“Nope. But if we can find her, she may turn out to be the edge we’re looking for.”
“I hope so, because we don’t have a lot of support at the moment. We’ve got So’Kla’s ship, two piece of shit dropships, and a company of raw troops. Some of them show potential, but they’re all pretty much newbies. Hell, we don’t even have CASPers for all of them.”
“What’s a CASPer?” Steve asked.
“The Combat Assault System, Personal, is the armor we wear in combat that makes us the equals of whatever we’re taking on. In the early days of off-planet combat, humans got creamed. We didn’t have the offensive firepower necessary to put the enemy down, nor could we take a hit from anything the other merc units had. Just like Samuel Colt made all men equal, Dr. Mauser made us equal with the alien troops when he introduced the CASPer. Well, not equal with the first version of the suit, but at least we were closer. We could at least damage the enemy and take a glancing blow or two before going down, and each new generation of the suit has given us additional offensive and defensive capabilities. What’s the latest version, Mason?”
“The Mark 8, sir. It’s got great haptic feedback controls, although they keep making the damn suits smaller and smaller, so they aren’t such big targets. Before too long, you’ll need a damn midget to operate one of them.”
“Haptic controls?” Steve asked.
“That’s the marketing spiel,” Nigel replied; “it just means the suit has a sense-of-touch user interface.” He turned back to Mason. “I may not have any 8s lying around, but I’m pretty sure I can round up a platoon’s worth of 6s from our museum and maybe even some 7s. I’ll try to call in some favors and see what else I can come up with.” Nigel laughed. “I learned how to operate a 6 when I was younger; hopefully, it will all come back to me.”
“It’s like riding a bike, sir…except one you can kill yourself in it if you fuck it up. Needless to say, you can kill a lot of other people with it, too, so hopefully we’ll have time to get you reacquainted with it before you actually have to use it.”
“Understood. Mason, I want you to go back to the field and start getting the troops ready to leave.”
“We’re going to take them with us to Karma? The only thing worse than having to take you there would be letting a bunch of newbies run around unsupervised on the station. Those that don’t get killed for offending an alien will probably end up into some of the extraterrestrial drugs you can get there. One time, we had a new guy that passed out for three weeks after drinking a cup of that Axanarian blue milk they serve there. We had to leave him when we deployed.”
“We don’t know where the trail is going to lead, and we may need the company to back us up. I agree, though; we’ll have to cancel shore leave while we’re there. I don’t want word of what we’re doing to get around. It’s going to be tight on the ship with everyone onboard, and mounting the dropships to it is going to be a bitch, but the Jehas have a reputation for being great engineers; hopefully, they can figure something out.”
Houston Starport, Houston, Texas, USA
Nigel and Steve arrived at the hangar to see Mason talking with the Jehas. After a few moments, they left, leaving Mason shaking his head as he watched them go. Nigel sympathized with Mason; he knew the level of frustration the Jehas could cause.
“Hey, Top,” Nigel called. “Got some extra time?”
“I’ve got a little,” Mason allowed. “What’s up?”
“I heard the first load of extra CASPers arrived, and I thought I might start getting reacquainted with them.”
“Yeah,” Mason said, “they’re the older Mark 6s, so they’re going to be a couple of steps backward for most of the troops. They aren’t as smooth as the current models, but they’ve got a hell of a lot of armor and don’t chafe as much.”
“Mark 6s?” Nigel asked. “Cool. Like I mentioned at the office, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem for me; that was what grandpa let me play with when I came here with him.”
“Your grandfather let you play with one of those?” Steve asked, wonder in his voice.
“Yeah, I guess ‘play’ is the right word for it. They had the weapons removed, and he let me do pretty much anything I wanted with them as long as I stayed out of the way of the people working here.” He gave Steve a crooked smile. “I used to play ‘Humans and Aliens’ with the trees on the airfield. Even without weapons, the suits are still pretty powerful. There were a lot fewer trees here when I was finished than when I started.”
“So you’ve got some experience with suits?” Mason asked. “You’ve also probably had the nanite treatment too, right?”
Nigel nodded.
“Awesome,” Mason said. “That’ll help the process considerably. We’ll still have to do the laser measurements to get your suit set up for you, but you’re not too far from the default setting; we could probably take out a pair of them right now if you wanted.”
“That’d be great!”
“I’m going to head back to the office then,” Steve said. “I haven’t had the treatment, nor do I want it. I understand it hurts like hell.”
“Pretty much,” Nigel agreed. Mason nodded. Every trooper remembered coming out from under sedation when they received the nanite treatment to strengthen their bodies in preparation for using a CASPer; the pain was legendary. “I’ll see you back at the office.”
Steve departed, and Nigel and Mason walked toward the line of CASPers.
“What do you remember about using them?” Mason asked.
