by Rick Partlow
“We’ll be fine.” I sealed my collar and checked my gig line. At Advance Occupational Training, it wasn’t as likely some random sergeant would rip me a new one for having my rank and branch slightly off-center, but it was a habit I’d learned in three long months of Basic. “Let’s go.”
At least we didn’t have to go outside. Inferno was still hot as shit, whether you were in Basic or AOT. Staying in the shaded, climate-controlled passageways of the Battlesuit Operator’s School was infinitely preferable to heading out into the afternoon glare of 82 Eridani and sweating our asses off waiting for the busses to take us somewhere else we could wait around and sweat our asses off some more. Plus, we wouldn’t have to gaggle up in some pansy-ass formation and come to attention and march and all that shit. We were all so over that after Basic, and the trainers didn’t care, either. We were here to learn how to do our job.
We still walked fast and made sure we saluted any officers who passed us, because the main thoroughfare through the school was considered fair game for saluting, unlike offices or classrooms. But there was no more screaming, no more PT pit, no more Drill Sergeants watching our every move. All that counted now was paying attention in the classes and passing the tests.
And being on time. That was still important. I’d timed it right, though. We didn’t even have to run to make it to Hangar 13 Bravo five minutes early…which, in military terms, meant right on time. The rest of Second Platoon, Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion of the 85th Training Regiment was already gathered in the cavernous expanse of the hangar, and our platoon guide, Edith Rogan, gave us a dirty look for being the last ones to show up.
Trent made apologetic noises, but I ignored her. There were no brownie points for showing up twenty minutes early instead of five and I didn’t give a shit if we made things inconvenient for her. She strode over to one of the techs hovering around banks of computer readouts hooked to the battlesuits and came to attention.
“Warrant Hancock,” she snapped off smartly, “Second platoon is all present!”
“Cool,” he murmured, waving back at her. “Chill for a bit, it’s gonna be another ten minutes.”
The only reason I didn’t laugh at Rogan was my attention was on the suits.
Battlesuit wasn’t a good word for them, I thought, not for the first time. It makes it sound like they’re small, like something you put on over your clothes, like the early powered exoskeletons they’d shown us in classes we’d had on the history of the Marines. A battlesuit was something you climbed into like an airplane; it just happened to be shaped like a man.
Three meters tall and nearly as wide across the shoulders, they were hunched over like a gorilla, the head just a dome-like protrusion, the arms reaching down past the knees. Stretching back from the heavily-armored shoulders was a boxy, angular structure, what might have been a backpack if the armor had been a human but built into the suit rather than hanging from it. Centimeters of BiPhase Carbide armor shielded the isotope reactor at its core, and the turbines flanking it, powering the suit’s byomer musculature and the jump-jets that made it so mobile and versatile.
These weren’t armed, but the hardpoints were there on the arms and shoulders for attaching plasma guns, Gatling lasers, missile launchers or a half a dozen other weapons systems I’d read about, watched videos of, and seen live-fire demonstrations of, but longed to use myself. Staring up at the monstrous, metal titans, I felt a lust that made anything I’d felt for Pris, or a dozen other girls before her, pale by comparison.
“Okay then!” Warrant Officer Hancock said finally, clapping his hands like a teacher trying to get his class’ attention. He actually reminded me of the instructors at my Primary School classes, soft around the edges and self-consciously chill. “We’re all set. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the WF-4100 Vigilante Amplified Personal Armor Suit, your next of skin for the foreseeable future. We can run you guys a squad at a time, so who’s up first?”
“First squad!” Private Rogan barked, far too involved in her brief authority for me to ever like her. “Move it up!”
“That’s us,” Trent reminded me, as if I’d somehow forgotten what squad we were in.
One of the enlisted techs under the warrant officer waved me forward to one of the faceless machines. She was short and skinny, light enough she might have blown away in one of the monsoons this part of Inferno was going through periodically this season, but her fingers moved without hesitation across the control board hooked up to the battlesuit via fiber-optic cables and there was a bored professionalism in her expression.
“Let’s bust this pig open,” she said, slapping a glowing green symbol on the readout.
The chest plastron of the battlesuit swung downward with a hum of servomotors, low enough for the grooves built into the inner surface to serve as steps and hand-holds as I scrambled inside. It didn’t move beneath my weight, as solid and unyielding as a mountain, and when I settled into the padded indentation designed for the human pilot, it seemed to embrace me, sheltering me from everything outside.
“Plug the interface cables in,” the woman said, nodding at something beside me.
I glanced from side to side and finally caught sight of the spooled cables just as the tech edged forward as if she’d have to do it for me. It was, perhaps, the strangest feeling of my life sliding the jacks into the sockets implanted into my skull, and a twist of nausea wrenched at my stomach as they clicked home. I swallowed hard and nodded to the woman.
“We won’t bother to strap you in,” she went on, as casual as if this were something I did every day, “since you’re not going anywhere yet. I’m gonna seal you in and start the synchronization. I’ll warn you ahead of time, it’s gonna be weird. The system is going to be adjusting itself to your brain activity and, to some extent, adjusting your brain activity to match the controls. It’s gonna cause some feedback. Could be some funky hallucinations, could be lucid memories.” She chuckled. “Don’t worry though, you won’t be able to go on a rampage or any shit like that. We’re freezing the suit’s motivators from out here, and you’ll be frozen out of your own body by the interface so you won’t claw your own eyes out or anything. We good?”
