Jethro Goes to War (Wandering Engineer Jethro's tale)

by Hechtl, Chris

  “Ah. Yeah, that'd suck.”

  “Yup,” Riley shook his head. “That it would. Hand me that laparoscope. No the other one.” He pointed. Sergei picked up the hair thin snake like cable and handed it over.

  “Unfortunately the electronics are fried. Literally. Cooked. So I've got to come up with another rig. Fortunately I've got the basics on file. I've left plenty of extra CPU and storage space for future upgrades.”

  “Cool,” Jethro nodded. He smiled to Sergei. “You know the best part?”

  “No but I think you’re about to tell me.”

  “This suckers got armor, dampeners, cloak AND a shield.”

  “Oh hell. I want one. I sooo want one,” Sergei moaned.

  “Sorry, only one to a customer. The other suits are all gen 2 armor. The big one is raider armor though. Best you’re going to get is one of those. Though we might be able to get you a dampener. I'm not sure. Maybe a shuttle dampener might work,” Riley said and then put a tool in his mouth.

  “That would be a good thing,” Ox said with a nod. He put a part down on a cart and then lumbered back into the back room.

  Riley looked up from the scope at the Tauren. He took the tool out to make small adjustments. “For you it's probably a necessity. You running around in armor on a station...” He shook his head.

  “What?” Jethro asked.

  “Well, it depends on the area he's at I guess. But if it's an old station he'd go right through the deck.”

  “Oh.”

  “So that's what it does? I thought it dampens something?” Sergei asked.

  “Read the manual again. Supplemental section,” Riley said curtly. “Field upgrades and refits.”

  “All right, it's not like I've got anything better to do right now,” Sergei grumped, sitting on a stool. His eyes went vacant. “Inertial.. oh.. okay. So it can take away some impact force like a shield... no, that's not right... but it... hmmm.”

  “It'll smooth out acceleration. From anything hitting you or you're moving around fast. It'll also cancel out some of your weight. But that sucks up juice. A lot. It'll also send out a signal like a flare.”

  “Ah.”

  “Subtle was never his strong suit to begin with Sergeant,” Hurranna teased.

  “Zip it.”

  “With his size I can believe it. This reactor's a bit different than the others. It's got vents on top and bottom.”

  “Heat,” Jethro grunted. He turned his head slightly to see the armorer. “To hide the heat and energy signature.”

  “Oh. Yeah, could be,” Riley nodded. “See, that's another drawback of the fusion packs. You got them your sending out neutrinos. With the right scanner package you might as well be tossing out here I am signs.”

  “Ah,” Chirby nodded. “That would be bad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But there is a fix?” Chirby asked. His second set of arms moved, pulling parts apart and putting them back together.

  “Only one I know is to minimize the problem. Keep power usage down and use the best fuels. Which means helium 3 and deuterium.”

  “Oh. Didn't I read that the basic suits use a field expedited micro reactor in a recharging station?” Ox asked.

  “Yeah,” Riley nodded. “Trouble is where to find one. I'd whip one up but we can't make a reactor.”

  “What about parts for one?”

  “Not going to happen. Oh a few things maybe. Cables, shit like that. But the injectors and chamber no. Replicator lock out. Same for the dampeners. Though I might have a work around by using a shuttle one like I said before. Cobble it together sort of. I dunno. Gotta see about its size and power demands.”

  “Oh.”

  “We'll see.”

  “What about the other bits?” Hurranna asked. “Maybe we can help a little? Check each out and see what's missing?”

  “I already did that,” Riley said waving his arm. “Ox is in there working on a suit now.” He waved to the side room. Hurranna went to the corner and peeked. The giant Tauren was hunkered down next to a suit laid out on a table. Parts and bits were everywhere.

  “Having fun?” she asked.

  “Loads,” he answered, fiddling with a clamp. Hydraulic fluid gushed out. He grimaced. “You're distracting me.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. There was a loud hiss behind her and she turned.

  “Wasn't me. Honest,” Sergei said holding his hands up.

