by Richard Fox
“Ask your cadre if you get the chance. We need a few more seconds for the monitor to synch with you.” She double-tapped the restraint on Roland’s wrist, and the chair released him.
“Am I supposed to sign a nondisclosure agreement for this?” He reached to the back of his neck to rub the monitor, then pulled his hand away.
“There’s no way to prepare for this part,” she said. “Either you’re minimally qualified for the plugs or you are not. Don’t worry about touching the monitor or showering with it on. Taking it off requires some effort. Do remember that if you remove it, you will be dropped.”
Her forearm screen beeped.
“Now you’re good. Report to the VR chamber in basement level 1C for your next assessment.”
“But it’s getting kind of late. When is din—I mean, yes, ma’am.”
Eeks chuckled.
“You remind me of a skinny little Kurdish kid from many years ago. If you really want to be armor, you listen to me. Don’t hold back. Don’t ever hold back.” She gave him a pat on the cheek, then pointed to the door.
“Now get moving. I’ve got to get through twenty more potentials.”
****
Tongea and Gideon stood in a control room, watching a screen where Roland paced back and forth in an empty VR chamber. The lit squares on the floors, walls and ceiling came in and out of focus as the holo projectors compensated for Roland’s shifting point of view.
“Eeks has this one down as marginal,” Gideon said.
“Marginal med evals make it through fairly regularly. His psych profile concerns me.” Tongea touched his forearm screen and Roland’s nervous system came up. “Adrenaline elevated…he’s ready for a fight.”
“I say we cut him now, suggest he reapply after his first term is up.” Gideon crossed his arms.
“Colonel Martel sent us here to find armor, not lessen our burden. Let’s run him through the canyon. I’ll take this one.”
Chapter 4
Roland reached toward the white abyss surrounding him. The VR chamber hadn’t changed since he first walked in. Only his shadow across the floor and the closed door behind him gave him any sense of spatial awareness. He took three steps forward and his fingertips touched the wall, sending ripples away from the impact like a stone dropped in a pond.
The wall shifted to beige and he jerked his hand back. A desert landscape formed around him and he felt a slight vibration from the floor. Dark storm clouds billowed over distant mountains and a gust of hot air washed around him. He turned around, noting that the door was gone.
“Candidate Shaw,” came from a speaker in the ceiling, hidden behind a holo panel showing him a deep blue sky. “Take the equipment provided and travel to the location on the map. This is a timed event.”
A circle opened in the ceiling and a drone floated down, a combat gauntlet and gauss carbine on top of it. Roland slipped the gauntlet over his left forearm and picked up the carbine. The drone rose back into the opening and vanished behind a sky projection.
Roland removed the magazine from the weapon and did a quick inspection. There was a blue line around the top of the magazine and a thin blue line around the top bullet. Training munitions. He slapped it back into the weapon and cycled a round into the chamber. The battery that would power the magnetic accelerator to propel the cobalt-jacketed tungsten darts read as nearly depleted. He could get a few shots off at most.
“This weapon’s more dangerous as a club when it’s loaded with training rounds. Why bother giving me a bum battery too?” He raised his gauntlet and a map came up. Although a dot pulsed in the bottom of a canyon, there was no indicator of where he was on the map, but there was a compass wheel.
He turned around and found a distant mountain peak, the spine of the connected range descending to the east. Roland twisted the map around on the gauntlet screen and found a match for the terrain feature. He shot a back azimuth and managed to estimate his location as a few kilometers south of the pulsating dot.
I knew spending those weekends at Scouts would pay off. He ran north, keeping a pace count as he went; the roar of engines rising from behind him. A half-dozen Eagle fighters raced overhead, low enough that Roland could almost read the squadron markings on their tails. The fighters vanished into the approaching storm clouds.
