by Jerry
“Yes sir, just a regular O-3.” She had a clipboard under one arm, and bent to retrieve a paper grocery bag that clinked with a familiar glass chime as she lifted it. “I’m here to check in on you, but I came with a peace offering.”
“Peace offering?” Skip asked, stepping aside to let Captain Walsh in and keep the desert heat out. “Gus think he pissed me off or something? Sorry, I mean Colonel Cliffton.”
She smiled and set the grocery bag on the kitchenette table. “Sometimes I forget that Dr. Cliffton has a rank. He rarely puts on a proper uniform. He’s just . . . well, he’s Dr. Cliffton.”
Skip maneuvered around and peered into the bag on the table. Inside were a wine bottle, a six-pack of beer he couldn’t identify by brand from a top-down view, some nachos, and a plastic tub of pork rinds.
“Eclectic mix.”
“Dr. Cliffton didn’t know if you’d developed sophisticated tastes since Kabul. The wine was . . .” she cleared her throat and did a fair impression of Gus. “In case you’d gone all Washington.”
“Wine’s good for dinner parties. I hate dinner parties.”
Captain Walsh slipped up beside him and rested a hand on his lower back as she reached into the bag. “Fine. Hope you don’t mind Coors. It’s the best we’ve got at the PX.”
Skip cleared his throat. “So, you drew the short straw, coming out to placate me?”
“Short straw? I had to pull rank to be the one to come check you out tonight.” Her other hand slipped inside Skip’s open shirt and ran along the space where he used to have abs before middle age caught up with him.
For the first time since her arrival, he allowed himself to view the captain as a woman, not a fellow officer from another branch. She was nearly his height, with her combat boots and his bare feet leveling the playing field. Her sandy blonde hair was pinned into a bun at the back of her neck. The natural bagginess of her uniform couldn’t completely disguise her trim figure. And those blue eyes stared right back when he looked into them. She bit her lip.
“Captain, I—”
“You can call me Fiona.”
“Captain, I’m not sure this is appropriate.” Skip held up his left hand, interposing his wedding ring like a Spartan shield wall. It was the first time he could remember being grateful that it was his right arm he’d lost. “I’m happily married.”
She held up a hand with a ring of pale skin where a wedding ring had once been. “I am, too. Mine’s back in Arlington, making a daily commute to the Pentagon. But I’m here for a post-test psych eval, and my professional opinion is that you’ve had a stressful day. I’d be derelict in my duties if I didn’t stay until I was certain you were . . . de-stressed.”
Skip retreated a pace, running a self-conscious hand over his shaved head. “I’m a mess. I mean, I’m fine. Yeah, sure, it’s been a long day. But I’m tired. I’m . . . I smell funny. I’m bald as a—”
“It looks good on you. Listen, Commander—can I call you Brent?”
“Skip’s fine.” He should have told her to stick to Commander Harrison. He knew as soon as the words escaped his lips.
“Skip, I can only imagine what life’s been like for you on the outside. Hospital gowns instead of uniforms. Getting treated like a civilian. Must have been hell. But right here, right now, you’re a hero, doing work no one else can do. And right here, right now, it’s just you, me, and this cozy little apartment where I promise you, no one will bother us until 0600 tomorrow.” As she spoke, Fiona slowly undid the buttons on her uniform shirt. She was still wearing a khaki T-shirt underneath, but it was pulled tight against her skin and dark at the collar with sweat.
“This is against regulations.” Lame excuse. Regulations hadn’t stopped fraternizing in the history of organized militaries.
Fiona dropped her shirt to the floor and slid her hands under Skip’s. “Everyone here values your emotional health. I have permission from General Kogane to be here. And as for the outside world, well . . . what happens in secret military base stays in secret military base.” She slipped Skip’s shirt off his shoulders and pressed herself against him.
