Dane thought about the storm that had struck the base, when he had been kept out of the bunker by Osgud. “The viral storm, about a month ago…”
“Negative, Private.” Heathcote was shaking her head. “I ran the sensors on that storm myself, from Fort Mayweather right here—and there weren’t any viral particulates in it.”
“Then, what?” Dane blinked. Was there any other way that he could have gotten reinfected? He tried to remember any time that he had been rained on outside.
“No, Private. The only way that these levels of Exinase could be present is if the virus had been replicating inside your system for almost a week longer than the New Sanctuary attack,” Heathcote said. “This changes everything,” she was muttering to herself. “What if the incubation for the Exinase is actually longer than I suspected? What if the exposure was before the attacks and timed so that the symptoms started at the same time?”
What?
But the doctor was already snapping Dane’s medical unit shut, gathering her things, and standing up. “Back to your training, Williams,” she said with a harsh note to her voice. “There’s something I’ve got to investigate here.”
Dane blinked in confusion as he watched Heathcote hurry back to her briefcase and then out of the room. He had no idea what the doctor was talking about, and all he knew right now was that somehow, he had to regain the respect of his platoon brothers…
8
Request Denied
“Permission request denied,” Heathcote read the return digital slip on her phone and grumbled to herself. Once again, she was working late—or very early, in fact—and when she looked up from her chair, she could see the overcast lighting of the eastern skies.
It was still dark, an inky purple out there—but before the hour was over, it would be a rosy pink from a new dawn.
And by then, another one hundred people across the United States will have been admitted to a treatment center. Heathcote glowered.
She had run the numbers all night. She had modeled the spread of the virus in both test tubes and computer simulations. The results were the same.
I’m looking at an incubation period that began before the attacks and a continuing spread of the virus through an unknown vector, she was thinking to herself, over and over.
The doctor’s eyes searched the purpling pre-dawns of night, as if she could peer all the way to New Sanctuary or New York or Boston and find the culprit.
“There simply has to be another carrier, and we know that it’s not humans,” she was muttering to herself. The virus couldn’t be spread by mammals, she now knew. But what if there was an insect? Some commonly-blooming plant?
And the Marine Corps are stopping me from finding it. She glared, glancing at the clock on the wall. Zero five fifteen hours.
She had put in a request for a sampling mission: a number of Marines to accompany her to the principle testing site to collect samples and return to base.
“But the sergeant seems to think that his precious M.I.D. isn’t ready yet,” Heathcote hissed. Well, how much longer would it take? She needed to get out there into the field if she was going to crack this. She needed to get scanners in the dirt and actual physical evidence in her hands if they were going to stop this virus.
“Frack it,” she hissed, getting to her feet in a spur of emotion and gathering her things.
Within half an hour, she had managed to pack an away kit, a hazmat suit, and all of the testing samples that she needed.
“If the sergeant won’t give me a complement of Marines, I’ll have to do it myself!” the doctor said. She radioed down for a covered jeep to be made ready for her so she could pick it up at the front gate.
By zero six hundred hours, she was gone.
9
Brawler
Some two hours later, Dane’s chance to earn back his team’s respect came when the first of the AMP-to-AMP direct-contact sessions were announced.
The new session was announced over the intercom immediately after PT, breakfast, and morning briefing.
“A new trench of satellites called the Aries Program has been launched to early-detect any possible incursion. Linking up with the Moon Base Deep Sky telescope system, this will provide a comprehensive deep-range observation of any objects entering our solar system…”
Dane immediately felt the thrill of excitement run through him.
Direct contact. That means brawling, right? He was grinning all the way to the Mech Lounge Hangar, along with the tide of other would-be Marines.
But no Corsoni.
“Huh?” Dane frowned, looking around the busy bay as he searched for his support engineer, who should, like all the rest, already have been here prepping his AMP.
Dane waited for as long as his frustration could bear, seeing the other recruits get into their own AMPs and start to jog back toward Gymnasium One—before, with a snarl, he decided to load into his suit himself.
Maybe I should notify the sergeant of this. The thought flickered through his head, but then he remembered the cold severity of Lashmeier’s eyes just yesterday, and firmly decided against it.
The sergeant expects me to be able to confront these obstacles myself, not cry for help at the first hurdle.
Luckily for Dane, he had listened to what Corsoni had been saying, and he already had the most experience with an AMP suit of any there. It was a struggle to hold the engineer’s console as well as slot his arms into the plate units, but he managed it, activating each section in turn until he was entirely encased in the metal humanoid.
>TRAINING AMP 023 Activating…
>Cycling accelerator unit…
>Recognizing User… PVT. WILLIAMS, D…
>General Systems Check… GOOD…
>Filtration, Biological, Chemical, and Radionic Protections… GOOD…
>Connecting to Federal Network…
His suit visor flickered to life, activating each system and symbol in turn, until he saw the small green vector-art humanoid of his suit hanging on the inside of his faceplate, indicating full power and health.
No more guessing what part’s wrong where! he thought with a laugh as he stepped out of the cradle and had to jog to catch up with the others.
