by Adam Moon
That scared the hell out of all of us. We thought things got better after camp but the captain had proven otherwise. We raced each other to thank Mr. Humboldt.
The captain smiled like an imp and said, “Just kidding guys. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”
As I walked past him, the captain put a hand on my shoulder. I actually felt the pressure of it through the steel. He winked at me and said, “Do you know who wore that skin before you?”
I nodded and smiled as I pointed to the etching on the shoulder.
He said, “If any other soldier had defaced my skins like that, I’d have reprimanded him. But Richard Pringle is no ordinary soldier. If you’re lucky, some of his essence got trapped in those circuits with you.”
I knew that wasn’t really possible but I smiled like I thought it was.
He added, “I heard Rick is older than I am but because he spends so much time in stasis while he’s in the field, he hasn’t aged the same way. I think he tells girls he’s only twenty five or something. He’s a sly dog.”
I hadn’t considered that. All pictures and likenesses of him were classified. I made a decision to look up his earliest exploits as soon as we got back to camp.
Tour
The captain showed us around the entire ship, and I mean every nook and cranny. We had to see the inside of a maintenance closet but we also got to end our tour in the command room which was awesome.
He said, “This is where the magic happens.” He pointed at the thirty foot monitor that showed the black of space outside and said, “We’re currently situated around a planet we’ve nicknamed Scum Earth. Ensign, show them the view of the planet.”
A young woman moved her finger around on a large touchpad until the scene on the monitor changed.
The planet was aptly named. It had an orangish brown atmosphere, just opaque enough to show dirty black landmasses beneath. It really did look like a scummy earth.
Someone said, “Which quadrant are we in right now?”
The captain shook his head. “That’s classified information. I’m sorry but I can’t divulge our location to anyone but those with the proper clearance. I’m sure you understand.”
Someone else said, “But there’s no threat. The Skeptics don’t have the resources to reach deep space.”
The captain laughed. “We’re not keeping our location a secret because of those weasels. We’re keeping it a secret because of the aliens.”
“But we don’t know when they’re going to return or even if they’ll return. What if they don’t show up in our lifetime?”
The captain said severely, “And what if they do?”
I saw Mr. Humboldt look at the nametag on the chest of the person asking all the questions. They’d be getting a flogging when we got back to camp.
The captain seemed to visibly deflate. Clearly, he saw how futile his entire life’s work was if the aliens didn’t make an appearance. Hundreds of captains had donned the stripes and ran their ships and then died of old age without ever even laying eyes on an extraterrestrial. All of their training and expertise was for naught.
He pasted a phony smile on his face and said, “Who wants to take an escape shuttle for a spin?”
I raised my hand as did the entire class.
Flight
While I waited my turn to go off in the escape shuttle, I saw Mr. Humboldt talking to the captain. He pointed in my direction and I froze. The captain seemed to mull something over in his head and then he shrugged.
Mr. Humboldt walked over to me and said with a smile, “I told the captain that you have more space walks than anyone else in camp. I asked him if he’d be against letting you take your new skin for a spin out there. He said he would allow it.”
I smiled and asked, “Can I do both? I still want to ride on the escape shuttle.”
“That suit you’re in is its own shuttle, son. It’s equipped with thrusters.”
“Thrusters don’t really work that well sir,” I said fearfully. I just knew one of these instructors would be the death of me.
“Trust me Jack. You’ve never operated anything quite like it. You’ll be fine.”
I was led to the airlocked bay where the escape vehicles are housed. It was very dark and very quiet until the bay doors opened up to outer space and the shuttle flew in. I held my breath but I found out right away that I didn’t need to breathe since I was a robotic super soldier. That was a weird realization.
My metal feet stuck firmly to the deck when the atmosphere started to drag me out with it. I think they’re magnetic but I don’t know
Humboldt was with me this entire time. We watched the bay doors close and then the students clopped off to safer regions of the Conquistador.
The pilot remained seated, sealed his craft back up and gave me the thumbs up. Then the airlock opened up again.
I heard Humboldt say, “Activate flight controls.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Just repeat what I said.”
I said, “Activate flight controls,” and then my entire vision changed. I saw through my own eyes but I was also looking at numbers and stuff that scrolled up and down, left and right.
Humboldt said, “Ignore all the readouts and ask for manual control.”
I felt like crying. “Manual control please.”
My legs cinched together under their own control and then I realized I was floating an inch above the deck.
Humboldt said, “There aren’t really any controls, per se, you just use your mind and your will to force the skin to move.”
As soon as I tried it, it reacted and I shot out of the airlock like a bullet. I panicked. The suit was throwing me out into deep space and I still wasn’t sure how to control the damn thing. I willed it to turn about and it did so instantly. I could now see the entire ship. It was enormous; far larger than I would’ve guessed.