  “It... damn. Pressure hose popped. Pin hole.” Riley sighed looking at the hose on the side of Jethro's suit. “That's bad. I'm glad I did a pressure test with air now. I think to be safe I want to swap all the hoses. These are old anyway. Seals too.”

  “Great,” Jethro sighed. Back to square one again. He could just imagine how long that would take.

  “Baby steps son. Remember that.”

  “Yeah.”

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Jethro grunted as he used a hole punch and brass swedge to tap the retaining ring out. He pulled the piece out, took a look at it, then reached in and fished out the o rings inside the chamber walls. He grimaced as his hand came out covered in grease and grimy bits of black plastic.

  “You were right. Rings are gone.”

  “Kinda figured. Get as much as you can out then we'll clean it up, run a rag over it, blow it out with compressed air, then put new ones in. Rings I've got,” Riley said waving to the draws of parts. “Rings I've got a plenty.”

  “Right,” Jethro nodded.

  “Take your time and do it right the first time. It'd suck having to tear it all apart to fix something simple.”

  “Yeah,” Jethro breathed. “That it would.”

  “So do it right the first time kid.”

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Jethro stood and walked slowly across the room then back. He smiled a closed lipped smile as he managed to make it back in one piece.

  “Progress I see,” the Major said from the doorway. Everyone in the room looked up startled and came to attention. Jethro moved faster than he intended and nearly toppled before he caught himself.

  “Easy there. At ease everyone,” the Major said waving his hands for them to sit back down. “Go back to what you’re doing. I'm just stopping by.” He came over to Riley and sat on a stool. “How are things shaping up?”

  “Fair to middlin. We've mirrored the parts that we didn't have in the left leg from the right and it's taking a little more breaking in than I'd like. In fact a little breaking than breaking in to be honest,” he grimaced. “Some of the plastics are damn old and brittle. To be expected after a couple of centuries. I've got that suit at ten percent like the others but it's still damn powerful.”

  “Hmm. I wonder if we should replace the other suits with the same actuators then?” the Major asked watching Ox working on Sergei's suit.

  “No way. The mounts wouldn't hold. Besides, these suckers are power hogs. You'd cut battery life down to a couple of hours. Now we know why they needed a MAM reactor. Wish we had one now. They must have been tiny. Real tiny. The grafted reactor pod tends to throw them off balance. Which makes them twitchy and of course sucking energy constantly.”

  Sergei grimaced and his tail lashed as he tried to stand. His tail thrashed for balance again as his legs flexed. It went straight out and up after a moment. He abruptly sat, crushing the stool under him. The Major winced as he went backwards then tried to roll to a sitting position and failed. Ox lent him a hand to pull the torso upright.

  “Heavy,” Sergei grunted. He rubbed one bare arm with the other. “Even with just the skeleton.” He took his tail in his hands and combed it. “Bruised my tail.”

  “Yeah. I'd say,” Riley said dryly, looking at the mess of his stool. He shook his head. “Their suits should be only magnifying ten percent of their strength, but that's still a hell of a lot more than I'd like. Maybe it's the lack of armor,” he said, suddenly getting a faraway look.

  “Maybe,” the Major said nodding. He watched as Jethro got up and walked again. Careful
ly placing one foot in front of the other. The panther's suit was bare, just the raw skeleton wrapped around the skin suit. There were bits he didn't recognize. A few looked like micro launchers. One pod on his right hip was a storage compartment, but the opposite side had some sort of launcher. There were bits on his hips and calves he didn't recognize at all.

  “Firefly called in a programming expert to help with the suit software. We've created a better adaptive system based on the old suits and an adaptive AI to run it all.”

  “AI?” the Major asked startled.

  “Not like Sprite or Firefly. More of a smart bot really. It can adapt to the user and interface with their implants. It plugs into the diagnostic system to make changes on the run. At least that's what the centaurian Veber and that other kid that's working on the software said they are doing. That's the plan anyway.” He winced as Jethro froze.

  “Um, a little help here?” the Major asked when Jethro didn't start moving again.

  “What happened?” Riley said coming over.