If she was trying to make me nervous, it was working. I dealt drugs, but I didn’t do them and I didn’t want any alternative states of consciousness or whatever other bullshit people talk about who don’t want to admit they took Kick to feel like someone better for a couple hours. But I wasn’t going to back out now.
“We’re good,” I assured her, flashing a thumbs up. The cables tugged at my head when I moved it to meet her eyes, and I tried not to grimace at the sensation.
“The bright side,” she assured me, eyes on the controls again, “is you don’t have to do this again unless they come out with a newer model.”
The servos were much louder from inside the suit, echoing off the interior of the chest plastron as it swung upward, the door to a prison, closing in on me. It shut with a pneumatic hiss and I was in total darkness, the interior of a casket. I could understand Lt. Harrell’s warning now. They probably lost a lot of recruits right about this point. I knew a lot of guys were nervous about being shut up inside the suit, but I wasn’t surprised at all when it didn’t bother me. I knew my fear now, and enclosed spaces weren’t among them.
I found the darkness comforting, the isolation a relief. They were reminders of old hiding places. Then light returned and with it, memory.
Five Years Old:
“Have you been fighting again, mi Corazon?”
The words were chiding but the tone was gentle. I couldn’t remember Momma ever yelling at me, but she didn’t have to. Just the slightest hint of disapproval in her eyes was enough to make me want to cry. Especially when I knew I’d done something wrong.
“Yes, Momma,” I admitted. I rubbed at the bruise on my cheek and wished I could melt into the rich, black earth of her garden.
“Oh, Cameron,” she sighed, planting her spade into the soil point-first. She had a
black streak of dirt on her face and she wiped at it with her forearm, smearing it with sweat without actually wiping any of it off. “Not at school again?”
I shook my head.
“On the way home. The Gomez boys were picking on Camilla again, calling her names because she can’t walk right. They wouldn’t stop, so I pushed Elian and then Roberto hit me.”
“Your heart is so big, Cameron.” She pulled off her gloves and pulled me into a hug. She was warmer than the sunshine of the spring afternoon. “But you can’t fight the world by yourself. The world is bigger and it will always win.”
“But Momma,” I protested, feeling the sort of righteous indignation only a five-year-old who’s sure he’s right can experience, “there wasn’t anyone else! Camilla was all alone!”
“She will be all alone sometimes,” Momma told me. “And even when she is not, you can’t always fight your way past the cruel and ignorant. The best you can do for her is to be there, support her, let her know she has friends.”
I scowled, pulling back from her to make sure she saw it.
“She’s not my friend!” I planted my feet, suddenly indignant again but for the opposite reason. “She’s a girl! Girls are yucky!”
She laughed then. I loved Momma’s laugh. It was like music. It didn’t last long, because then we both heard the shouting. It came from the usual place, up the street from our house, at the corner where the bad men would hang out during the night. Poppa called it a bar, and Momma called it the Bad Place. I’d heard her say to my older brother, Anton, to stay away from it, that cartel thugs came there. I wasn’t sure what a cartel was, but “thug” sounded like a good word for the men who would stand around the building at night and drink from bottles or cups. They weren’t usually loud this early, not before sunset.
They were cursing, words I’d heard before but Momma told me never to say. And they were close, halfway between us and the bar. No one else lived in the houses between, and Poppa had said it was because they were afraid. I understood. I was afraid now.
“You said you would have the money by today, mericon!” one of them screamed at the other, pointing in his face.
He was a fat man, which meant he was rich. Only rich people were fat in Tijuana. His shirt was nice, the kind I’d been told was made from silk. Poppa had told me it came from a worm’s butt, but I thought he might have been teasing me.
“And you said you would give me another week!” the other one yelled back. He was taller and very skinny, and he was wearing a funny hat, the sides turned up. He pointed his own finger. I had always been told pointing was impolite. “You’re a fucking liar!”
“Cameron,” Momma said, coming to her feet, “you need to get inside. Go tell your brother…”
I heard the gunshots and flinched. I’d heard them before. Some of the bad men would shoot their guns in the air at night after they’d drunk for a long time. But this one sounded different, so much closer. I could see it in the fat man’s hand, shiny and polished on the flat parts, twinkling in the sun. It moved in his hand and there was a flash from the end of it, the muzzle. One after another and the skinny man was falling to his knees.
And so was Momma. She was gasping for breath like she’d been running hard, but she wasn’t running, she was kneeling. There was blood on her chest, spreading out from a rip in her work shirt and her hands went to cover it, as if they could hold it all inside.
“Momma!” I said, even more afraid now. “Momma, are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. Her mouth was moving like she was trying to talk, but blood was coming from her mouth too, and only a gurgle came out.
“Momma!” I grabbed her, hugged her to me, sensing she was going away from me and not wanting to let her. Wet warmth soaked my shirt, and I could feel her ragged attempts at breathing, felt her heart thudding in a strange, irregular beat.
