their world ship beyond the galactic rim. Of course I know.”

  “Ach, don’t you remember anything?” She strode across the flight deck, her eyes low and searching, the long red tail of her hair draped over one shoulder, the metal rings from her skull plugs glinting in the light. She froze for a moment, then crossed herself.

  “Here! It’s here.” Morrigan rushed to one side then went to her knees. She reached to the deck with a trembling hand, then pulled her fingers back to her lips.

  Roland made his way to her slowly. Morrigan’s chest heaved unevenly as she tried and failed to stifle tears. A few inches in front of her knees was an even cut almost six inches long in the deck.

  “What is it?” Roland asked.

  Morrigan wiped a sleeve across her eyes.

  “You saw our Templar ceremony back on Navarre,” she said. “Put it together.”

  Roland’s eyes narrowed.

  “The ceremony…the initiates knelt in prayer and a hologram appeared of Colonel Carius from the night before the final assault on the Xaros.” He looked around and felt sick to his stomach. “Carius asked for volunteers and the initiates…they all said, ‘Take me.’ This-this is where it happened, isn’t it?”

  Morrigan nodded quickly.

  “Saint Kallen was here,” she said. “Right here. She was with them all at the end, just as she promised her Iron Hearts. And this was where Elias stood. This is where he drove his sword into the deck and prayed that Kallen would find him worthy…to stand beside her in the world to come.”

  Roland’s skull plugs tingled ever so slightly. The vision of Saint Kallen on Ouranos, a vision he’d shared with Morrigan and the other Templar Armor, still haunted his mind. The power of Kallen’s presence had left him uneasy in the days that followed. The rest of the armor had acknowledged the event to each other, but none had been willing to speak of it openly.

  Morrigan put her hands to the deck and leaned forward. She kissed the deck where Elias’s sword had pierced the metal, then got back to her feet.

  “It’s right that this ship belongs to the Ibarra Nation,” she said. “The Union doesn’t deserve it. Saint Kallen’s mantle has passed to us.”

  “You sound like the Lady,” Roland said.

  “Is she wrong?”

  “No,” Roland said quickly. “But Stacey Ibarra didn’t send Admiral Makarov to capture this ship for religious reasons. She was after the Keystone jump gate the Breitenfeld carried.” He gestured to the bloodstains a few yards away. “And this ship didn’t go easy. The Lady…she snatched this ship and Admiral Valdar, hero of the Ember War, right out from under the Terran Union. Things were bad enough between us and Earth.”

  “Earth has real problems.” Morrigan shrugged. “The Vishrakath bombing colony worlds. Kesaht invasions on multiple fronts. They used this ship as a glorified museum piece. It wasn’t ready for the war, but Valdar threw it into the fire anyway…you saw all the work being done to her when we shuttled in.”

  “We may stand apart from Earth, but we’re still human,” Roland said. “This ship isn’t the same as when you and the rest of a fleet defected…left the Terran Union with the Ibarras. She means a lot to people. Earth can’t slap ‘Breitenfeld’ on a new carrier and call it a day. They will want this back. They’ll want Valdar back. There won’t be peace until that happens.”

  “The Union can sod off and—no,” Morrigan said, shaking her head quickly. “I owe the Rosary for that sin. You’re right. They are all human and our oaths as Templar don’t stop at politics. Still, the Union’s not our ally. You were there on Mars—you saw our brothers and sisters cut down as we tried to escape their prison.”

  “Tongea deserved a death in his armor,” Roland said.

  “We didn’t leave Earth behind because we cared about what Phoenix, or President Garret, or the aliens on Bastion wanted. We followed Saint Kallen here. We fight for humanity. And Lady Ibarra needed this ship and the Keystone gate to win this war once and for all, to make the galaxy safe for us,” she said.

  “I barely understand what Lady Ibarra wants with this ship…or what she needed from Trinia on Ouranos,” he said. “The Keystone is a mobile Crucible gate. The Nation already has that technology.”

  “Our mobile gates are limited in range to a few dozen light-years. The Keystone is next generation, far better design. As for Trinia…faith, Roland.” Morrigan gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “How can you lack any after what you’ve seen?”

  “How indeed,” Roland said with conviction, though doubt gnawed at his heart.

  “Soon we’ll do our pre-battle rights here.” She raised her arms to her sides. “Where Carius and the first Templars made their oaths and blessed their weapons. Iron Hearts. Hussars. Warriors of legend were here.”

  “May we be as worthy,” Roland said and went to one knee next to the tear in the deck. He ran his fingertips along the edge and looked up, imagining the armor named Elias beside him.

