by Chris Hechtl
“Okay, okay,” she said, hands up in surrender.
He watched her go and then nodded. They had to work their schedule around Doctor Thornby's. The doctor was planning to do one surgery weekly until they were up to speed and certain of the processes involved.
They would start with Letanga and then see if they could add additional Cadre members each week if the doctor had time in her schedule. That meant Jethro had to have the armor of each person beforehand and they had to be acquainted with it.
He got up when Bast looked pointedly at him. “I'm going, I'm going,” he said, hands up. He left his office and walked to the temporary armory. He signed in with the guard and then went inside.
He'd set up a second office in the armor morgue. It was little more than a semi-comfortable desk chair, a tablet, a tray to set it or papers on, and a long cable jack to the Class 3 military grade industrial replicator the admiral had dropped off. `
“What is it this time?” he asked as he looked around the room. His armor was still in its crate. Pieces were missing off it; they were lying on racks nearby. He knew Bast didn't like it, but he also knew she knew it was that way for a reason.
“Ox is on his way,” Bast reported.
“About time,” Jethro growled. The Tauren armorer Ox was an engineer who was an old classmate and graduate of F Platoon. He'd recently been promoted to gunnery sergeant. From what Jethro had heard, the Tauren had been none too gently urged to take a commission. Since Ox was a hands-on sort of person, he knew that wasn't likely to happen, though he might be convinced to take on a warrant.
Since so far all he'd had was headaches and paperwork, he wasn't certain if it was a good idea or not.
Recently they'd hit components that were not species specific. Bast had allowed them to make multiples of the parts. He glanced over to the suit slowly taking shape. They didn't have the torso situated yet, but they had a good chunk of the arms and legs. Another day and they should be finished with one set of limbs he thought. If he slept in the armory, they'd get the other set done.
He rubbed the small of his back. If he was going to do that, he was going to find a damn way to get a cushion or foam mattress in to lie on. Bast could sleep …no damn it; he had to take parts out. He heaved a sigh.
Bast cocked her head. “Just planning for the eventual time we move in here,” he said as he picked up the jack cable and plugged it into his implants.
Bast smiled but he could tell she was already distracted. He felt data flowing out of the cable and into his suit as the suit came alive.
He managed to get most of the components for the hands completed when there was a rap at the door. He turned. “Enter,” he called out as he set the gauntlet he'd assembled to the side.
“Jethro? Shouldn't Letanga be helping you with this at least?” Ox asked as he entered the armory. He was followed by a familiar human.
“Bloody hell, move your fat ass, you big lummox,” Riley growled as he pushed Ox aside so he could get around him. Ox snorted then stepped aside but also casually bumped his cohort in the process.
“Okay, you did that on purpose,” First Sergeant Bill Riley growled as he fumbled his packages.
“Don't drop it,” Jethro urged, reaching out an instinctive hand just as Ox turned and casually righted the packages for Riley.
“Thanks,” Riley said with a grunt as he set the packages down. Ox did the same. “We've got a truckload outside,” the master armorer said, jerking his thumb to the open door. “I think with this lummox and the armors we're supposed to be working on, we're better off leaving out anyone else for the time being,” he said. “Not that I don't mind the extra hand from time to time,” he said. He surveyed the room. The armory was about thirty meters in diameter with bays for a squad of armor caskets. It had a battery pack and the replicator in the center of the room to charge and repair the suits. Around the outer edge of the room, racks had been set up for the parts. “Not much to work with here,” he said shaking his head.
“We work with what they give us I'm afraid,” Jethro said. He reached up to remove the cable, but Bast shook her head and froze his arm. “Um, I'm afraid I'm sort of stuck for the moment,” he said. Bast put a twelve-minute countdown up on his HUD. “Sorry boys, I'm stuck here for the next twelve minutes,” he said.
Riley eyed the jack, then his eyes traced to the replicator. He grunted and turned to the gunny. “See? Rank does have its privileges. We do the heavy lifting while he sits on his ass,” he griped good naturedly.
“Well, I also have to handle the paperwork,” Jethro drawled, holding up the tablet. “Wanna trade?”
“No, no, no thank you!” Riley said, putting his hands up and shaking his head in surrender. Jethro snorted and flicked his ears as the human retreated the way he'd come in.
“Hopefully, he comes back. We really do have a lot to do,” Jethro said with a grimace as Ox blocked out the light in the doorway. “Oh, nice to see you both,” Jethro said.
“Are you coming or what?” Riley demanded querulously. “This shit won't unload itself! Believe me, I wish it could!”
“And to you as well old friend. But we can catch up in a bit,” Ox said as he went outside to help unload. Jethro looked at the countdown and then sighed softly to himself.
<)>^<)>/
Doctor Thornby sequenced the Royal Jelly she received from Bast, and then since it didn't make much sense to her, she ran it past Commander Sprite.
Since she was an A.I. and had chosen coding as one of her side professions, Sprite was one of the best coders in the military. However, she was also the admiral's chief of staff, so she had many other duties to perform. But, since the Cadre was a priority project, she set up a series of bots in the medical mainframe to translate the DNA sequences into coherent data. Her own access with the admiral's Royal Jelly told her there was a key to translate it all but applying the admiral's key to interpret the results turned out to be incorrect.