And then it stopped and she fell away from me, collapsing in the garden soil, crushing the seedlings she’d planted that day.
I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. I looked down at my hands, at the blood dripping off of them and couldn’t seem to catch my breath even enough to call out. Poppa was there, but I didn’t remember him coming out, and he was screaming. I could tell by the way his mouth was open, his chest heaving, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel anything.
Momma was gone.
Light flooded through the open chest plastron and Warrant Hancock’s frowning face followed it.
“Hey man,” he said, sounding concerned, “your heart rate and BP are kinda spiking here. I think we should pull you and maybe try again later.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. Sweat spattered away from it, and I felt the cables tugging once again. “I’m okay. Just hit a bad memory.”
“Yeah, that can happen,” he acknowledged, sounding relieved. “Pro tip, it helps if you concentrate on something positive before the system grabs your cerebellum. Kind of starts the train running.”
“Sure, will do. Thanks.”
A positive memory. Could I think of one? Sex? It was positive, but damned if I could grab onto a specific memory, barely even a face.
I found something just as the plastron closed again. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.
Ten years old:
The closet was dark, tight, packed with boxes and old clothes. It smelled of dust and age, and I wondered what was in the boxes. What did the people who ran this group home think was worth saving? Maybe arts and craft projects from the kids who’d used to live here? Maybe hardcopy printouts of old records? He’d seen those, but he didn’t know why the staff here would want them. They didn’t seem to care enough to know anything about the kids now, much less worry about ones who didn’t even live here anymore.
But it seemed to me as if the memories of those other kids were shielding me here, guarding me like Momma used to. The bruises on my arms still ached from the one they called Tito. He punched me in the arm whenever I got within reach of him, like it was a game, trying to hit the same spot each time. He was half a meter tall than me, at least twenty kilos heavier, so fighting back wasn’t an option, and neither was telling the staff. I’d been warned about that from day one by the other younger kids. All the adults would do is take you to confront whoever you’d accused of bullying and try to force the two of you to “talk it out.” Tito wasn’t stupid, he would make all the right noises to not get in trouble, then make you pay later.
And no one would stand up for me, no one who could. This was the safe way, the easy way. I could stay here all through lunch, and no one would care. In here, I would be safe until I got too hungry, or thirsty, or had to pee. Hours. I could even sleep in here, so I wouldn’t have to sleep at night, when Tito could get to me. I could sit up in bed and watch. But now, I would rest.
I closed my eyes and just breathed.
7
The world dropped out from beneath me and I fell into the darkness wrapped in two tons of metal. I’d simulated it a dozen times in virtual reality, which seemed even more real than virtual through the interface jacks, real enough I’d wondered why we’d bothered training for it in actual suits at all.
Now I knew. The interface could duplicate the physical feelings, the sensations, but not the emotions, the gut-deep conviction I could really die. Warrant Hancock had told us in his own, colorful way that the Vigilantes were military hardware, built by a Corporate Council fabricator, shielded from monopoly regulations and product-safety lawsuits by the necessities of war. All it would take was one slip-up, one bad batch of circuit boards getting by the scanners and the inspections and the jump-jet turbines wouldn’t catch in time and the suit would fall the whole four hundred meters and probably look intact afterward. I, of course, would have to be poured out of the suit through a strainer.
The turbines did ignite, though, as a push of command from my thoughts translated through the interface more swiftly and certainly than any hand or foot control could have managed. Their abrupt boo
st pushed upward through my feet, into my spine, compressing me by a centimeter with the added gravities of deceleration and my vision narrowed into a tunnel for just a moment before the thrust evened out and everything flickered back to light.
It was the dead of night outside, past midnight, but it meant nothing inside the suit. The infrared, thermal, lidar, radar and sonic sensors were all meshed together into an image brighter than daylight and projected in 180 degrees around me. Actually, it gave me 360 degrees of coverage, but my brain could only handle optical input in 180 degrees. The rest was fed to me via the interface as something I can only describe as instinct. The way I knew down in the Zocalo if someone was watching me, the way I could sense even in the darkness of the maintenance tunnels if someone was nearby.
And someone was nearby. Identification Friend or Foe transponders glowed blue in the sensor display, showing me the positions of the rest of the squad, my squad today. I don’t know how the hell I had wound up as squad leader on the first live mission, but that was how it had fallen out. I didn’t like it much. I had no ambition to be an NCO and would have been happy not to worry about anyone but myself.
“Garner!” I snapped to Trent. “You’re drifting west, man! Pull it back in. You, too, Rogan,” I added, not bothering to hide a bit of malicious glee. The only good thing about being in any sort of leadership position was the self-important Private Rogan being subordinate to me. They had call signs, of course, and they were even displayed helpfully beside their IFF transponder avatar, but what was the point? The damned Tahni weren’t going to be searching for us on the net if we used names, even if they were somehow capable of intercepting a laser line-of-sight signal, which they weren’t. I was sure I’d get gigged for it later, but I didn’t care. I had enough other shit to think about.
“Tighten it up!” I added on the general net to the whole squad. “The terrain down there’s rough and our landing zone is tiny!”