Roland kept running until his chest was heaving and his heartbeat pounded in his skull. Taking a knee beneath the shade of a mesquite tree, he tried to touch it, but his fingers went right through the hologram. He glanced at his gauntlet…and the dot vanished, reappearing farther west. Much farther west.
“You’re kidding me.” He stood and shot an azimuth to the new location and started jogging at a more even pace.
A hot wind picked up behind him, and blowing sand obscured the distant mountain peaks. He turned just in time to see a wall of sand rushing toward him, and raised his arms over his face out of reflex, but not a single grain of sand touched him within the VR chamber. Everything around him was a brown morass.
I’ve lived in Phoenix since I was seven. Never seen anything like this. What’re they trying to test, how well I do in Alice’s Wonderland? he thought.
A ripple of cannon fire rose over the wind, and rounds hit the sand a dozen yards away. The sound of an Eagle and another, higher-pitched, engine swirled above him. Roland lifted his gauntlet up, turned to the west and started running again. Whatever was happening overhead was not something he wanted to be around.
This is crazy, he thought. I want to be armor. Why are they running me around the desert like it’s the last war?
A thunderclap and a flash of yellow light cut through the sandstorm. A hunk of smoking metal hit the ground and bounced straight toward Roland. He dived to the ground as the debris sailed overhead.
Stupid. None of this is real. He got up and kept moving. The sandstorm abated a few minutes later…and all the mountains he’d used for terrain navigation were gone. Small hills and wide salt plains surrounded him…but there was a billowing parachute a hundred yards away connected to an ejection seat lying on its side.
Roland went for the seat, hoping whatever he found there might help make sense of this whole thing. He approached the ejection seat with the carbine to his shoulder, finger off the trigger. The seat faced away from him, and he heard groaning from the other side.
He sidestepped around and found the pilot slumped against the restraints, his helmet lying in the dirt. Walking closer, Roland bumped his foot against the helmet, sending it tumbling away.
“That’s not a hologram?” He tapped his foot against the ejection seat and found it was real too.
Kneeling next to the pilot, he gave his shoulder a gentle shake, and blood leaked out of the side of the pilot’s mouth. An ugly rip ran down the side of his flight suit, soaked with deep red blood.
“Hey, can you hear me?” Roland found a bright yellow box beneath the seat and pulled it out. Inside were a med kit, emergency transponder and a food pack.
The pilot groaned and gave a wet cough. Roland removed a quick-clot patch and a suture laser from the med kit, then gingerly pulled back the torn flight suit. Within, a pile of spilled intestines quivered in a pool of blood. He cried out briefly, then pressed the flight suit closed and dropped the patch to the ground.
“Help…me,” the pilot said.
Roland wiped blood off his hands and looked around, but there was nothing but the stretch of flat desert. His gauntlet buzzed and a new dot appeared. An icon for a Mule transport came up beside the dot.
“Help’s on the way, buddy. Just let me think for a second.” He snatched up the yellow case and fiddled with the transponder. Flicking the plastic cover off a red button, he looked up. A dogfight raged high overhead, the flash of gauss rounds and energy blasts crisscrossing the sky.
“I hit this, and someone will come for you, right?” The pilot answered the question with a groan. A half-dozen scenarios came to Roland—moving the pilot, waiting for help. He looked at his weapon leaning against th
e ejection seat and wondered if the pilot was mortally wounded and suffering…
“Not that.” Roland pressed the transponder button and it began flashing. He put it back into the yellow box, jimmied the box back into the seat and found a gauss pistol within a holster belt. He drew the pistol and pressed it into the pilot’s hands, then took the spare battery in the holster and slapped it into his own rifle.
“Help will either come here, or I’ll bring it to you.” Roland ran for the spot on his map, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds back to the pilot. Ahead of him, he made out a Mule through the heat haze.
The desert faded away and the lit squares of the VR chamber returned. Roland skidded to a halt and thumped into the wall with his shoulder. He whirled around and found the pilot sitting on his ejection seat on the other side of the room. He wiped blood from his face, revealing tribal tattoos on his chin and the side of his face.
