Armored-ARC

by John Joseph Adams

  “Any color you want, as long as it’s black.”

  When she straightened, Jurrin had gone back into the vehicle. She locked the shoulder pieces in place, switched off visual augmentation, detached the jaw guard, and then raised her hands to her temples. Only full combat skeletons came with head-plates and parliament was, once again, fighting the Corps about it. The Confederation’s Elder Races, the ones too evolved to fight back when the Others swarmed into Confederation space, the ones happy to sit back while the less evolved fought and died to protect them, they didn’t much like the idea of the head-plates. Said it blurred the edge between flesh and machine. Jacking in to extremities was fine. Jacking right in to the central processor stepped over the line. The Elder Races had a stick up their collective asses about technical augmentation.

  She shivered as the temple jacks released and slowly pulled the side plates away from her skin. When she could duck her head without touching the metal, she cracked the chest cage and stepped out of the skeleton.

  The head, the hands, and the feet held the most definition in metal—although the head came without a face. The rest of it was glossy black strapping with the same smart fabric used for regular Marine combats completing the physical integrity. Standing empty, it looked like an insect had shed its skin. A really big, bipedal insect.

  Given the variety of species in known space, Deena wasn’t ruling out finding one.

  Her hand and arm looked pale and soft and slightly damp as she unhooked the tool kit from the skeleton’s thigh.

  “I always forget how small you are without that thing.”

  “Eight centimeters difference.” Deena handed him the tool kit. “I’m still shorter than your average di’Taykan.”

  “It’s all about the presence, shechar.”

  “Still not your darling.” But she bumped her shoulder against his as she moved over to pick up her weapon, more than happy to put it down again a moment later inside the borer. The heavy part of heavy gunner was entirely accurate.

  The inside of the borer looked a little like an APC; operator’s area at the front with two seats, the control panel, and half a dozen dark screens. No seats or weapons racks in the big empty box at the back, but the differences were minimal. Of course, she’d never heard of anyone trying this kind of hook up with an APC either, so the similarity didn’t add much weight to the success side of success or failure.

  The floor felt cold under her bare feet. Jurrin had opened the control panel between the two seats.

  “I can’t do this in the seats,” she said as the di’Taykan climbed in through the hatch, input jacks on short pieces of wire cradled in one hand, her toolkit in the other. “I’ll have to lie on the floor.”

  “Dee…”

  They heard the explosion. Felt the borer tremble.

  “Have you come up with another way to get us the hell out of here?”

  He shook his head, his hair flat and unhappy.

  “Then jack me in because it sounds like we’ll have to go out and get them.” If the floor had been cold under her feet, it was fukking freezing through the thin fabric of her underwear. She tucked herself as close to the base of the panel as she could—Jurrin’s arms were long enough to reach over her. “Give me the external sensors first. If we blow out my brain, you won’t need to waste time with the other stuff. Joke,” she added quickly, when the light receptor’s in Jurrin’s eyes snapped shut.

  “Not funny,” he muttered, but his eyes darkened and he reached into the guts of the panel. “Maybe we should wait for Ghailian.”

  “Hey, this is the biggest skeleton any Marine has ever worn, and it was my idea. Ghailian doesn’t get to horn in on it.” She could feel her pulse pounding at the base of her skull, sweat prickling along her spine, and spent the next few minutes forcing herself to relax. This was the biggest skeleton any Marine had ever worn. That was all it was. Just a big skeleton and she could operate that in her sleep. Just a big skeleton. Someone had to be first to be jacked in. Just a big skeleton…

  “You ready?”

  “Born ready.”

  Deena kept her eyes closed as Jurrin gently turned her head murmuring, “Right side first.”

  Familiar pressure.

  “Left side.”

  And again.

  “Anything? Dee?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? As in not working or burned you out nothing?” He sounded so panicked she couldn’t help but smile.

  “As in, not powered up nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  “Power on three?”

