by Michael Todd
“I installed trademark equipment on the suit when I used it,” Sal explained quietly.
“You what now?” Young asked.
“Nothing,” he said and turned to Madigan. “Remember, I showed it to you—”
“Oh…right.” She shook her head and loaded the software. Sal claimed credit, but it was actually something that Boulos had helped him work on. The man was an engineering genius, and with a little scientific help from Sal’s end, they were able to develop software that could clean up the communications while inside the Zoo by counteracting the very unique radio signals that the goop gave off.
It was a rather obvious solution, but sometimes, you needed geniuses to see what stared you in the face.
The signal cleared slowly, and a voice stuttered through. The man spoke in a raspy, pained voice in a foreign language.
“He’s speaking Russian,” Ito interjected quickly. “I didn’t know we had any Russian operatives in the area.”
“We don’t,” Young said. “They set up another base to the north and have run missions like ours from there. We haven’t run into them yet because…well, the Zoo is huge and growing.”
“He doesn’t sound like he’s doing too well,” Sal said and hastily inserted himself into the transmission. “We read you on this end. Please respond, over.”
“I can speak Russian,” Ito said, almost offended.
“Well, would you really want to translate everything this guy says?” Kennedy asked.
Ito nodded. “Good point.”
“Hello?” the man said in a heavy accent. “This is Lieutenant Gregor Popov, Fifth Battalion. Do you read me?”
“We read you loud and clear,” Sal said. “Well, loud, anyway. Are you in need of assistance?”
“Suit is damaged. Can’t move from here. Rest of squad was attacked.” The signal grew clearer the more Sal and Boulos’ program worked on it. “In desperate need of help.”
“Roger that, Lieutenant.” Young cut in. “This is Sergeant Lionel Young from the UN Staging Area. Can you send us your coordinates?”
“Roger…roger that,” Gregor said, and after a moment of muffled static on the mic, a series of numbers and letters appeared in Sal’s HUD. He assumed that it had done the same thing with everyone else’s.
“That’s only five klicks from here,” Young said.
“Are we really going to rescue a Russian?” Sousa asked. “Aren’t they the bad guys?”
“I’m…still here,” Gregor said.
Sal killed the comm connection for the moment. “In this particular situation, I think the fact that he’s a human makes him…well, maybe not one of the good guys, but definitely not one of the bad guys,” he said. “Maybe something along the lines of a lawful neutral?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Sal shook his head. “I say we go in after him.”
“We need to keep working,” Young growled. “Since there are seven of us, we can split up. A team can help the Russian while the rest maintain the heading.”
He nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Kennedy and I can help the man while you guys follow this heading.”
Monroe made a face, and Sal talked quickly when he saw that. “The idea is that if we’re to split up, we should have at least one specialist per crew. That way, we cover more ground over less time. And since I can work as a gunner and a specialist, it makes sense for me to be on the team with fewer people. That’s my logic anyway. But I’ll shut up now, okay.”
Young nodded. “That actually makes sense. Jacobs and Kennedy, head off to help our Russian friend. The rest of us—”
“Maintain a northwest trajectory,” Kennedy interjected. “Keep walking for ten klicks or so and you’ll find a big collection of Pita flowers. We’ll circle around and meet you there.”
“That’s a plan,” Young responded. “Good luck, you two.” They’d been over this on their last mission with Young. He knew that they had a way to track the plants without having to wander all over the place, and he was perfectly content to leave it in their hands as long as Sal and Kennedy divided up the bounty.
“Stay safe,” Monroe said with a small smile and punched Sal in the arm. Hard.
“Owww…will do,” he transitioned smoothly but rubbed where she’d struck him. “And you too. Keep your eyes open.”
She smiled and moved forward to follow the other squad members.
Sal connected to the comm channel that Gregor was still on. “Hold on there, Lieutenant. We’re on our way to your location.”
“Much appreciated,” he replied, the relief very evident in his voice even through the tenuous connection.
“So,” Kennedy said as the two of them headed off. “You seemed pretty anxious not to hurt Dr. Monroe’s feelings back there. That was really sweet of you.”
“It made sense, and I blurted it out before I even considered that she might think that I had excluded her or something,” Sal said and shook his head. “With a brain as big as mine, there’s not much distance between it and my mouth.”
“She’s a sweet girl.” She looked sideways at Sal. “It’s nice that you stick up for her like that. She seems the type that’s smart enough to jump too easily to conclusions. It’s nice of you to make sure that she knew that she wasn’t being excluded from this little Heavy Metal excursion from the group.”
“Yeah, I don’t think she liked it, anyways,” he grumbled and didn’t notice Kennedy’s inquisitive tone or sidelong glances. His eyes and attention were already on a new kind of tree that he hadn’t seen before. It simply…grew right in the middle of the jungle, lower than the massive trees over it. Despite that, it still towered over the bushes and underbrush that covered most of the ground and made it hard to navigate. Like it didn’t need the sunlight.
The new species was noticeably slender. Most of the trees were large enough to necessitate a short walk to circumnavigate them, but this was thin enough that Sal could hug it and make his fingers touch. It would be a stretch, but still.