  “Stuck. Left leg and back froze again.”

  “Crap.”

  “See that's the other problem. The system tends to freeze and lock parts up if it runs into a problem it can't solve. Or it will have the entire system lag if it's got an issue. Or it'll lock up entirely.”

  “Ah. So it's a work in progress,” the Major said with a laugh.

  “You could say that,” Riley snorted. “A lot of work. And a lot more work. And only so much progress to show for it.” He jacked in and frowned. “Hell. Yup, system locked out the C6 spinal vertebra actuator and the left knee and ankle. Buffer over run... I'm resetting them now.” He cocked his head. “Okay try it again. I'll shoot Bobby an e-mail to reset the buggers threshold.”

  He turned back to the Major and shook his head. “That's another issue. Sometimes the system gets one thing right, or it won’t and it will keep trying different settings until it does. That can mess up other things downstream which makes it reset them and start over. It can get out of control and cascade if you're not watching it. Bobby just fixed that last night in the latest compiled version. Or at least said he did.”

  “Not fully,” Ox sighed. “This suit just did a full reset to default.”

  “Oh shit,” Sergei growled. “Did I land too hard?” he asked cradling his limp tail.

  “Unlike you the suit's computer isn't in its ass,” Riley said with a snort. Hurranna giggled at that.

  The Major smiled and then nodded. “Um, I was wondering...”

  “No, not a week. Maybe next week.”

  “Wasn't my question, though that answered the next. I was actually wondering if I could check out my suit.”

  “Oh?” Riley said turning to the Major. “Something up?”

  “Another recruiting drive sir?” Jethro asked looking up.

  “How'd you...” Riley asked amused.

  “It's in the family archive. Show up all spiffy in armor. Impress the hell out of the locals. Get their attention and you've got them eating out of your hand.”

  “Ah. Sounds like a quote.”

  “Old movie sir.”

  “Huh. That reminds me. Get me a list of all these old war movies you've watched. Any other things you can think of as well. I'm going to put that out through the entire corps and navy. See what we can dig up. I'd like to get ideas.”

  “Considering the source?”

  “I'd take anything at this date,” the Major said shaking his head. “We can fix it later. But if it's interesting, pass it along. We can learn from anything. And anything that's wrong we can point to it and say it's wrong.”

  “Aye aye sir.”

  “Good. Now, about my suit?” He turned looking to the armorer.

  “Sure sure, let me go load the lockers,” the armorer said moving over to the controls. “Okay it'll be thirty seconds.” He looked up.

  “Perfect. I'll be changing then,” the Major nodded. “Keep up the good work people. I want this done ASAP.”

  “Yes sir,” they said in unison.

  “Carry on,” he nodded and went into the changing chamber.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Jethro ran down the corridor and then paused. He turned back and forth. “Stuck again?” Riley asked.

  “No working on the sensors. I'm getting a shadow effect. IFF's are coming in clear but I'm getting an echo with them too.”

  “All right. I've logged it,” the armorer grunted. “Try the cloak again.”

  Jethro grunted and then accessed the controls and sent the coded signal. It was supposed to react to his natural instinct, when he initiated cloak through his body the suit would interpret it and do it for itself. Unfortunately they hadn't quite gotten the sensors up to be able to read his neural system that well. Yet.

  “You're flickering. There.” The gunny nodded as the suit faded out. “Damn that's cool. Smart of Ox to think of using the drivers for the ghillie suits for this.”

  “Yes. He saved us a hell of a lot of work. Though it's not perfect. There are issues,” Bobby said watching the suit through his HUD. He could just make out the suit by the distortion around its edges. That was better than the pixelating problem they had had the other day. “I wonder if I can write a program to look for this...”

  “Probably. Later though. There has got to be a way to fix that though,” the gunny said standing behind them.

  Bobby popped to attention as he suddenly realized who was there. Riley just snorted. “At ease kid,” he shook his head. “Still got them scared spit-less I see,” he jerked his thumb to the programmer next to him.

  The gunny smiled a closed lipped smile. “Good practice.”