  “Sure, yeah. One. Two. Three…”

  Wall. Floor. Ceiling. Wall. Wall. Ceiling. Floor. Wall. Wall. Wall. Floor. Wall.

  “Dee?”

  Her scanner was slaved to her optic nerve. She looked to the distance, it showed her the distance. She looked close, it magnified. Multiple scanners, multiple images. Multiple depths of field on each image.

  Breathing short and shallow, she focused on what she thought was the wall in front of the borer. One image at a consistent distance. Keep it simple. One. Push the others to the side.

  “You’re going to have to blindfold me.” Eventually, she’d give into the urge to open her eyes.

  “Kinky.”

  “You wish.” Since the soft cloth Jurrin carefully wrapped around her eyes didn’t reek of di’Taykan hormones—where reek translated as “left her squirming on the floor”—he’d used the t-shirt in her pack. You know you’re in deepest shit when a di’Taykan didn’t even attempt to get lucky.

  Wall. Ceiling. Wall. Wall. Wall. Floor.

  Wall.

  One wall.

  “Okay.” She held her breath for a moment, then inhaled long and slow. Blew it out. “Okay, that’s got it.” One wall. Dead ahead. “Now jack the tracks into my legs.”

  “It’s the propulsion unit. You’ll have to sort out what exactly you’re moving.”

  “Whatever. You can jack my arms in once we’re mobile.” She could hear Jurrin moving, hear the click of tools. She matched her breathing to his to keep from hyperventilating.

  “Hook them to what?”

  “I saw half a dozen waldos on the outside of this thing. If we’re attacked, I’ll need them.” Hand to hand to waldo. She bit back a giggle.

  “If?”

  “Fine. When.”

  A wire slithered across her leg. Felt Jurrin’s fingers around her thigh.

  “The contact point is lower.”

  “Spoil sport.” She could hear the grin in his voice.

  The trick would be to walk without walking. The wetware gave the command. The skeleton did the work. Except tracks worked simultaneously, not sequentially.

  “Uh, Dee, we’re not moving. Maybe your brain isn’t compatible with this thing.”

  “It’s a brain,” she grunted. “It’s compatible with everything.”

  The floor jerked under her.

  The borer ground around in a half circle, tracks grumbling against the stone.

  Left.

  Then back.

  Right.

  Wall. Wall. Wall. Ceiling. Floor.

  “Dee!”

  The trick was not to think of her legs. Not legs. Tracks. Moving forward together. Mind over matter.

  WALL.

  “Shit! Sorry.” Turning was also good. Speed up left tread to turn right. Speed up right to turn left. Reverse was just forward, backwards. Easy.

  She aimed the borer toward the ramp and gunned it up toward the street.

  “You’re doing it!” Jurrin squeezed her hand. His palm felt damp.

  “Of course I am.” Sky. Rubble. Stone dust. Marine! “Here they come. Get the hatch open.”

  Even focusing on just the one screen, the amount of input coming through the borer’s sensors threatened to overwhelm her. Best thing she could do for the squad was get it sorted. A small piece of her attention registered boots on the decking, voices, the clatter of gear against metal…

  The heavy thud of Gh
ailian, last in. The only heavy she’d heard so they’d stripped Huang out of her skeleton.

  “What the fuk!” He didn’t sound happy.

  “We can’t stay,” she reminded him quickly. Sky. Street. Sky. Rubble.

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But nothing. Biggest damned skeleton any Marine’s ever worn.”

  She could hear the others waiting for Ghailian to respond. Chris started to say something but was cut off so quickly she wondered if someone—Serri maybe—had slapped a hand over his mouth.

  After a long moment, Ghailian sighed. “You sure?”

  She grinned and, as she felt the hatch close, got the tracks moving again. “Piece of cake.”

  WALL!

  “Shit! Sorry.”

  “She does that a lot,” Jurrin sighed dramatically over the laughter.

