Warsuit 1.0

by James Lovegrove

  “That there is the ground-level access to the lifts,” said Wes. “The entire installation has gone into automatic lockdown, and all the inner doors have sealed themselves. They’re bombproof, virtually impregnable. T-Cell, however, don’t seem to think that’s a problem.”

  As Od watched, the T-Cell operatives set the device going, standing well back from its funnel-shaped nozzle. There was a piercing whine and the door began to judder and blur, and then, incredibly, to crumble. Fragments of it flaked off, falling to the floor in a heap, as though the door was rusting away at super high speed, decades of decay taking place in seconds. Soon there was a large, almost perfectly round hole.

  “A drill that uses focused ultrasonics. Not much can resist that.”

  “You seem impressed,” said Od.

  “I admire the appliance of technology. The downside is it means they’ll be swarming all over us in, I estimate, less than three minutes.”

  “Then we have to get out of here.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Well… what are you waiting for?”

  “The command.”

  “From who?”

  “From whom, Od,” Wes corrected.

  “Sorry, Dad – I mean, Wes.”

  “You’re the pilot,” Wes said. “I’m just a craft. I can’t go anywhere without your say-so.”

  “Right. So, to walk, I just move my legs, yeah?”

  “Yes, but don’t you think we should release the diagnostic and charge cables first? Otherwise we’ll be dragging along half the lab equipment with us.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  “Give the order, then.”

  “Um, release the cables, Wes.”

  The main screen was labelled “External View [Head]”. On it, Od saw the cables drop away from Warsuit 1.0 and slump to the floor like so many stunned snakes.

  “Now,” said Wes, “you may want to insert your arms into the apparatus to your right and left. Walking’s easier if you counterbalance the movement of your legs by swinging your arms.”

  “Like this?” Od slid his arms into a pair of jointed slings on either side.

  “Like that. And off we go. Best foot forward.”

  Od shifted his right leg gingerly. Warsuit 1.0 responded with surprising suddenness, shuffling its right foot across the platform.

  “Wow, I thought that would be more of an effort.”

  “You’re thinking of me as though I’m some sort of high-tech medieval suit of armour,” said Wes. “I’m not. I have stabilising gyroscopes and muscle-amplifying servomotors. I’m built to enhance your natural movements, not hinder them. Try the other leg. Take a proper step this time.”

  Od did. Warsuit 1.0 wobbled a little but stayed upright.

  “Major-league weird,” he said.

  “I know, but you’ll get the hang. Just bear in mind that I’m considerably bigger than you and therefore have a much longer stride. You’ll need to adjust your spatial aware–”

  Od, who had been concentrating on taking the next step, suddenly found the suit tipping forwards. Next thing he knew, there was an almighty CLANG!!! and he was horizontal and had bashed his mouth on one of the screens.

  “Ow!”

  “As I was saying,” said Wes, “you’ll need to adjust your spatial awareness accordingly. We fell off the edge of the platform and now we’re lying prone on the floor.”

  “Well, how do we get up? We’re not stuck, are we?”

  “It would be pretty daft if we were.”

  “Do I shove off with your arms to get us upright?”

  “I wouldn’t. The Warsuit doesn’t have hands. It has weapons. Shoving off with them may damage them.”

  “Oh. So what do we do?”

  “Might I recommend deploying the forward thrusters?”

  “You have forward thrusters?”

  “I have omnidirectional thrusters. How else would I be able to fly?”

  “You can fly!?”

  “Yes, but one thing at a time. Let’s not run before we can walk, as it were. By the way, the T-Cell operatives have reached the lifts and are coming down. We really should get a wiggle on.”

  “Then fire up those thrusters.”

  There was vibration, rumbling, shuddering. Od felt the Warsuit lifting up through ninety degrees, rising to vertical.

  “There,” said Wes as the vibration faded. “You cried out a moment ago. Are you OK?”

  “Bashed my lip. I’ll live. Which way now?”

  “Your call.”

  “But you know the layout of this place.”

  “Well, you came in via the emergency exit, didn’t you? I suggest we leave the same way. The tunnel has just enough clearance for me, if I duck.”