  “Yeah right,” the armorer snorted again. “Keep telling yourself that. You said you’re working on a patch system?” he said turning to the programmer.

  “Yes. I ah, want to compile changes then hit the suit system in its down time. That way we can do changes all at once and do roll backs if we need to without doing stop and go hack and slash programming like we're doing.”

  “Hence the log,” the gunny said nodding. “You're using the algorithms in the ghillie suits I heard?”

  “Yes sir. It's not perfect though. I suspect someone in cadre or recon had a better system and kept it under wraps.”

  “Probably,” Riley snorted. “They always liked having an ace.”

  “We need a better testing environment. Something for the system to show it's true colors. See how fast it can adapt. How much power it takes.”

  “And the ship isn't the place since the bulkheads are all uniform,” Riley said shaking his head. “I get you. But we can't exactly do this outside. I'm still not one hundred percent sure about her life support and suit integrity. Something goes wrong and he's fried.”

  “We don't want that. Besides, I want something dynamic. Like a planet. Exterior work is dull grays and browns. Not enough of a challenge,” the gunny replied.

  “Where are we going to get a planet sir? Can we send him to Agnosta?” the programmer asked.

  “You going to go along for the ride?” the gunny asked Bobby, giving him a look. The kid pointed to his chest in confusion, eyes wide.

  Schultz shook his head. “The Major nixed it anyway. The only ship going to Agnosta in the next six months is the Clydesdale freighter seven seven niner. He's right. I wouldn't chance that piece of equipment with civilians. If it fell into the wrong hands...”

  “We'd have a serious problem,” Riley nodded. “Not to mention out all this hard work. So that's out,” he sighed. “Park deck?”

  “Which brings us all sorts of other headaches. Political ones,” the gunny grunted irritably. “We've been trying for two days. They want an arm and a leg for a couple days of time.”

  “Even if he's just standing around sir?” the armorer asked, sounding exasperated. “We really just need a day. Maybe a single shift or half shift could do it.”

  “We could print out giant pictures. Or make a giant vid screen. Have him stand in front o
f it and test it,” Bobby said nodding.

  “Good idea. Go with that.”

  “Wont work well. Light angle and color changes. Dynamic. Though a static could get us closer I suppose,” Riley mumbled.

  “And then he can take a stroll through the public park. Like oh, at the college,” the Major said behind them. They turned to him, straightening as training took over.

  “Busy corridor,” he smiled as they shot to attention once more. “At ease. I see it's working.” He squinted. “Or barely see. I can just make out the edges.”

  “Yes sir,” the gunny nodded, clearly annoyed he'd let his guard down enough for the Major to sneak up on him. He needed to work on his situational awareness. He should have at least noticed his scent.

  “A stroll in a public park sir?” Riley asked.

  “What do you say corporal? You up for a walk?” the Major asked, pitching his voice to include Jethro.

  “Sure, I mean yes sir.” He decloaked and then grimaced. “I did not mean to do that,” he sighed, frustrated.

  “Looks like we've got a little more work to do before that stroll,” Bobby sighed shaking his head. “I think I'll ask that centaurian Veber if he can work on that and the coding of the fringe. I'm wondering if there is something in the anti-alias algorithms we can fine tune to get a better result,” he mused.

  “I want to know just how far that suit can go. How much power it uses, how much the cloak needs, and shields. How much punishment the systems can take. Also how long he can remain shielded or cloaked.”

  “Yes sir. We've got a graph but it's tentative. Shield and cloak use a lot of juice. This is actually the secondary cloak. More of a back up. The primary is something tied into the shields. It seems to bend light. Possibly a phase shift, though I don't see how that is possible in real time. We can't use it though, we don't have the right algorithms,” Bobby replied absently. He grimaced and then shook his head. “The shield is an order of magnitude over the cloak. It's all connected with the incoming energy that has to be shed...” Bobby got a faraway look.

  “Later. If I'm up to it son,” the Major chuckled. “Since I never got past counting with my fingers and toes, I'd say way later,” he smiled shaking his head. “I just need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the suit.”