“Give me your weapon,” Tongea said, holding a hand out, “and your gauntlet.”
Roland breathed hard as he walked over. He offered the butt of his carbine to Tongea, then yanked it back. He powered down the weapon and withdrew the magazine, then handed it over. There was a protocol for transferring a weapon from one soldier to another, a painful lesson Roland had learned early on in Scouts when he made the mistake of giving a rifle with a loaded round to a former drill instructor.
“Did I…pass?” Roland removed his gauntlet.
“You completed this training event. If you are dropped from selection, you will be told immediately. Until then, you are under constant evaluation. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why did you leave me behind?” Tongea gave Roland a hard look.
“You were…dying. Sort of. I couldn’t do much for you with what was in the med pack. I figured I could get to the Mule and bring them to you, or you’d get picked up by a search-and-rescue team before I could come back.”
“Your mission was to bring the intelligence data to the location provided on your gauntlet. That information could have changed the course of the battle, even the war. Why did you bother to help me at all?”
“I couldn’t just leave you there…I tried to find a way to do both. Was I wrong?” Roland asked, flopping his arms against his sides in frustration.
“This was a relatively simple exercise. There will be exponentially more difficult tasks to come,” Tongea said. “Do you wish to continue selection?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A shower and fresh clothes are down the hall. Third door on your left. Report to the mess hall for dinner. The SEPS computer will assign you a room for the night. You’ll learn if you’ll continue selection in the morning.” Tongea twisted around and pointed a small device at the wall. The door appeared after a click.
Roland got a good look at the plugs at the base of Tongea’s skull and his hand went to the back of his own head. He opened his mouth to ask a question…but hesitated.
“This training iteration is complete. Move out.” Tongea motioned to the new open door. Roland nodded quickly and left.
Tongea looked up once the door closed.
“He didn’t make time,” Gideon’s voice came through the speakers. “Cut him.”
“No. He has the right instincts, held up well under stress. We can work with that.”
“He’ll drop by morning.”
“We shall see.”
****
Roland sat on the bed of his one-man room, a Spartan affair with a small wooden desk, a chair and an open closet for his personal items and a spare jumpsuit. Roland’s quarters were on the top floor. He’d passed through several open bays of double bunks with recruits destined for the Marines. He’d caught some odd looks and overheard whispers about the device around his neck before he made it to the sequestered barracks for armor candidates. He touched the base of his skull, running his fingertips down the smooth plastic of the monitor.
Suddenly, he burst to his feet and pressed the palms of his hands against the sides of his head.
“I screwed it up,” he muttered. “Why didn’t I just leave him and keep running? This isn’t going to work. I’ll be a jarhead by morning. Why don’t I go out there and make friends before they’re certain I’m some sort of freak because of the monitor…”
He sank back to the mattress then picked up his personal data slate—a battered model almost five years old with a cracked screen—and connected to a weak civilian data network. Nothing from Jerry, but there was an e-mail from Ms. Gottfried that he didn’t want to read. She’d pry, and telling her he was in armor selection felt like a sure way to jinx what little chance he had left.
“Sammy.” Roland woke up his data assistant. “Find me an interview with an armor soldier. No earlier than the start of the Ember War.”
Video clips of armor fighting Xaros drones during the war popped up around his screen. His eyes lingered on a looped video of armor charging over a trench line on Hawaii, cannons blazing as they counterattacked the Toth landing. The armor moved with a human grace, nothing like the stiff, predictable motions of the humanoid robots toiling around Phoenix.
“Data unavailable,” the computer said. “Would you like to watch the special features that came with your purchase of The Last Stand on Takeni?”
“I’ve seen that movie a thousand times. No. Have any armor soldiers mustered out of service since the war ended?”
“Data unavailable.”
“Is it restricted or does it not exist?”
“Data unavailable.”