  He thought back to the mausoleum on Mars where Saint Kallen was buried in her armor, memento mori of those that died on the Xaros world ship around her. The only thing Elias had left was a face mask, a face mask he ripped off one of the Xaros leadership caste.

  Of all the feelings swirling through his heart, worthiness—when compared to Elias—was not one of them.

  The screen on Roland’s forearm buzzed with a messa
ge.

  “Back to the Warsaw.” Morrigan frowned at her own screen. “In armor drills.”

  “I’m not sure who’s the harder taskmaster, Nicodemus or Martel,” Roland said.

  “Fire makes steel, boy-o,” Morrigan said.

  ****

  Amniosis sloshed around Roland as it filled his womb, the armored pod within his suit. Filling his lungs and stomach with the fluid was never a pleasant experience, but after so long, he’d become accustomed to the sensation and the slightly sweet taste of the amniosis.

  The umbilical attached to his plugs vibrated and his armor’s HUD appeared on his vision. Video feed from his helm fed to his brain and he took in the cemetery, his lance’s maintenance bay on the Warsaw.

  Master Chief Eneko stood on the catwalk running parallel to the armor’s waist, his attention on a data slate held in the crook of an arm.

  Roland’s mind still clung to the events on Ouranos as he and his armor integrated. The process was almost second nature to him by now, but something the Aeon Trinia had said to him in her laboratory itched at the back of his thoughts.

  He ran a quick diagnostic, then pulled up a schematic of his suit. His hands wavered slightly with sympathetic motion as he searched through status reports on components attached to his womb. He accessed a small device built into the umbilical system and got an error notice.

  “There a problem?” Chief Eneko looked up from his slate to Roland’s helm.

  “What is…regulator CD-999B?” Roland asked.

  The maintenance tech’s face scrunched up with confusion. “You getting a function alert off that component?” he asked.

  “No. But I’m locked out from monitoring the internal controls. There a reason for that?”

  The chief sighed and began swiping across his slate. “Your suit’s designed so you don’t have to worry about the inner workings. You plug in and you are the armor. Screw around with the fine-tuning, you run the risk of redlining or screwing up your sync rating. Why you doing this to me, sir? Think me and my guys aren’t busy enough patching up your battle damage?”

  “Do you know what it does or not, Chief?”

  “I’m inclined to answer, as you might crush my skull as part of your customer service feedback,” Eneko said. He doubled-tapped his screen and lifted an eyebrow, then whacked the side of the slate against the handrail, tapping the screen repeatedly. “Well…that’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “System locked me out. Unauthorized access. Though I did get that regulator CD-999B is coded for specialty techs to service…thing is, me and my wrench monkeys are the only ones on your maintenance records. That part comes installed from the foundry that makes the wombs. I’ve never had to work on them. Weird.”

  “Can you tell what it…regulates?” Roland asked.

  “It’s housed with the neural buffers. Works with the input/output through your umbilical is my guess. I worry about what’s broken, not what’s working just fine,” the maintenance chief said.

  “Roland, we’re on holo range seven for gunnery,” Colonel Martel, his lance commander, sent to him.

  “Roger. Moving.” Roland activated his armor’s servos and Eneko stepped aside as the catwalk lifted up and away from the maintenance bay.

  “You want me to keep digging?” Eneko asked.

  “No, Chief, forget we ever mentioned this.” Roland gave him a thumbs-up as he walked out of his bay.

  “Mentioned what?” Eneko whacked his slate hard against the railing and the screen came back to life.

  Chapter 2

  Candles flickered in front of Roland as he lit another votive. He said a silent prayer for his parents and watched as the smoke rose from the fire. He was alone in the chapel, and the relative quiet served to heighten the religious nature of the space, at odds with the emptiness of the Breitenfeld’s hangar.

  “Up to heaven,” he said quietly. The traditions aboard Ibarra Nation ships were slightly different from what he’d experienced aboard Union vessels. There, open flames were forbidden, so shrines to Saint Kallen were tucked into corners of work areas and chapels were plainer. Aboard the Warsaw, Saint Kallen was front and center, embodied in a stained glass window backlit above the pulpit.

  Roland looked up at the Saint. The art held her in a wheelchair outside the gates of the Armor Center at Fort Knox, where she waited for days before being accepted to training.

  “Things would be easier if you were still here,” Roland said. “We’d know what you’d want. We would only follow you. Fight beside you. Never for something…abstract.”

  His breath fogged and a chill nipped at his ears. Roland swallowed hard, knowing who’d just arrived.

  Stacey Ibarra stood behind the rear pew, her silver hands resting on the wooden back. She wore a black robe run through with a tight pattern of wires. Her face was still, the candlelight reflecting off her metal face.