  “Marines…” Speed up left tread. Street. Now both treads and full speed while she had a relatively flat, unobstructed surface to cover. “…we are leaving.”

  “…but before you leave, there’s a few things I want to say.” Staff Sergeant Chad Morris’s skeleton gleamed so brightly Deena couldn’t look directly at him without polarizing her scanner. “As of today, the Confederation Marine Corps has trusted you with the operation of equipment they tell us is worth more than any of us will make in our lifetimes. I say, the equipment is worth sweet fuk all without you in it. Some members of Parliament say the Corps has made us into weapons. I say some members of Parliament have their heads so far up their asses they’ve cut off the oxygen to their brains. Because of you, because of us, because we’re willing to do the heavy lifting, Marines will survive who might not have, battles will be won that might have been lost. We are one in four and we make the difference! Make me proud, Marines.”

  “Dee!”

  Deena had to wet her lips and swallow before she answered. “What?”

  “You stopped breathing.” Chris had taken Jurrin’s place at her side.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  Blindfolded, she couldn’t roll her eyes, but she layered the reaction into her voice. “I think I’d know if I…” What felt like a mortar round hit close enough to rock her on her treads. It wasn’t the first, but it was the closest. They’d found the range. She needed to see more than just the track in front of her so she turned her head. Felt the metal floor under her cheek.

  Not her head.

  Locking her attention on the visual input, she turned her perception of her head.

  Rock. Grass. Trees. Sky. Track. Track. Sky. Rock. Grass. Trees. Sky. Track.

  Too much information. It swirled around and around and around and she was going to puke and then drown in it in a minute. She had to stop thinking about the borer as separate, as something she was driving, and become the borer.

  Track. Focus. Turn. Rock. Focus. Turn. Trees. Focus. Turn. Turn. Turn.

  There was moment of vertigo that felt like smashing through ice and then she resurfaced, able to see, able to turn her head a full three hundred and sixty degrees just as the impact from another mortar shell sprayed dirt over her rear sensors.

  The longest waldo didn’t have much of a throwing arm either but Deena figured ripping a tree out of the ground and whipping it back along the path of the mortar fire might give the Others something to think about. All she had to do was keep her tracks moving. Keep going until they got close enough to their own lines that the enemy would fall back.

  Her arms were cold.

  “All right, you’ve all hooked up to a remote, we know you can make the brain/skeleton connection…”

  Only eight of the eleven Marines who’d chosen to become heavy gunners after basic had made it this far.

  “…today, you’ll be jacking in to the rudimentary skeleton. Strength augmentation only. Settle the shoulder pieces before you jack in your arms. And remember, the skeleton is becoming part of you, not the other way around.”

  “Ah come on, Sarge.” Deena couldn’t lean far enough out of ranks to see the speaker—not without catching hell herself—but she thought it sounded like Sam Drake. “When you going to turn us loose on the full combat chassis? We got buddies out there waiting for us to clank to their rescue.”

  “You want to join them today, Private? Just open your mouth again.”

  “Come on, Dee, just open your mouth.”

  Chris.

  “Leave her alone.”

  Ghailian.

  “I just want to get some water into her.”

  “You see her swallow lately? Borers don’t swallow.”

  “Fuk off, Ghailian. Dee! Deena! Come on! If you’re not going to open your mouth then talk to me. Tell me you’re okay.”

  It pissed her right off that there were no visual sensors, no cameras of any kind inside the borer. She could hear, there were microphones so the operators, back when the borer needed an operator, could give voice commands, but she couldn’t see. And she couldn’t seem to find her mouth in the constant stream of data coming from outside.

  Oh. There it was.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Dee?”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated, and shifted the bulk of her concentration back to boring through a pile of debris blocking the track. From the residual radiation she was picking up, they were passing close to where one of the pulsed planes had kissed dirt. When those things blew, they blew big. Going around would take too long and although her walls were thick enough to protect the Marines she carried for a short time, she needed to hustle. Lingering wouldn’t be good for anyone.