But the shirt never hit the floor. Catching the garment around his wrists, Skip hobbled backward, stumbling against the wall as he shrugged back into some semblance of being in uniform. “At ease, Captain Walsh. Stand down.” Mental images of Maddie flashed before his eyes. Her smile on their wedding day. The exhausted euphoria holding Grant for the first time. Their second honeymoon in Fiji.
Captain Walsh complied without a hint of protest, scooping up her own uniform top and retrieving the clipboard he had forgotten she had even brought with her. “I think that will conclude my psych eval for the post-interface check. Thank you for your cooperation, Commander Harrison.”
“Wait. This was all a test?” What kind of place was this? Wasn’t it enough that they’d put him through the ringer mentally, running signals through parts of his brain he barely knew existed? Now they wanted to dangle bait in front of him to see if he’d take it?
“Yes and no. I’m here to evaluate your mental state after spending the day plugged into an experimental computer. You’re aware, alert, in full possession of your mental faculties, and behaving within the bounds of your latest psych eval we acquired from the Navy.” She rattled off her reply as she buttoned up her uniform—an actress backstage after playing her role.
“And if I’d gone along?”
“I’d have known you were in a compromised mental state. I really am a trained army psychologist, even though we play with expanded ethical standards this side of top secret. We both know it wasn’t going to happen. That wife of yours is a lucky woman.”
With a salute, Captain Walsh took her leave. Skip headed right back to the shower to see how cold the water could get in this desert.
* * *
In the morning, Skip once more found himself jabbed, clamped, probed, and immersed in the pod. While not a bit of it was pleasant, the prospect of experiencing the mech in the field was more than enough to keep him focused through the process, and knowing what was involved kept his nerves from fraying. When his natural vision blinked out to be replaced by the computer feed from the Beowulf, he felt a thrill of ecstasy.
He was sixty feet tall and indestructible. And today, Gus promised Skip that he’d be allowed to take the Beowulf through its paces.
“So, Doctor Cliffton, you gonna let this baby off its leash for me?” High-tension cables anchored the Beowulf to the walls and ceiling of the cavern. He could twist a few degrees, but the force feedback made him feel the resistance of lines that were stronger than the mechanical muscles of the vehicle.
“Just a few diagnostics to complete. Your vitals are looking better today. Hope you got a good night’s sleep. Today isn’t going to be the cakewalk that yesterday was.”
Cakewalk was one word for it. Tedium turned out to be more like it. Raise the left arm—good. Lower the left arm—good. Now swivel the head—excellent. It was like dog training. Skip had a ten-year-old golden retriever named Daisy who could follow directions like that, and she had never been through flight school.
“All right, Commander. We’re cutting power umbilicals. You’ll be switching over to internal battery power.”
“How long does the battery power last?”
“Longer than you. Don’t worry about it. Once you’re on internal power, you’ll have a readout for battery life.”
Army personnel swarmed the Beowulf on lifts and extendable catwalks. Images of them popped up on sub-displays as Skip directed the mech’s external cameras. They were disconnecting the tethers. Soon he’d be free to operate unfettered. Once the last of the hookups was severed, there would be nothing but Skip to direct the vehicle. It took them under five minutes. As the last of the workers retreated, he flexed his mechanical muscles. “Ready to go. What’s first on the agenda?”
The ground rumbled. Skip looked up into the control booth. Gus was standing there with his arms crossed and a smug grin. Whatever was goi
ng on, Gus knew, so Skip just waited to see what his latest surprise was. It was a doozy.
Skip began to sink. What he’d believed to be a solid floor beneath his feet was, in fact, an elevator platform, and it was lowering him farther below ground. Was there a test course down there? As the platform lowered, he ran through some deep knee bends and abdominal twists, exercises he couldn’t have performed while tethered. The twists were mildly disorienting as they swiveled his camera view of his surroundings; it would take some getting used to the lack of direct equilibrium feedback in his movements.