  Roland beat a fist against his heart in salute.

  “My Lady.”

  “Ro-land.” She pronounced the syllables separately without moving her lips, but her shell wavered as she spoke. “You spent some quality time with the last Aeon…with Trinia. She tell you anything…interesting?”

  “I left nothing out of my report, my Lady. And Marc Ibarra was with me the entire time I spoke to Trinia,” Roland said, suddenly realizing what a fool he was to try and delve into the inner workings of his armor. Of course the Ibarras would keep an eye on something that could be incriminating.

  But if she—of all people—were here…

  “Grandfather says you’re truthful,” Stacey says. “Honest. Honorable. He doesn’t like you. And when you were with Trinia, she…mentioned something while examining your armor.”

  “She claimed she designed the armor and that there were components she wasn’t familiar with,” Roland said evenly.

  Behind Stacey, blocking the doorway, was one of her honor guards who were heavily armed and wore ornate power armor. They were formidable warriors and Roland knew he had no chance in a fight against them outside his armor.

  His mouth went dry. The Ibarras were known to kill to accomplish their goals.

  “And you got curious.” Stacey put her hands behind her back and walked down one side of the pews to Roland. “That’s not a trait we encounter with our armor. Curiosity. How curious.”

  Roland remained silent.

  She stopped near the votive candles and the chill from her presence bit through Roland’s clothes. Flames flickered, fighting against the cold.

  “Do you know what you went looking for?” she asked.

  “Trinia said there were components she didn’t recognize. Given her expertise as a scientist working for millennia—according to her—and her involvement in creating the armor …it sparked questions.”

  “Questions you haven’t shared?” Stacey looked up at him, her doll-like face almost unnerving.

  “My crew chief looked into regulator CD-999B for me,” Roland said, turning his face to one side. Had he doomed Eneko too?

  “And you found something,” Stacey said, walking to the pulpit and looking up at the stained glass depiction of Kallen, “but you don’t know what.”

  “That is correct, my Lady.”

  “And should I tell you? Remove all doubt? What would happen then?”

  “The decision is yours,” Roland said and felt his uniform stiffen as Stacey’s metal body leeched heat away.

  “I should be honest, Ken. You deserve honesty. I never had the chance to tell you the whole truth before you left,” Stacey said.

  “Ken, my Lady?”

  Stacey’s head cocked to one side for a half second.

  “How to tell you the truth without ruining everything? All my armor is so honorable. They don’t take to being tricked. Oh no, no, no.” She wagged a finger next to her face. “But Grandfather said it had to happen. We needed you in Navarre. We couldn’t wait decades to grow our own true born to recruit into armor. What choice was there? He…he’s not to blame. I
know what I did.”

  Roland rubbed his thumbs against his forefingers. What was she getting at?

  “She was real,” Stacey said, raising a hand to Kallen. “I remember seeing her. I know how you can venerate her. A cripple, a quadriplegic, but she had the strength to be armor. Impressive for anyone. Back then, I was just a junior navigator on the Breitenfeld, then the Ember War began and everything went sideways. I didn’t see much of her after the war started.

  “After it was all over, armor began to pray in her name. Then it spread to the Navy. Then to the Rangers. Then everywhere. Not that I cared. My own faith was in danger.” Stacey touched where her heart would be if she was still flesh and blood.

  “One day a Pathfinder team brought back an artifact from a dead world and it gave us quantum communication technology and I was able to modify it—not perfect it, just get it to work well enough as a monitoring device. One I could even send data through. Grandfather had them installed in every armor’s womb as a ‘system improvement.’” Stacey was still for a moment, then whirled around and thrust a finger at Roland.

  “And I don’t regret what I did, Ken! You were on New Bastion negotiating away our future and what was I supposed to do? I needed them!”

  Roland backed up until his legs touched the votive stand.

  “My Lady, I don’t understand why you—”

  “You think I wanted to be Saint Kallen?” Stacey balled her fists at her waist. “Think I wanted to masquerade as someone noble and pure while I was trapped in this thing? Yeah? Do you know how hard it is to project onto the armors’ minds? What it does to me?”

  Roland felt ice in his heart, a feeling that had nothing to do with Stacey’s presence.

  “No…no. I saw the Saint,” Roland said.

  “You ‘see’ what the armor feeds to your brain,” Stacey said, “not with your own eyes. Your suits are all tapped. Have been for years. I can dip into the feed of any suit in the galaxy when I want and blast my own reality to you.” She rapped the side of her head. “Remember back on Barada? When the Vishrakath nearly disabled your armor? I needed the Union to get the archaeotech, so I stepped into your data and sent Kallen to you. Got you back on your feet and fighting.”