“Nice to see some of you made it here in good time,” Lashmeier was once again bellowing from the front, and Dane felt a sting of indignant shame.
Behind Lashmeier’s shoulders, the expanse of Gymnasium One had been turned into a very crude Mech-Brawler arena, Dane realized with a grin. There were high reinforced steel walls wheeled and then bolted into the floor to form a large octagonal zone in the center, with only one way in or out.
“Today, you will be trying your first taste of actual Mech-Combat,” Lashmeier was saying. “Without weapons, just hand-to-hand melee.” Dane saw the sergeant’s eyes flicker in his direction. “I know that some of you have had experience in tournament arenas before—whether boxing or what have you—and I want you to forget all of that! This is not a sport, and you do not win when you score enough points!”
Ouch. Dane shared a look through his faceplate with Bruce, the ex-sumo wrestler, who was wincing as well at the comment.
“This is warfare, gentlemen. And in war, there are no scripted moves. There are no special combos or crowds to impress. There is just what gets your opponent on the ground, understood?”
“SIR YES SIR!” The AMP-suited recruits’ voices, broadcast through their suit speakers, rang the hall.
“That’s what I like to hear.” Lashmeier at last seemed pleased. “That said, because this is a training session, I do not want to see anyone killed in there, understood?”
“SIR YES SIR!” Another roar.
“You are to get your opponent to the ground and hold for five seconds. Then the siren will go off, indicating that the bout is over. Either that, or the siren will ring after eight minutes anyway, and the bout will be over.”
Eight minutes? Dane thought. That was no time at all. How could he get an opponent to the
floor in eight minutes?
I have to be fast, he thought.
“First match—Hopskirk and Farouk!” Lashmeier called. The two recruits sauntered forward into the arena, squared off, and waited for the beginning bell to sound.
BWAAR!
The first pair were hesitant to engage, Dane thought, using his time to study the movements of each AMP-wearer. Farouk was more confident than Hopskirk was in his suit, but both spent the first four minutes mostly edging around each other until finally trading kicks and punches. As soon as the first clang of metal sounded, however, the other AMP wearers—and Lashmeier—were starting to yell at the combatants.
“Take him down!”
“Don’t hold back, Marine!”
“Counter-jab, counter, counter!”
By the end of the bout, neither Farouk nor Hopskirk had managed to get each other to the floor and had done little more than trade blows. The next pair, Jones and Caxton, were much more gung-ho and clashed together almost as soon as they entered.
But they’re still not giving it one hundred percent, Dane thought. The same pattern repeated through the pairs of recruits. Some of the pairs were more eager to engage than the others, but none of them even came close to realizing what it was that they were capable of in their suits.
“Next up, Dane and…” Lashmeier was calling, looking around at the Marines who hadn’t yet had a chance.
“Marks,” Lashmeier said, and Dane felt a slow, wolfish grin spread across his face.
“Play nice, now,” Bruce murmured to Dane as he left the pack to the entrance of the arena, but Dane was only listening to the shouts of the crowd.
It’s like being back in the dome, Dane was thinking as he stepped into the round room, looking once for the clearance he would have. Less than he had been used to, but enough for what he was planning.
Marks clanked opposite him, and Dane watched as he moved, checking all of the small, tell-tale signs that a Mech-Brawler gave off of any blind spots and unease.
Marks was swaggering a little with bravado, but Dane thought that he still lacked confidence.
Gotcha. He grinned to himself.
BWAAR!
The bell rang, and before Marks had even thought to take a step forward, Dane had thrown himself into a giant, leaping roll, hitting the floor with a shower of sparks.
He slammed one metal hand down on the ground and swung his leg out, straight at the shins of Private Marks’s suit.
With a smack, Marks went down. Dane was already flipping his own Mech body over with one push to body-slam Marks back into the gymnasium floor. He threw one forearm behind Marks’s head as he held him down for the five-count.
BWAAR!
“Fifteen seconds!? Did you see that!!”
“Boo-yah!”
Dane heard the bell and the hollering applause of the crowd and knew that he had done it. They had seen just what he was actually good at. The bullies like Osgud and Marks would think twice before coming after him, and the other Marines might even respect him a little more.
“Get up, Marines!” Lashmeier was shouting as Dane rolled off to let Marks clank to his feet, and then for Dane to push himself up as well.
CRRANG! For there to be a grinding sound from the knee of his suit as he stood up.
What?
>Suit error! Lower knee servo-assist three non-compliant…
The small vector shape of his suit on his HUD had an unhealthy orange flash mark where his right knee should be.
That’s not right, Dane thought. There was no way that his sweep kick had damaged his suit, was there? Not unless these things were a lot more fragile than he had supposed.
But it had taken an incendiary blast out on the training field no problem, Dane was thinking as he turned to move out of the arena, lurching slightly as he did so.
“Randall and Cheng,” Lashmeier was announcing the next bout as Dane got back in place, joining the line of those who had clearly bested their opponents.
Let me see… Dane was thinking, looking around his screen as the giant metal men converged and clashed in front of him.