  Od stomped towards the vault-like door. The Warsuit’s progress, with its novice pilot at the helm, was far from graceful. It collided with a workbench, shunting it aside as though it weighed just a few kilogrammes rather than several hundred. It also accidentally struck one of the computer consoles with its thigh. The blow was glancing but nonetheless smashed the console to smithereens.

  “Aargh,” said Od. “Not good.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Wes said encouragingly. “I reckon I’m doing pretty well too, seeing as this is my maiden voyage. Every bit of me is in good working order, so far. Fully responsive. All systems nominal.”

  “Maiden voyage? This is the first time you’ve walked?” Od found it hard to believe.

  “First time I’ve set foot off that platform. Oh, there’ve been in situ tests. Plenty of them. Lifting a leg, waving an arm. But that’s about as far as it goes. I’ve not actually been anywhere, till today. You’re officially my first proper pilot.”

  “I’m honoured.”

  “You should be. Door’s straight ahead.”

  “I know.” Od halted. “I’ve just had a thought. I’ll need to get out of the suit to use the pass-card.”

  “Or,” said Wes, “you could simply blow the door out of its frame.”

  “Yeah, ha ha, right, there’s always that.”

  “I’m serious. Do you have any idea the level of firepower I’m packing?”

  “Obviously I don’t.”

  “Perhaps you should find out. That door is fifty-six point five centimetres thick, give or take a millimetre, and made of steel-clad concrete. Would you like me to configure my right arm to launch a blockbuster shell?”

  “Yeah, sure, why not?” To Od it seemed absurd; hilarious. Fire a whacking great shell at the door? Of course! What could be more normal?

  The barrels at the end of Warsuit 1.0’s right arm spun until the largest of them locked into position.

  “Raise your right arm, Od. I can do the rest.”

  Od brought his arm up, levelling it at the door.

  “Targeting,” said Wes.

  Crosshairs on the main screen sighted on the hinge side of the door, its weak spot.

  “Awaiting launch command.”

  “OK. Bombs away.”

  “You’ll want to brace yourself. We’re close to the impact point. There will be some blowback from the blast, in addition to the firing recoil.”

  The blockbuster shot from the Warsuit’s arm. A split second later a tremendous, whoomphing explosion pummelled the door backwards out of its frame as though it were made of nothing more than hollow tinfoil. The door sailed down the tunnel, bouncing off the walls and coming to rest flat on the floor some thirty metres away.

  Inside the Warsuit, Od was rocked and buffeted.

  He was also, in another sense, staggered.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Did I really just do that?”

  “You really just did. And those T-Cellers are really just outside and about to break in any second.”

  Sure enough, with a shrieking whine the door at the opposite end of the chamber began to disintegrate. Od saw it on the screen labelled “Rear View”. As soon as a sufficiently large gap had appeared, in ran a dozen T-Cell operatives, assault rifles at the ready.


  “You have a choice,” Wes said. “We can either stand our ground and fight, or take evasive action.”

  “By fight, you mean kill.”

  “T-Cell want the Warsuit. They’ll do anything to get their hands on it. We have to be prepared to do anything to prevent them succeeding.”

  Od thought fast. He was no killer. He’d never even thrown a punch in anger. “Dad’s the priority. The sooner I get to him, the better.”

  “Fine. Evasive action it is. Let’s go.”

  Od bent forward and headed into the tunnel.

  Chapter Nine

  Bullets blizzarded around Warsuit 1.0 as it pounded along the tunnel, hunched over. Wes reassured Od that the suit’s armour plating could easily withstand conventional gunfire. Still Od flinched as he heard the rippling whine of rounds ricocheting off metal.

  “Why are they even shooting at us?” he yelled as he ran. “Surely they want the suit intact.”

  “I’m eavesdropping on their comms chatter,” said Wes, “and from what I’m hearing, they weren’t expecting anyone to be in the suit. They reckon you’re a civilian, one of the boffins who built me, and they think they can intimidate you into surrendering. There’s fear in their voices, too. I think the penalty for failing in their mission will be quite severe.”