I willed the suit to gently move me in the direction of the ship and it did what I wanted it to do. I was already getting the hang of it. I just had to make my thought-commands really prominent in my own mind and the suit would obey. I considered getting right back into the airlock but I’m a bit reckless so what I did instead was I strafed the ship. As I passed the cameras, I did little barrel rolls and loop-de-loops. I could imagine my classmates talking about it for weeks afterwards but then I screwed up and got too close to the thrusters of the Conquistador. I didn’t get close enough to sustain injury or anything but my reaction must have looked hilarious because my panic manifested itself in the suit and it tried to take me in multiple directions all at the same time.
I recovered, and realized my heart wasn’t racing, but that was because I had no heart. I made my way back into the airlock and the bay doors shut behind me. Humboldt was shaking his head at me but he did say, “You got the hang of that quicker than most do.”
That made me mad because what if I hadn’t? What if I couldn’t get the hang of it at all? I’d be floating off into the void right now.
I think I got lucky because it seemed like no one saw my near miss of the thrusters. Either that or I didn’t look as silly to them as I felt when I reacted to them. I don’t know but I’m thankful nonetheless.
The captain was smiling when he said, “Handles like a dream, right?”
“I was surprised by that. Why can’t we use one of these in training?” I didn’t mention that a skin would have saved dozens of lives lost during my stay at Deep Training Camp Eighty Seven.
“They’re too expensive. At last count there are only twelve hundred units. We just don’t have a unit to spare.”
That was bullshit though. These skins were just collecting dust before we showed up.
Unexpected Arrival
A rumbling kind of siren blared that made the captain jump. He mumbled, “That’s odd. I wasn’t told of additional arrivals.” To Humboldt he asked, “Did you schedule any more students to come aboard?”
Humboldt shook his head.
The captain grabbed me
by the wrist and said, “Follow me.”
As I allowed him to lead me below deck, I asked, “What’s up, sir?”
“We have an unauthorized arrival and I need you for protection.”
I almost laughed until I remembered I was wearing the body of a Marine.
We made it to the skin bay in time to see a Marine suit fall from its cables and hit the deck with a thud. It looked confused at first but then it saw us approaching and held its hands up defensively.
“Check with your comm. officer,” it said. “You should be receiving a distress signal any second. We came under attack. I barely made it out alive.”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“I’m the technician, doctor Bolder, who sent you here. I was wearing the lab coat.”
The captain interrupted. “What happened?”
“The training camp was infiltrated.”
“By who?” With expectation in his tone, he asked, “Was it the Enemy?” Some people called the aliens by the name Enemy.
“No, it was the Skeptics. They were killing students and staff off left and right. They nearly got to me too.”
I grabbed him by the throat and asked, “Who else can operate the teleporter?”
“Just me,” he replied, confusion playing across his rubbery face.
“Then why are you here? You should’ve stayed behind to help more of them get here.”
The captain added, “You fucking coward. They’re all stuck there now that you’re here.”
“You don’t understand captain. They’re all dead.”
Traitor
The captain said, “Tell me you disabled the link to my ship.”
“I couldn’t. I had to get here and if I’d have cut the link, I’d be stuck with those murderers.”
“That’s fine. We can do it from this end.” He pulled a thumb sized device from his pocket and hit a button. It looked like a primitive kind of radio. He opened his mouth to speak and then there was a loud pop and his head disappeared. His headless body hit the deck with a soft thud. I tried to wipe the captain’s blood out of my eyes but it was difficult with the overly large hands.
The tech screamed and batted at the blood splotches that hit him, which would have been funny, given he was wearing a suit designed to stomp asses, but under the circumstances, it was not.
I wheeled around in time to see a space Marine point a laser rifle at my chest. I froze, confused, and waited to die.
But when I saw the nametag on the skin, I was even more confused. It read Samantha Salazar.
She walked into the skin bay and shut the door behind her. “No one move and no one say a fucking word and you both might just survive this.”
The tech guy said, “Ok,” and she shot him in the head. He fell over and the floor shook from the impact. Mrs. Salazar mumbled, “I said don’t say a word, asshole.”
I stared at her but because she didn’t have human eyes, it was impossible to read her.
She shoved me back against the wall and trained the rifle on me with one hand as she walked over to the unused skins. There was a thunk as one of them hit the floor. The skin looked at her, then at her nametag, and smiled. “It’s Bosley,” he said in a male voice. “The others are right behind me. How’s the situation here?”
“I haven’t made a move yet. I figured I’d wait for you guys to get here first.”
Bosley walked to the headless captain, bent down and fingered the stripes on his bloody shoulder and said, “This is a good start.”
There was another thunk as another Marine came to life. It happened again and again, until I was surrounded by eight super soldiers.
One of them asked her, “Should we be worried about those kids? We’re outnumbered if they decide to fight.”
Mrs. Salazar went to each soldier and reached under their faceplates, one by one. She fiddled around a bit and then tugged something small and square out of each. She tossed them on the floor lazily and then said, “We don’t need to worry about those brats now. We’ll just initiate the all-stop on the suits and they’ll go off-line. We’ll be fine. I just disabled ours.” Then she did the same to her own.