  “Why is she talking through the control panel?”

  Jurrin sounded upset but he wasn’t talking to her so Deena ignored him in favor of feathering her right track in order to give the left time to grip.

  “Answer me, Ghailian! Why, dammit?”

  “How much farther to the camp?”

  “What difference does that…”

  “Fifty-nine kilometers, eight meters, six centimeters, give or take.” She wasn’t entirely ignoring the conversation, just the parts that had nothing to do with her.

  “You should stop now, Deena. We can walk from here.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Ghailian. Radiation levels are too high. And it’s starting to rain.” Her moisture sensors were going nuts.

  “Not everyone can be a heavy gunner. There will be extensive psychological evaluations even before the physical modifications begin.” The Staff Sergeant turned his head, faceless behind the head-plates of a full combat skeleton. “This is a position only Humans can fulfill and only one in four of them. There is no way of knowing which you’ll be until you’re jacked in for the first time. Most of you won’t be suitable. Some of you…” He swung the big KC-12 off his back and blasted three grenades, a stream of impact boomers, and a line of fire from the flame thrower down the range toward the target.

  Toward the smoking pile of debris where the target had been.

  “Some of you,” he repeated, and Deena would bet the brand new chevron on her sleeve that he was smiling, “will get to play with the good toys.”

  She unlocked the hatch after she gave the recognition code to the sentry and crossed the perimeter of the camp. She felt like crap. She hadn’t been made for this kind distance travel, not at speed. Her tracks were worn almost smooth, cracked in at least three places, and two waldos had broken off. Okay, one had broken off, the other had been shot off. Not to mention that her power levels were dangerously low.

  She watched a crowd of Marines run up. Lost the image.

  Flashed in on Sergeant Yarynin being carried out on a stretcher.

  Jurrin and Chris were still inside, so she switched to internal audio.

  Dirt. Sky. Marines.

  “Deena? Dee? She’s not breathing!”

  “Move away from the body, Corporal.”

  “It’s not a body, dammit!”

  “Chris, come on. Give them room to work.”

  “I’m not getting a heartbeat! Get those j
acks out and a medpack in!”

  “Dee!”

  So cold…

  “They shouldn’t be allowed out in public.”

  Jerked forward for emphasis, hand aching in her mother’s grip, Deena watched the Marines cleaning up the last of the mess left by the storm. She’d learned about the Marines in school, how they came down from the space station to help after the storm and how there used to be lots and how they’d saved people and found dead bodies and fixed the roads. Things were almost back like they were before the storm and almost all the Marines had gone back to fight the in the war.

  Almost.

  The biggest Marine stepped forward, black metal gleaming in the sun, and picked up a piece of a building, lifting it like it weighed nothing. One of the other Marines yelled something and the metal covered Marine tossed the piece of building over by the fence as easily as if he was tossing a single bit of wood not nearly a whole wall.

  Deena felt the impact through the bottoms of her sandals.

  When the Marine turned and waved a metal hand, she waved back.

  “Don’t encourage them, Deena. They’ve become machines; their brains are no more than wet computers.” As her mother lengthened her stride, Deena had to nearly run to keep up. “What kind of person does that to themselves?”

  Tanya Huff lives and writes in rural Ontario with her wife Fiona Patton, nine cats—number subject to change without notice—and two dogs. She has a degree in Radio and Television Arts, spent time in the Canadian Naval Reserve, and is an enthusiastic, albeit not terribly skilled, guitar player. “You Do What You Do” is the second short based on the Confederation of Valor series (Valor’s Choice, Better Part of Valor, Heart of Valor, Valor’s Trial, and Truth of Valor). Her recent titles include the mass market edition of Truth of Valor, published by DAW Books in September of 2011, followed by The Wild Ways—a second Emporium book—out in hardcover from DAW in November of 2011. She’s currently working on a created-world fantasy, not yet titled, to be published in 2012.