Nigel stopped and closed his eyes, thinking back through the years. “I think I could still put one on.” He pantomimed placing his feet into the legs of the suit, including snapping them into place, then went through the motions of connecting the haptic links and interface cables.
“One more on the right side,” Mason said as Nigel inserted his right arm into the phantom suit.
“What?”
“You missed one of the cables on the right side,” Mason said. “Other than that, pretty good.” He sounded impressed, Nigel thought. Finally, he had done something right! Nigel tried to impress Mason by completing the rest of the sequence without making another error.
Nigel made the motion of connecting the cable he had missed. He knew immediately which one he had forgotten; it was the same one he had forgotten a couple times when he was younger. Both times it had caused him to fall, and he had amassed an impressive collection of bruises in the process.
The rest was easy. Put on the helmet, make the last few connections, and flex his arms to insert them into the arms of the suit. He paused as he mentally waited for the phantom technician to turn the power on, and then he made the “okay” signal with both hands, pinching his index finger and thumb together, which would bring the suit to an operational state.
“Close canopy,” he said. He opened his eyes. “How’d I do?”
“Pretty good for someone who doesn’t do it every day,” Mason said. He flagged down a passing technician. “Hey, Oscar, can you take the boss and get him suited up? We’re going to take a couple of the CASPers out to the range.”
“Sure,” the technician replied, leading Nigel in the direction of the nearby locker room.
When Nigel returned 15 minutes later, dressed in a combat uniform and helmet, Mason was already waiting for him in one of the CASPers. As Nigel approached, the soldier fired the suit’s jumpjets and launched himself in a low arc across the assembly area. Nigel stood his ground as the suit rocketed toward him.
Less than a second before it would have squashed him to paste, the jets fired again and Mason slowed it enough to come down in a controlled landing, flexing the suit’s mechanical knees to absorb the shock of landing. He opened the canopy and smiled. “Ready?”
“You bet,” Nigel said, ignoring the dangerous maneuver the trooper had just performed. “Which one’s mine?”
“This one,” a technician said, pushing a boarding ladder into place at the third one in line. “It’s checked out and rea
dy to go.”
Nigel climbed the ladder, careful not to snag any of the cables he was carrying. He reached the platform and found the Mark 6 suit to be the same as the ones he had played in—old and worn. The suit was probably older than he was; at least, it looked it. The paint was worn off across most of the suit’s skin, and the interior padding had more places where it was patched than where it wasn’t. But it was home, and wearing one was his birthright. It looked beautiful to him.
Careful not to go too fast, Nigel turned around and backed into the frame. Kneeling down, he slid first one leg and then the other into the suit, pointing his toes and wiggling his leg to get it all the way into the unyielding plastic. It had been a little easier when he was younger and more flexible, but he managed, finally snapping his legs into place. He stood up and found one of the leg splints rode too high into his crotch. He knew from experience the first time he jumped it would slam him in the groin and incapacitate him for several minutes. He adjusted the setting to a more comfortable level and plugged in all of his cables, careful not to miss the one he had forgotten earlier.
After checking to make sure there weren’t any unconnected cables dangling or in places where they would get hung up, he put on his helmet, activating the haptic skin sensors built into it. Everything in place, he rotated his shoulders and flexed his arms backwards into the arm holes. These were easier to get into, as the suits were designed with a little more space in the arms.
Nigel nodded down to the technician. “Ready.”
“Roger,” the technician said. “Standby for startup.”
Nigel watched the power indicator switch from blue to yellow as the suit’s motor started. The hydrogen-powered generator came to life, and the suit vibrated slightly.
“Clean board,” the technician advised. “Good start.”
Nigel made the okay sign with both hands, and the suit’s status indicator switched to the green ‘operate’ symbol. “Close canopy,” Nigel said, and the canopy rotated down and sealed with a small thump. The suit pressurized as it came to life, and he stretched his jaw to pop his ears. All of the suit’s systems came online, including the cameras which gave him the same exterior view he would have had if the canopy had been glass and not hardened steel.
He checked the monitors that showed his suit’s status. No warning or caution lights on the indicator panel. Power output, backup battery, and life support were all in the green section of their bar indicators, and his fuel status was at 98%. The only thing he was missing was the weapons status, which was grayed out as no weapons were loaded. Yet, he thought with a grin. He turned on the exterior speakers with a finger motion and reported, “Good start. All systems green.”
“I want you to move all of your extremities and get used to the suit again,” Mason said, stepping up in front of Nigel’s suit. “Take it slowly, though. If you haven’t done it in a while, it will come back pretty quickly, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself by doing too much too fast.”
Even though Nigel felt ready to run an obstacle course, he knew Mason was correct and tempered his desire. Before he had donned his first suit, his grandfather had told him a story about how a new recruit had mistimed his first step. The man had fallen forward on his face, given himself a concussion, and then had a blood clot cause a stroke that killed him. Nigel didn’t know if it were true or urban legend, but he remembered how easy it was to fall when you were first learning to operate a suit, and he knew from personal experience that really painful injuries could result, even if death did not.