He rolled his eyes and almost slapped the slate against the bed frame to punish it for insolence.
“What is available about the Armor Corps fortress on Mars? Mount Olympus?”
A pic taken from orbit of the largest mountain in the solar system, a wisp of clouds breaking against the slope, came up. Geologic data scrolled beneath the photo.
“The Terran Union Armor Corps headquarters within Mount Olympus is one of the most active military installations in the solar system,” the computer said. “The location sustained damage during the Second Xaros Incursion and is currently off-limits to all civilians.”
“How many armor soldiers are there?”
“Data unav—”
“How many casualties did the Armor Corps suffer last year?”
“Data—”
Roland clicked the slate off and tossed it onto the desk.
“Why am I doing this to myself? If I wanted to do a stint in black ops, I should just try for Intelligence. No spikes in my brain there.” He went to the door and hooked a finger beneath the monitor. “Just take it off, go to the robot at the barracks door. Forget all this…” He tugged at the monitor and pushed the door open.
The edge bumped into someone standing just outside his room. Masako, her hand raised to knock, backpedaled away, her eyes squished shut in pain.
Roland froze, his jaw slack.
“Sorry,” she said, rubbing a hand against her elbow.
“No, it was me. I didn’t know you were out there.” He plucked his finger from the monitor and smoothed it shut against his skin.
“Thought I saw you with this thing in the mess hall.” She tapped her own monitor. “Guy next door said this was your room, so I…”
“I thought you were going medical?”
“Me too, then I got to thinking that I’d probably never have this chance again… Why go through life wondering ‘what if?’ If this doesn’t work, then medical is still there.” She shrugged. “Looks like things are going well for you.”
“I don’t know about that…you have any idea what’s next?”
“Not a clue.” She glanced down the hallway, then leaned toward him. “Did you have to do some sort of VR sim in Hawaii?”
“No, I think I was out near the Superstition Mountains, way east of here. There was this pilot and—”
A clearing throat startled Roland bad enough to make him rattle the handle on his door. Gideon stood in the doorway of a room ten feet awa
y; lieutenant rank on his shoulder epaulets, the glistening silver helm Armor Corps badge above rows of ribbons stacked high on his chest.
Roland snapped to his best approximation of the position of attention. Masako clutched her hands to her chest.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Are we not supposed to—”
“‘Taps’ in ten minutes,” Gideon said. “I suggest you get as much sleep as possible.”
“Yes, sir, thank you sir.” Masako pointed to the restrooms down the hallway. “I’ll just…and then…”
Gideon shut his door.
“Does he scare you?” she whispered.
“A little. Not as much as the other one.”
“Well, good luck tomorrow.” She gave him a wink and hurried away.
Roland stumbled with a reply, then retreated into his room. He reached for his monitor…and let his hand flop against his side.
“We’ll see how tomorrow goes. At least I’m in good company.”
****
Roland woke up to the sound of screaming and the crash of metal on metal. The sound came muffled through the walls, from the open bays on the same floor as his room…and through the floor. He glanced at his slate…the clock read just shy of five in the morning.
Someone moved across the light coming from beneath his door and he heard a slight hiss of paper sliding across the floor—a small envelope, its shadow stretching into the darkness. He put his bare feet on the cold linoleum and stared at the missive for a moment.
“Maybe it says ‘read me.’” He picked it up and read CANDIDATE SHAW in the low light. The lights clicked on and a trumpet song blared from speakers in his issued data slate, sitting next to his personal device on the desk.
Ripping the green envelope open with his thumbnail, he removed a folded piece of paper.
“‘Room 12A. 0530. In-processing attire.’ What?” Roland flipped the paper over, looking for another clue, then heard feet shuffling in the hallway. He cracked the door open and watched as two candidates walked past, both carrying their packs on their shoulders and monitors in hand. One had a crushed red envelope in his fist, muttering to himself as he left.