“Look at this,” he said and shuffled closer. The trunk curled upward like a vine on an invisible post and sprouted leaves all along toward the top, where a cluster of flowers grew. Kennedy seemed annoyed at the change in the topic of conversation, but she kept moving.
Sal ran his fingers over the diamond-shaped leaves. They were blue instead of green, and as he looked closer, he realized that the veins in the leaves glowed and even pulsated a little.
“Ten bucks says that those flowers at the top have a higher concentration of goop than any of the Pita flowers,” Madigan said and zoomed in for a better look.
“No bet,” he replied. “Ten bucks says that if we try to cut the tree down to get to them, we’ll be swarmed by angry Zoo animals.”
“No bet,” Kennedy said with a small smile.
Sal took a moment to collect a small sample from the leaves and the bark as well as to snap a few pictures with his HUD before they moved on.
There were no visible indicators to show the passage of time as they pushed deeper into the Zoo. Barely any sunlight filtered through the leaf cover above them, and even with the goop-powered night vision, it was difficult to tell what time it was without checking the clocks in their suits. A couple of hours passed before they neared the coordinates Gregor had given them.
Sal connected to the comm line again. “Hey, Gregor? We’re approaching your location now. Can you give us a little ping to lead us to where you are? We need to connect with our team again and would rather not have to scour the area in search for you.”
There was no response, but a soft ping glimmered on their HUDs that turned them slightly to the left of their current heading. It wasn’t long before they reached the man.
“You…have no idea how good it is to see human face again,” Gregor said and sighed loudly with relief. “And I hated most humans this morning, so you should feel flattered.”
The man looked to be in his thirties with a scruffy beard and a handful of scars on his face. Not much else
could be seen since the rest of him was covered in full power armor that had been chewed at relentlessly by what was most probably the hyena creatures, if the shape of the bite marks was any indication. The wiring was exposed all over, and from the looks of things, would be a pain to fix.
“That armor won’t go anywhere,” Kennedy muttered and voiced the obvious for her and her teammate.
“No shit,” the Russian said with a laugh.
Chapter Nineteen
Sal kept a wary eye on their surroundings. As he was the specialist there, he felt he should do something. But as it turned out, Madigan was the one who knew about the technical side of the armor, so she ran the diagnostics on Gregor’s suit.
From the look on her face, things did not look good. Not a huge surprise, he supposed. More like a disappointment even though he’d seen scrapped suits that looked better than that.
For the moment, he watched the shadows for whatever creatures had caused that degree of damage. He gripped his rifle firmly and took a moment to glance at the oddity of his new suit before he shook his head and resumed his watchman responsibilities.
“Well,” Kennedy said and removed the wires that had communicated the diagnostic from the Russian’s suit her to hers. “Most of the sensors have shorted and the power armor functions have been disabled. On the bright side, most of the hardware was isolated so the inner computers were shut down before they were damaged by the short, so the suit hasn’t been completely trashed. It’ll still need a lot of work, though, and you won’t be able to move in it until you get it back to a shop.”
“Wait—they isolated the hardware but not the sensors or the power functions?” Sal asked and scowled. “And they let people walk around in it outside a testing room?”
“That’s Russian engineering for you,” Kennedy said, her face all scrunched up as she thought hard. “I read about this somewhere. They decided against isolating their power functions since it reduces the movement lag by thirty percent…or something like that. I guess they applied the same thinking when they designed their sensor systems.”
“Well, sure,” the specialist said with an annoyed laugh. “It’ll reduce the lag, so you move faster with the power armor right up to the point where something goes wrong and you get electrocuted. Speaking of—”
“His vitals look fine,” she said. “Life support is one of those isolated systems, and it indicates that everything is okay. You have a couple of bruises and a twisted ankle, but you should be fine. Still, you might want to get yourself looked at. The air filters in your suit are fucked up. We haven’t registered a lot of these new plants and the pollen may be toxic.”
“Let me guess…” Sal said and shrugged meaningfully.
“Air filters were brought in by cheap company,” Gregor confirmed with a small chuckle.
“I sense a pattern with all this Russian engineering.” Sal shook his head.
“Much functionality, not much for safety,” the Russian confirmed with a nod of his head.
“We need to get you out of that suit,” Kennedy said.
“But what about what you just said?” Gregor asked. “About the poisonous pollen or something?”
“Well, if there was any around here, you would already be dead,” she pointed out. “Your filters are shot, so it won’t make any difference. It’s best to get you out of here as quickly as possible because I’m not carrying your ass.”
The man uttered something in Russian and shook his head as he pulled slowly at the locked levers that held his armor together. Sal disengaged from the powered part of his suit to help Gregor, and it was now Kennedy’s turn to keep watch. As advanced as her suit was, it still wasn’t nimble enough to handle the small manipulation of the various screws that were utilized to keep the armor in place. The idea behind them was that the software implanted could do the work for you when you wanted to get out, but the fact remained that there was the chance that something would go wrong. Sometimes, you would need to get yourself out of it without the power assistance or have someone do it for you.
It still took a few minutes and a fair amount of pulling and tugging before they created a hole large enough for Gregor to step out.