There had to be a way though; after all, the admiral and Jethro had somehow activated his jelly fully to bring Bast to full conciseness.
A new medical A.I. was proposed, but Sprite didn't have the time to work on it. For the moment, it would remain in her to-do list.
It took time to assemble the key; time that had been unexpected. Given that the armory team was having trouble manufacturing the armor, the delays evened out. When they did have a partial key, things came together rapidly. Within a day most of the artificial DNA strands had been translated and assembled. But gaps in the database were a problem.
Doctor Thornby, Sprite, Proteus, Lieutenant Fletcher, and Commander Veber got together in an electronic conference. They decided it was in the best interest of the team to start with those of the blood. They would need to replicate the process Jethro underwent until they had the time to better understand, clone, and replicate the Royal Jelly.
Bast had been brought online by a combination of exposure to Jethro's suit as well as his own actions. But a clone of Bast was a problem; each A.I. would need to be different for each user. One of the things that had triggered Bast had been Jethro's experience in full combat with the suit. Given that they didn't want to expose the suit to full combat nor burn the time to get it and a team there and back, they tried to brainstorm other methods of inducing the trauma. None came immediately to mind other than extremely realistic training.
But first they needed the armor to be finished.
<)>^<)>/
The Cadre candidates were eager to see their armor being built, but it started to provoke unwanted attention from other RECON personnel as well as the guards assigned to protect the morgue. Once they had the process down, Riley insisted on doing a fitting-out scan of the personnel who had never suited up.
Which reminded Jethro that those personnel hadn't taken suit training. Nor did they have the facilities at the RECON base to do the scans and fittings. Which was a problem until Riley organized a visit to the central Marine base where there was a full armory. He kept the field tr
ip down to a single fire team each time to keep it as low key as possible.
Three of the team, the Neochimp Staff Sergeant Shic Chavers and the two human PFCs Bernie Fowler and Kim Littledeath, had armor and were obviously armor qualified. The humans were not “of the blood” however. Their armors would be used as the basis of their Cadre armor. The parts were not the same, but the nanites would be able to convert the components later. The armors hadn't been delivered to the RECON armory; apparently, the powers that be had thought they wouldn't be needed and had intended for them to be reconditioned. When Riley found out, he'd picked the armors up in one of his field trips.
It wasn't as easy as slapping Cadre armor on their frames, however. Jethro's exterior armor was suited for a Neocat; there were very few parts in common to use other than fastenings and weapon parts. The cloak, electronics, and sensors were all form fitted to each armor. “The bloody things are custom made from the tip of the head to the toes. It's going to be a pain in the ass for each of 'em, mark my words,” Riley pronounced in a fit of disgust. The experiment to jump-start the process stalled and was then tabled for the moment.
One thing that the armor transfer had kick-started was their forced transfer to the Cadre-only facilities. Jethro had known it was going to be needed so he'd started the paperwork the day after Riley and Ox had arrived. It had taken a week to get it through channels and approved.
Getting the new armor morgue built to Riley and Ox's exacting spec turned out to be an endeavor he hadn't anticipated. He let the duo divide their time between overseeing the construction of the components and on-site construction with their time helping him with the armor replication.
And he thought, they were going to do it all over again when they finally got around to building the cave base he reminded himself bleakly. More paperwork he thought with a grimace as he checked the armor over carefully.
The project was tedious and took time. They could only do a few parts at a time, and Jethro had to be on hand for the entire process. It took nearly a week of fitting Letanga to get the torso sorted out.
Bast had to use the basic armor they had as a matrix to form the new one. She would layer the new armor on top of the old, one molecule at a time, and build it up. Then she would go in and undercut the old material out and replace it, again one molecular level at a time with the composites the Cadre used. It was tedious and expensive. The materials were not something one picked up off the truck. Admiral Irons must have been processing and caching it all for months, possibly years, Jethro thought.
That was another thing he came to respect as they worked. Supposedly, Admiral Irons had all the keys to the Cadre, though he had some questions about that. If the admiral did, it meant he could make each suit from scratch far faster than they did. But he'd have to take the time to do it and each would have to be fitted to the user. He was a busy man; he'd learned to delegate it.
Besides, having the armorers and the Cadre candidates do it for themselves meant they learned every bolt and wire. It meant they knew it all intimately and could only blame themselves if something went wrong. It also meant they could do field repairs if necessary.
If there was any need, he reminded himself. The nanite layers would go a long way to make repairs and upgrades under the A.I.'s guidance.
“It should get easier once we have two suits and two A.I.,” Letanga said as he tested a gauntlet. “And then two makes four, and so on and so forth. Exponential,” he said with an ear flick to Jethro.
“I hope so,” Jethro said with a shake of his head. “There has got to be an easier method of doing this. I keep thinking we're reinventing the wheel. I was just thinking the admiral could do it faster. But he's busy, and we've got to learn the hardware anyway.” He watched as Bast checked on the inertial dampeners and grav emitters. Fine tuning them would be a bitch he knew.