“Run suit auto-diagnostics,” he breathed, flicking off the speaker sound as the AMP started to self-diagnose the problem. An overlay image of his knee joint appeared, showing the different cogs, pistons, and gears that made up the assist to the frame.
“Osgud and Jarousc,” Lashmeier called. Distantly, Dane could hear cheers and shouts as various battles were won confidently or weakly not settled at all. Most of them ran the full eight minutes with neither AMP wearer making any decisive victory, but by the time that everyone had had a bout, there were three clear winners who had forced their opponents to the floor: Osgud, Cheng, and Williams.
>Problem isolated. Coolant valve compromised…
Dane was looking at the diagnostic image, seeing that one of the thick, wire-meshed and rubberized cables that kept the servo-systems working was lit up a deep warning red.
Oh frack, Dane thought. It had either been torn loose or developed a puncture, even though it was secured by padded clips and surrounded with solid-form foam.
“Final bouts, ladies and gentlemen!” Lashmeier was calling, striding forward to the “winners” team. Dane excited out of his error panel quickly, seeing Lashmeier flicker his eyes over them all.
“Let’s see how good you guys really are, shall we?” Lashmeier was saying. “Osgud and Dane!”
Dane growled in agitation inside his suit. His suit was compromised. He should call a forfeit. But he knew, as he stepped forward (taking small steps to hide the suit’s weakness) that he wouldn’t. There was no way that he was going to pass up an opportunity to fight Osgud, was there?
There should be enough lubricant already on the joint to keep going, he told himself.
The gymnasium fell eerily silent as the two AMP walked into the arena. This fight had been brewing for a while, Dane was thinking—and everyone around them knew it, too. As he got to his position, he saw Osgud’s suit facing him, and then Osgud rolled his large metal arms and swung them down to his sides…
For one metal gauntlet to tap at his own leg, and the giant metal faceplate to turn to one side just slightly, as if mocking Dane.
He knows. Osgud knows about my knee! Dane was thinking. But that would be next to impossible. Osgud must surely just have been throwing an insult about Dane’s apparently uncontrollable legs.
>Incoming Private Channel: OSGUD…
His opponent had opened up a private suit-to-suit channel, and then Dane’s helmet was filled with the threatening whisper of Osgud’s voice.
>How’s your leg… cripple!?
The man whispered, and Dane felt a flush of anger—just as the start siren sounded.
BWAAR!
Dane’s anger propelled him forward, not performing a jump and a roll as he had done previously, but instead lunging slightly to one side as Osgud leapt.
Dane’s leg wasn’t moving as fast as he liked. He had barely stepped to one side when Osgud was already jumping into a high, stamping kick—
CLANG!
>Suit Impact!
But Osgud had missed his target, and instead his foot smashed against Dane’s righthand side. The same side as his damaged knee.
Dane lurched as his leg refused to bend fully, but he was already sweeping one giant metal fist around in a roundhouse blow.
Smack!
There was a scrape and a clatter of sparks as Dane’s fist connected with the head of Osgud’s suit.
But the AMP suit was designed for high impact, and Osgud, although he was staggering, shoved himself forward toward Dane—
Move!
Dane tried to sidestep with one powerful leap, but his leg dragged instead. Then Osgud’s shoulder hit him on the chest and sent him flying backward into one of the metal walls, with Osgud ahead of him.
Oof! Dane felt himself bounce inside his suit, enough to jar the teeth in his head—but he was securely padded inside the Mech.
>Incoming Pr
ivate Channel: OSGUD…
>You don’t belong here, Williams!
Osgud held him there against the metal for a moment, using all of his force to grind Dane against the wall as his words hissed into Dane’s ears.
>Everyone knows you’re a failure, Williams!
>You wanna know something I heard? About your dad. Bad Luck. A failure. Just like you…
Osgud pulled back to draw back one giant metal fist.
Frack you, Dane thought, waiting for the slightest pause as he saw Osgud throw all his weight into the blow.
That was the thing about Mech fighting. The really good Mechs made it feel easy to move, but you were still throwing around over half a ton of metal at a time, and the physics were undeniable. There was inertia. There was centrifugal force.
Dane allowed his working knee to drop at the last moment as Osgud’s fist slammed into the metal, and then he was shoving Osgud’s other shoulder backward. All of Osgud’s weight had been thrown into that punch, making him overbalanced.
Osgud started to fall backward, with Dane unable to stop himself from falling on top of him.
Fracking idiot! Dane snarled as his suit slammed into Osgud’s chest, and both hit the floor with enough force to make the ground shake.
“Rargh!” He heard Osgud snarling and gasping over the still-open channel between them. Dane pulled himself back, skidding his useless leg out to one side as he half-sat on top of his opponent and started to pummel him with giant metal fists.
“You really think you can beat me in a ring!?” Dane was hissing into the air of his suit as he threw another punch and then another against the metal man.
“Williams, Williams, WILLIAMS!” Someone was shouting as Dane smacked his fists again and again into Osgud’s faceplate. Suddenly, something grabbed his shoulder and was lifting him back. It was another AMP, and he was being hauled off of Osgud’s battered form below.
Mech Warrior: Born of Steel (Mechanized Infantry Division Book 1) Page 6