  “Remind me to feel sorry for them later. Hey, we’re losing them.”

  “We are. I may galumph somewhat, but when I get going, I can shift.”

  “How much further to the end of the tunnel?”

  “Four hundred and forty metres. Four hundred and thirty. Four hundred and – ”

  “OK, now listen,” said Od, panting a little from the exertion of running. “We can’t just hit the next door with a shell like we did the last one. There’s a soldier posted right the other side.”

  “I predict he wouldn’t survive the blast.”

  “I predict that too. What other options do we have?”

  “Several,” said Wes. “A super-focused beam of microwave radiation. A magnetised nano-thermite charge. A squirt of carborane superacid. Any of those would do the trick.”

  “You have all that on board?”

  “And more. I’m extraordinarily well equipped. Fitted for every conceivable combat scenario, be it battlefield or black ops.”

  “The microwave thingy sounds a bit iffy as far as that guy outside’s concerned, though. And the magnetised charge.”

  “True. And the acid, highly corrosive as it is, might take too long eating through all that steel and concrete. We don’t want to be a sitting duck. The T-Cellers could get it in their heads to use their ultrasonic drill on us. I suppose I could simply hack into the lock and open the door that way.”

  “That’s more like it,” said Od. “Wait.” He frowned. “If you can do that, why didn’t you suggest it when we were opening the first door?”

  Wes hummed a tuneless tune to himself. It was something Od’s father sometimes did too, when he was thinking. “Not sure. Instinct? I’m basically a walking weapon, Od. Clue’s in the name: Warsuit. I’m designed to adopt aggressive tactics, unless my pilot specifies otherwise.”

  Od could see the logic in this, although he didn’t like it.

  “Well, I’m specifying otherwise,” he said. “Let’s keep the death and carnage to a minimum if we can. Call it the John Connor rule.”

  “The what?”

  “You’ve seen Terminator 2.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Yes, you have. We watched it together. Oh no. Wait.” Od was forgetting that, just because Wes sounded and acted like his father, it didn’t mean he was his father. They didn’t share all of the same experiences and memories. “Never mind.”

  “All right, I’m in the lock now. Bypassing the security protocols. And… done. Open sesame.”

  Ahead, the door yawned wide. Through its frame Od could see the soldier who was dressed like a tramp, standing with pistol drawn. The soldier’s jaw dropped as he caught his first glimpse of the metal behemoth lumbering towards him from the gloom of the tunnel. Apparently he had no idea what he’d been helping to guard all this time.

  “Can I talk to him?” said Od.

  “Engaging external speakers.”

  “You need to move,” Od said to the soldier. His voice boomed down the tunnel, and the soldier looked more alarmed and awestruck than ever.

  “Seriously,” said Od. Warsuit 1.0 was now less than twenty metres from the exit. “I’m coming through, and there’s a bunch of bad guys not far behind. You need to start running now.”

  The soldier dithered, then decided. Warsuit 1.0 was rushing at him like an oncoming train. He turned tail and fled through the pair of outer doors. A moment later, Warsuit 1.0 barged into the prefab unit and smashed straight through the opposite wall. The prefab shattered in an explosion of plywood and plasterboard. The fake hut around it likewise was reduced to tinder. Warsuit 1.0 skidded to a halt on the floor of the quarry, covered in dust and debris.

  “We made it,” breathed Od. “Awesome.”

  “Let’s not pat ourselves on the back just yet,” said Wes. “We still have a dozen T-Cellers on our tail. Quarter of a minute before they catch up with us. Perhaps we should reconsider engaging them…?”

  “Or,” said Od, “we simply shut the door on them.”

  “No can do. The door’s on a hardwired, isolated timer mechanism which I have no way of overriding. It closes automatically forty seconds after opening, but not before then.”

  “Well, so what? They can’t harm us.”

  “But they can harm him.” Wes flagged up the tramp-soldier on a screen. The man, a faint figure in the grey early-dawn light, was halfway across the quarry but had stopped running. He gawped at Warsuit 1.0. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze off it.

  “You’d think he’d never seen a seven-metre-tall Warsuit before,” said Od.