“Which in a way we are,” Letanga said with a shrug. “We don't have the right tools, so we do what we can with what we have,” he said. He looked up, frowning.
“What?” Jethro asked.
“I'm just wondering … how many Cadre armors fell into the pirate's hands? And if they got one intact, with someone “of the blood,” would it activate? Could they do what we're doing?” he asked. Indicating the armor and replicator.
Jethro looked at Bast. Bast's long ears were sticking out and flat. She looked distinctively unhappy by the idea. “You would mention that,” he sighed as he tapped at his tablet.
“What? What'd I say?” Letanga asked.
“I'd say don't ask questions you don't want answers to, but we need those questions asked, and more importantly, the answers to them and others so they don't come up and bite us in the ass,” Jethro said as he found the ONI website. “I'm going to pass it on to higher and let them know you thought of it,” he said.
“Gee, thanks,” Letanga said dryly as he punched his left fist into his right palm. “Remind me to return … crap!” he said as a servo locked up. He tilted before he recovered.
“Servo again?” Jethro asked, looking up.
“Got to be that sticky one. I think we need to replace it again. Maybe run down what's causing it,” Letanga said with an air of much-tried patience.
“Manufacturer maybe. We're using a mix of components since we don't have the admiral on hand to make the rest of the servos that we need,” Jethro sighed. “According to what we know each suit will need to be customized by the user and his or her A.I.”
“While you are griping to ONI, see if you can send him an e-mail asking for those other parts,” Letanga said.
“Right,” Jethro said with a heavy sigh.
<)>^<)>/
Since Bast was tied into the suit and the armory processors, she had sufficient processing ability to handle regular conversations with the organics as well as the A.I. She tended to keep her conversations simple with the organics, but once the other A.I. knew she was fully online, they opened a chat channel and asked for more input.
When Sprite pressed her, Bast did her best to explain the naming conventions and how they were determined by the bloodlines. Each line has a deity. When awakened the A.I. derived itself from its source code, plus it's host's identity, plus exterior input. Usually the input is knowledge of the last version of itself. If one is still in existence, that triggers a rename and morph phase. Sometimes they got lucky and a deity had multiple names that it could shift to easily. It would then take on an alpha numeric after the name and then alter its appearance to suit its host.
The good news was that they had the ability to add new lines and recreate old ones. The bad news was they had a limited gene pool to draw them from … and didn't know what alphanumerics past A.I. had if they were not recorded in the historic records.
Chapter 19
Once they had a finished suit, Letanga spent a long time admiring it. It was identical to Jethro's suit but a slightly more matte shade of black. Riley and Ox were off on other duties so it fell on Jethro to help his cousin in the final suit-up and first initialization. Letanga stepped up and then turned and backed into the suit. It closed around him.
“Normally, you go into a suiting room, and the parts are brought in by robotic arms and attached,” Jethro explained. “It starts with the boots, hips, and torso and then builds the legs and limbs.”
“I know. I saw it once,” Letanga said.
“But there are alternative methods of getting into the armor, especially Cadre armor,” Jethro continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. “Now the fun begins,” he said as the armor closed around Letanga. “Initiate new user,” he intoned. Bast sent a signal through her connection to the armor pod, then took control of Jethro's arms to place them onto ports on the armor.
“What are you …?” Letanga started to ask just as he jacked in.
Bast guided the set-up initialization of the electronics so they wouldn't self-destruct. Once they were online, she withdrew. “Step two is completed,” she said using Jethro's voice.
“Was that …”<
br />
“Bast,” Jethro said in his more normal tone of voice.
“Damn … freaky,” Letanga said as the helmet closed around his head. The eyes lit up and then the ears flicked. “A bit to get used to,” he said.
“I know. I don't think I will ever completely. No offense Bast,” Jethro said. Bast flicked her ears. “I guess you could say we're wet-ware, she's software, and the body is just a meatbot with an armor coating,” he joked. Bast flicked her ears at him.
“Okay, you took the armor class; do you remember how to work through the initialization?” Jethro asked.
“Move around slow. Test the range of motion. Check the motors and suit systems at low power and speed. Build up both to comfortable levels. I think I should do it outside though,” Letanga said just as he reached up to stretch and threw himself off balance in the process.
“Problem, we are still in the RECON base. Turn the speed down. Move slow, the suit will sense your intentions,” he explained. “Over time it will read your muscle thoughts,” he said.
“Freaky,” Letanga said. “I'm not sure this is good for sniping,” he said.
“You haven't tried the cloak yet,” Jethro said. The armor flickered, then popped brightly. The skin flickered again, like it was a series of flat planes trying to imitate the surroundings. The more Letanga moved the more the electronics had trouble however.
“Easy, one step at a time. Turn the cloak off. Let's learn to walk before you go further,” Jethro chuffed as Letanga's tail thrashed.
Jethro ducked aside as the tail thrashed again and knocked over a tray of parts. “Sorry,” Letanga said as he turned. His tail hit a pipe with a clang, then Jethro's armor making Bast hiss. “The thing has a mind of its own,” Letanga said, trying to get a grip on the tail.