The elevator ride was short, just over one mech-height down, and it ended in a long tunnel lit by fluorescent lights along both walls. He hadn’t been sent down here for the view, so Skip took the initiative and started walking. The first few steps were like a nightmare trip down memory lane. He was back in his first few days of post-cybernetic rehab. His mind was fighting old muscle memory that told him one way to walk while the Beowulf refused to respond the way he imagined it should.
But having been through the process once before, Skip knew how to both persevere and adapt. The first ten steps were halting and awkward. If not for the intervention of balance-assist hardware baked into the system, he knew he’d have fallen multiple times. But the next few dozen steps smoothed out, and by the time he was halfway down the tunnel, Skip was trudging along in rhythm like a hiker caught in deep snow.
“This why I got the call on this project instead of someone with a special ops background? I already knew the learning process?”
“It was a consideration. But the truth is, we’ve found that a pilot’s training maps better to the controls than experience in power armor. Tactics and maneuvers are easier to teach than the sort of spatial awareness and cockpit presence you flyboys learn.”
“What’s at the end of this tunnel?”
“A door.”
So Gus wanted it to be yet another surprise. What was it with top-secret sorts? Did they not get enough excitement in their sequestered little lives? Or was this because he and Gus were old friends? No, Skip decided. This was yet another in an ever increasing list of tests. They wanted to keep him guessing, off-balance, and reacting. He had to keep reminding himself that the Beowulf was only one part of the project; he was the other. And if this was an uneven split, he would have to guess that mimicking a human brain was the harder half. After all, what was he driving but an oversized suit of power armor with a new control scheme?
The tunnel was distinctly beginning to slope uphill. He didn’t need Gus to tell him that he was going to come out somewhere above ground, even if the Beowulf hadn’t had an altimeter. The hangar was already an impressive feat of engineering. Duplicating it on a scale that would allow the Beowulf to run through its paces would have been impractical. His guess was proved right when sunlight peeked around the outline of the door as it swung outward.
Skip waited.
He was a robotic step from freedom, from open spaces and sunny skies. But the meter-thick slab of steel was opening at a crawl. “Mind if I give this thing a push?”
“By all means. Give me a second to disengage the motor and it’s all yours.”
A low-gear diesel grumble that Skip been ignoring as background noise suddenly ceased. He took that last step forward and reached out with the mech’s right hand. He could feel the weight resisting his efforts, but there was no exertion on his part. The door swung out of the way, and Skip looked up into a clear blue sky. A shimmer in the air caught his eye. “We under some kind of force field?”
Gus laughed over the radio, and in the background Skip could hear a chorus joining him. “You’re in the most advanced thing we’ve got. J-PAC would kill to get their hands on the Beowulf. But we’re not building Hollywood magic here. You’re seeing a scatter field, in case anyone’s getting nosy on satellite.”
“Understood.”
Skip was in another valley in the Sierra Nevadas. Mountains hemmed him in on all sides. Scattered among the rocks and scraggly desert plants were targets of various sorts. There were modular general-purpose tents arranged in a mock-up of a military base. Along one ridge line there were giant red-and-white bullseyes, one of which was being lowered into position by helicopter. Farther down the valley, there was a small cinderblock village.
“Commander, you’re going to need to unlock fire control. Look to the lower left for a manual input console. Code is eight-seven-alpha-charlie-four-four-zulu-one-November.”
Glancing at the manual input console brought it to the fore of Skip’s field of vision. Of course, the “manual” part was a stretch. As Skip focused his attention on each digit and letter in turn, the system accepted that as his selection. As soon as he finished, a whole bevy of new options crowded the heads-up display. Even more strange, he could feel the weapons almost as if they were extra finger or toes. “Whoa.”
“I’ll take that to mean you have access. Now, we’re going to dial back the display resolution. You’re going to be getting a lot of unfamiliar neural feedback, and we don’t want you getting overwhelmed.”
“I thought this project was focusing on signal security. Why can you still change my interface remotely?”
“This is a prototype. The production units will have safeguards like this built in. But until then, we can’t risk you getting into trouble and not being able to adjust the settings yourself. Now, your right arm is fitted with a .50 caliber machine gun. Take aim at the tent city on your two-o’clock and open fire.”