  “Quite,” said Wes. “Here they come, Od. What do we do? I’ve already target-acquired the first three of them. Single shots to the head. We could have them on the ground in less than a second. Just give the word.”

  “There – there must be something else we can do,” Od said in desperation. “Surely.”

  The T-Cell operatives were all out in the open, past the shambles of the prefab, and already they had spotted the tramp-soldier nearby. The gun in his hand marked him out as an enemy combatant, even if the rags he was wearing didn’t. Several of the T-Cellers turned their wave cannons on him.

  “They’ll shoot him, Od. I need a decision. Make up your mind. Quick.”

  It was agonising. Od had no desire to kill anyone. More than that, he just didn’t have the capacity to do it. It wasn’t in his mental make-up. He’d played his fair share of shoot-’em-ups, of course, eliminating thousands of zombies and Nazis and the like, and never had a problem with that.

  But this was no videogame. This was the real deal. He would be responsible for ending real lives, creating real corpses.

  Set against that, a man’s life was at stake. The soldier was in mortal danger, unless Od acted.

  Crosshairs were superimposed on more and more of the T-Cellers’ heads, deadly green haloes.

  “Use non-lethal force,” Od said. “John Connor rule, remember.”

  “Shoot to wound?” said Wes. “All right, but I should warn you, it won’t guarantee that man’s safety.”

  “Do it anyway.”

  Od lifted his right arm and Wes rotated the gun barrels till the second smallest was uppermost. Onscreen, the crosshairs moved, latching onto other parts of the T-Cellers’ bodies than their heads: knees, elbows, thighs, shoulders.

  “Selecting armour-piercing rounds. With all that polyethylene bulletproofing on them, we have to make sure.”

  “Understood. Fire!”

  Bullets sprayed from Warsuit 1.0’s arm with lightning speed and pinpoint precision. Every single shot found its mark, flawlessly accurate. Down went the T-Cellers, one after another, like a row of tin ducks at a fairground shooting gallery
. In next to no time, all of them were sprawled on the quarry floor, clutching wounds, writhing. They were in too much pain even to think about picking up their wave cannons again.

  Watching them, Od felt distinctly queasy. But he knew he had made the best choice under the circumstances.

  “They’ll live, right?” he asked Wes.

  “They will. Some of them might never walk properly again, mind.”

  “Let’s take out their guns for good measure. Just in case.”

  Wes targeted the wave cannons the T-Cellers had dropped, blasting each to bits where it lay on the ground.

  The tramp-soldier looked stunned but grateful, like someone who could hardly believe his luck. He offered Warsuit 1.0 a tentative salute. Then, pistol raised, he went over to the T-Cellers. He didn’t move like a tramp any more.

  “All right, you lot,” he growled, pointing the gun at them. “Try anything funny, and I won’t be anywhere near as merciful as whoever’s inside that real-life Transformer robot just was.”

  The T-Cellers who could raise their arms in surrender, did.

  Inside the Warsuit, Wes made a thoughtful, back-of-the-throat noise. “Ah, now look at this. This is interesting.”

  “What?” said Od.

  “I’m picking up aircraft radar signatures. Helicopters, three of them, inbound. Zeroing in on our location.”

  “More T-Cell people?”

  “No. The helicopters are Chinooks. British military troop transport. Reinforcements, I assume. They’ve been scrambled from the base over at Carnforth and they’ve come to take back Selston Tor.”

  “Well, that’s good news.”

  “Indeed. However…”

  “There’s bad news as well,” Od said with a groan.

  “Afraid so. T-Cell have their own air transport. Just the one. And it’s taken off from the installation and is headed this way.”

  “What sort of aircraft is it?”

  “That sort,” said Wes.

  On the main screen a large, intimidating-looking silver gunship appeared above the rim of the quarry. It hovered on the thrust generated by six downward-pointing jet propulsion units. It was crescent-shaped, the tips of its curved wings almost touching at the front like a crab’s pincers. On top was a cockpit canopy, a blister of glass with the flight crew inside. From its belly and the underside of its wings a number of pods and launch tubes hung – a bristling array of weapons.