I considered reaching inside my faceplate but I was pretty sure that move would be my last.
All eyes turned to me and Mrs. Salazar said, “Leave him with Bosley. The rest of you come with me. Cover me until I get to the all-stop. After that, it’s a free-for-all.”
Bosley
Bosley was a fucking douche bag. He snickered a lot and called me kid. He said, “I wonder what it’ll be like for you. How will it feel when your real body dies and your mech. body won’t respond? That’s got to be a living hell, huh kid? That’s got to be like getting buried alive or knowing you’re in a coma.”
I remained silent until he yelled, “Answer me you little bitch.”
I nodded and said, “I’m pretty scared.”
“Well then maybe you shouldn’t have decided to become a part of the military machine. You’re the problem. You and those like you. And I’m the solution. There are kids staving to death while the governments of the world spend our money on a fake war that is never coming.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I’m an orphan. Most of us on Eighty Seven are. We’re born into this life.”
If I thought that might soften him, I was way wrong. “That’s a bullshit excuse. If you didn’t want anything to do with militarization, you could’ve launched yourself into the void. You would have been a martyr and a hero to many. Now you’re going to suffer and die like a dog.”
I started to formulate a plan of attack at that moment because I was pretty sure I was not going to get out of this by doing nothing.
Before I had a chance to make a move, I heard a tinny voice issue from Bosley’s suit. He put his index finger in his metal ear and said, “Did you say you already hit the all-stop? When?”
Bosley nodded and said, “Uh huh,” and locked me in a stare.
I realized that my suit should have gone stiff if the all-stop had been initiated already so I didn’t make a move. I stood stock still as Bosley approached. Luckily, you don’t need to breathe or anything in a skin. I would have tried to ponder why mine was still working but my mind was racing too fast.
Bosley’s face came so close to mine, our fake noses touched. I was as solid and still as a statue.
He stepped back and said, “Goodbye kid. If you can still hear me in there, I just want to say that you got what was coming to you.”
And then I hit him with all of my might in the stomach. His suit buckled under the impact and he took a frightened step backwards.
Before he could react, I quickly said to my suit, “Activate flight controls. Manual control,” and my suit lifted in the air. I willed it to turn me so my body was parallel to the ground, and then I whipped around so my foot thrusters were right in Bosley’s face. I blasted him full force until his suit crumpled to the floor in a melted heap. His head was reduced to a wax-like pulp. It was over quickly.
I’d never killed a person before so I was pretty shaken up, but I forced myself to get over it. There was too much to do and I had no idea what any of it was. Should I try and take out the Skeptics one at a time, covertly? Should I get to the controls and send out a distress signal? Should I try and override the all-stop to free the cadets?
The door to the skin bay opened and I realized I think too much. I should’ve acted. But rather than one of the Skeptics returning, I saw Mr. Humboldt’s suit standing in the doorway.
“Hurry Jack. We need to act quickly. I had a feeling that bitch was up to something.”
“Why aren’t you immobilized?”
“Whoever wore my suit before me was savvy enough to disable the kill switch. I’m guessing Rick Pringle did the same to yours when he wore it.” Then he saw the headless body of the captain and he visibly stiffened. “Did she do that?”
“Yeah, she killed the tech that came through too.”
“We need to stop her.”
“It
’s more than just her now. There are seven of them onboard and they’re all wearing skins.”
“The first thing we need to do is alert the crew about this. They think the suits glitched and that’s why they stopped functioning. I was kind of hoping the same thing.”
“Ok.”
Rick and Peggy
We didn’t even get out of the skin bay before our plans were changed for us. Two suits fell from their cables. They didn’t stand still like idiots though. They moved at me and Mr. Humboldt quickly.
One of them grabbed me by the throat and shoved me into the wall. The other one picked my instructor up bodily and held him aloft.
The one who had me demanded, “State your name.”
“I’m Jack Peterson, a cadet from Eighty Seven. I’m here on a field trip.” I was very afraid. This guy had killer written all over him.
The one who had Humboldt had a female voice. “Now you,” she said.
He said, “Billy Humboldt. I’m Jack’s psych. warfare teacher. I specialize in field interrogations.”
He was dropped to the floor like a lead weight. Then the girl bent down and inspected his suit. “Hey, this was my old suit.”
The guy grabbed me roughly and turned my shoulder towards him. “This guy has mine. Shit. I wish we could swap. I had that thing all modded up.”
I said, “They activated the all-stop. They might do it again.”
He said urgently, “Get the kill switch out quick.”
They each reached within their helmets and yanked out the devices.
He said, “I’m Rick and this is Peggy. Tell us everything.”
I couldn't believe I was staring at my hero, at a worldwide hero. His name alone was a kind of mascot or a rallying cry. I wanted to ask for his autograph.