Skip took several steps and adjusted his feet into a shooting stance. “Seems a little lightweight for a weapon this size.”
“It’s temporary. We’ve got subcontractors working on an E-M kinetic system to replace the machine gun. For now, the exercise is more important than the firepower. Proceed with target practice.”
Skip lined up a crosshair with one of the tents and just willed the gun to fire. An automated burst riddled the tent with holes from a distance of 300 meters. “Not bad. But when did you army boys start using metric?”
“It wasn’t easy getting it pushed through, but you tell enough generals that this project is more complex than the mission that missed Mars, and they eventually get the idea that we need a single set of units. Hard to build the future while stuck in the past.”
Skip shredded tents until the .50-cal ran out of ammo. It didn’t have the visceral feel of shooting down enemy fighters with the same gun on his F-54, but he was getting quicker with his aim. “What’s next?”
“Think you’ve got the hang of walking around in that thing?” Gus didn’t wait for a reply. “Good, because I want you to run to the mock village.”
“Run? I’m doing OK with walking, but . . .”
“Walk if you have to. You’ll be doing it more than once. Eventually you’ll pick up the pace.”
The first trip took him twelve minutes. By the tenth time, he had it down to three. He was learning the terrain and where he had the best footing, but more than that, he was flowing more easily from one step to the next. The thinking required was drifting into muscle memory, which was weird to contemplate, since there wasn’t a single muscle of his involved in the process. The prosthetics were foreign, but had become a part of him in a shotgun wedding. The Beowulf was just connected to him by a bunch of wires and probes.
“Great job, Commander. Time for a little fun before we call it a day.”
Skip perked up. There was something of childlike glee in simply piloting a giant robot. For all his complaints about the degrading pod insertion and repetitive drills, he was enjoying himself. Was Gus promising something even better, or was this another bait-and-switch to test him?
“Whatcha got for me? I’m ready.” Ready for a good meal and six or eight showers, but a grand finale could be worth the wait.
“You’re equipped with Dragonfly Mark IV missiles. Take up a position 100 meters from the mock village and pick out a building you don’t like.”
That was an easy task. On his forays back and forth, Skip had
developed an adversarial relationship with the nearest structure, a four-story cinderblock apartment building that had marked the end of his timed run. Every time he came up short of his time goal, part of him blamed it for not being just a little closer. Now, it was time for some payback.
The missile controls were a little more complex than the machine gun. He had to arm the missile and confirm a target before it allowed him to fire. But the aiming was all the easier for being integrated into his right arm. For whatever reason, using the left felt less natural and the mental effort was more fatiguing. But between the improved responsiveness of his right arm and the practice he’d gotten with the Beowulf’s targeting system, he had the apartment building in his sights in no time.
With an act of will, he unleashed the Dragonfly. It appeared from a rack buried in Skip’s right forearm and hissed away in a contrail of propellant. The twisting course was visible as it self-corrected mid-flight, and it slammed into the cinderblocks with a concussive blast that sent up a cloud of dust. Skip wanted to crack his knuckles, pound his chest . . . anything to let loose the surge of power he felt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a front-row seat for a missile impact in his F-54. Generally, those things hit from kilometers away.
“Ha! Nice shot, Commander. But those buildings take a while to construct. Let’s move on to those bullseyes.”
Skip turned the Beowulf but remained in place. What good were missiles if you ran up to your targets to hit them? His heads-up display was able to mark the bullseyes one by one before firing the first Dragonfly. That first shot obliterated the target in a fiery spray of plywood and desert dust. It made for a better pyrotechnic show than the cinderblocks, but lacked the feel of taking down a real structure. Still, this was a training and data collection exercise, not demolition. He took careful aim and fired again. And again. Halfway through he noticed that his missile count and the number of targets matched perfectly, even accounting for the initial shot on the mock apartment building.