He pulled himself free, and suddenly, Sal realized why he hadn’t wanted to be stripped of his armor. He was dressed in a pair of boxers, a pair of combat boots, and a tank top.
And that was it.
“Do your commanders not allow their men to wear their suits fully clothed?” Kennedy asked after she gave the man a moment to compose himself.
“No,” he replied. “There is little ventilation inside. Gets quite hot when in use.”
“Huh,” Sal said and managed to bite off a chuckle. “Is that something that you might want to bring up with them when you get back?”
“Probably,” the man said. “Although I do not think that there will be any changes. Budget problems, you see.”
“We could probably get you hooked up with our armorer, and he could fit a custom add-on in there to help you,” Sal said with a smile.
“That is impossible, I’m afraid,” Gregor said, still visibly uncomfortable at being this naked in front of two strangers. “The designs in that suit are proprietary to Russian government, and nobody can inspect that without being thoroughly vetted.”
“I got a pretty good look on the inside,” Kennedy said with a grin. “Does that mean that I’m vetted by your government?”
“Well, you were trying to save my life,” Gregor explained. “Is different.”
“Sure,” Sal growled. He slid himself back into his power suit and hefted his gun. “In other news, we’ve probably hung around here long enough. I would prefer not to wait here for whatever did that to your suit.”
Kennedy nodded. She drew her sidearm from her hip and handed it to Gregor. “Try not to copy the design of that, would you? I’m sure that there’s some company that owns the patent to it.”
“Very funny,” the man said with a forced chuckle. “That said, I can’t leave this armor here for the same reason. Is there any chance that one of you could carry it back? It’s only fifty kilograms, easy weight for someone with full power armor.”
“Are you serious?” she asked and glared at him.
Sal shrugged. “Can your suit carry that kind of weight?”
“Well, yeah, but it’ll be a pain to maneuver with,” Kennedy explained. “And dangerous if we get into a sticky situation.”
“I can’t leave it behind,” Gregor said.
“Would your government be willing to pay to get it back?” the specialist asked.
“I doubt it,” the man replied.
“Well then, will you be willing to pay her for the extra trouble of carrying your suit out?” Sal asked and for the first time, truly understood the expression about pulling teeth.
“I can do,” Gregor nodded. “It would be preferable if my government could foot the bill, as Americans say.”
“Do…Russians not say that?” Sal asked.
“Well, we have our own saying, but is better if we start to move again?” Gregor said.
“Just to confirm, though,” Kennedy said as she moved to the suit which still lay on the ground, “if your government won’t pay, you’ll pay. Let’s say…five hundred dollars?”
“Deal,” Gregor said with a nod. She shrugged and looked annoyed at how easily the man had agreed to the price, which told her that she could have asked for a lot more. Either way, verbal agreements were binding in this abandoned section of the world, so she closed the suit again and strapped it to hers. The power armor picked up the extra weight smoothly.
“More to the point,” Sal said as they set out into the jungle again. “What was it exactly that attacked you?”
“It was a group of the panthers that worked with a pack of those hyenas,” Gregor replied. He looked uncomfortable again, but for very different reasons, the specialist suspected.
“They were working together?” Kennedy asked.
“Yeah, like they were wi
lling to make team to bring us down,” he replied. “And they got damned close, too. They came from behind and dragged a couple of our men away before we even realized that we were under attack. After we turned to fight the hyenas, the panthers jumped down from the trees. There wasn’t much we could do. I was separated and those who survived from my team were pushed back by sheer numbers. The fact that they didn’t try to return for me says the worst. Either they didn’t survive, or they assumed that I hadn’t and left me out here to die.”
“Which do you think is more likely?” Sal asked.
“If I had been with my proper team, I would say the former,” Gregor said. “But this time they teamed me up with new men—some mercs brought in from South Africa. I didn’t know them that well, so I literally had no idea what to expect. They could be loyal and dead, or alive and cowardly bastards. I’m not really sure which I’d prefer.”
“Maybe they’re loyal and alive, and haven’t been able to find you yet?” Sal asked and tilted his head in query.
“That is surprisingly optimistic view of the world.” The man looked at Sal like he had told him that the world was flat and hollow and filled with mole men. “But there is GPS tracker in the suit, and I sent a distress signal before it went offline. So, unless the GPS is broken…” He looked at Kennedy.
“It’s intact,” she said with a twist of her mouth.
“Dead, or assholes,” Gregor said with an unhappy growl.
“Well, if that’s true, then the best-case scenario is that they’re dead and assholes,” the specialist said with a grin.
The Russian chuckled and shook his head. “That is closer to my view of the world.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Sal said with a nod. With Madigan carrying the Russian’s suit and the other man in his underpants, he was now the de facto gunner of their little group. As they moved to link with their squad, he also searched for the novelties that would pay for their trip there.
Even so, Kennedy wanted them to maintain a good pace. It was already past midday, and she didn’t want to spend the night out there with only the three of them, especially with one almost defenseless man and her weighed down. That would only invite trouble, and Sal was sensible and experienced enough now to understand that it wasn’t a commentary on his own skills as a gunner. There was only so much one man could do when the critters came at them in hordes.