He spent the first few minutes moving his arms and legs then practiced marching in place to make sure his timing was correct. His suit’s left leg was a little slow to follow the motion of his own leg, and he had the technician calibrate the controls until it worked flawlessly. Finally, he felt he was ready.
“Ready for release,” he said.
The technician looked again at his status display and nodded. “All systems operational on my board. Releasing.”
Nigel felt the straps holding him back release, and he dropped forward into his favorite superhero’s pose, on one knee with a raised fist. “Let’s rock!” he roared, his external speakers set to max as he mimicked MechaMan’s battle cry.
“Easy, sir,” Mason said, stepping in front of him. “You won’t do anyone any good if you hurt yourself the first time out.”
“I know,” Nigel said with a mental sigh. Old people never get it. “I was just playing.”
“Yeah, well play time is over. We need to get you checked out in the suit and up to speed, including the weapons system, which you said you haven’t used. We don’t have the weapons systems installed yet, so you’ll have to come back for that, but we can at least get you up and, hopefully, running.”
“Got it,” Nigel said, trying to sound more chastised than he really felt. “What do you want me to do first?”
Mason ran him through a variety of start-up maneuvers designed to assist the suit in making its final internal calibrations. Nigel handled most of them fairly well, although some of them were things he had never attempted before, like lying on his back and raising his torso while supporting himself by his hands and feet in a an upward-bowed ‘bridge’ position. That one took him a while to get right, and his inability to do it correctly left him feeling a little bit…well, not chastised so much as annoyed.
“Good operators can use that position to spring to their feet, just by pushing off,” Mason noted.
“Bullshit,” Nigel said. After many failed attempts at performing the maneuver, he didn’t see how it was possible.
Mason lay down on the hangar’s concrete floor, bridged himself, and flipped up to a standing position.
“Any questions?” Mason asked, sarcasm audible even through the speakers.
Nigel stood looking at the other CASPer, his mouth hanging open inside his suit. He would have bet an awful lot of money Mason couldn’t do it.
“Now, are you ready to do what I tell you?”
“Yes.” Nigel hoped he didn’t sound as sheepish as he felt.
With Nigel’s attention now riveted on every word and movement, Mason led him through the rest of the basic maneuvers. Nigel completed them within 10 minutes and was quickly moving around without having to think about it anymore.
“Ready for something a little more challenging?” Mason asked.
“Yes!” Nigel replied.
Mason led him through another series of drills, including running, jumping, and picking up and manipulating small objects. These were things Nigel had done before; even though he hadn’t done them recently, he was familiar with them and picked them back up fairly quickly. He was pretty happy with his performance; he only had one bad fall, and that was during the jumpjet practice. Using the jumpjets had been frowned upon when he was growing up, so he only had a little prior experience with them, gained when his grandfather wasn’t looking. It didn’t make his horizontal landing feel any better—it hurt like hell and caused some minor damage to the suit—but at least he understood why it had happened.
“Had enough?” Mason asked two hours later.
“Shit!” Nigel said, looking at his suit’s chronometer. “Is that really the time? I’ve got a meeting I’m going to be late for.”
“Yeah, time flies when you’re having fun or driving a CASPer, which amounts to about the same thing.”
The pair ran back to the hangar at full speed. Although Nigel was close, Mason beat him by two seconds. They secured the suits to the maintenance harnesses, opened the canopies and climbed down the egress handholds. Mason was already down and drinking a bottle of water when Nigel reached the floor.
“Nice run,” Mason said. “You’re a lot further along than I feared you would be.”
“Was that your top speed?”
“Honestly? No. I slacked off a little bit so you wouldn’t give up. Still, that was better than any of the recruits did on their first time in the suits, so you’re ahead of schedule. Next time we’ll try one with
weapons and see what you can do.”
“Really?” Nigel asked. “I’ll be back as soon as I can!”
Cell Block, Planet Moorhouse, Kepler 62 System
“I don’t think your brother likes you very much,” Commander Tranayl noted, his carapace clicking in amusement. “I’m told he is going somewhere else rather than coming here to rescue you.”
“Maybe he’s just smarter than you,” Parisa Shirazi said to the MinSha. The creature looked like an oversize praying mantis, with a blue sheen to its chitin. “Maybe he knows something you don’t. Wouldn’t be too hard; you’re obviously not very smart.” She was tired of the creature coming down to taunt her every few days, and she knew it was starting to show.
“The results suggest otherwise,” the giant insectoid said, one claw indicating the prison in which Parisa was being held. “I am on the outside of the cell; you, however, are in it.”
“For now.”
“I do not believe our positions are likely to change. This strategy is the culmination of years of preparation. Our spies are everywhere; we know all. Everything has been foreseen, and is taking place as it should.”
“You should have finished my civilization when you had a chance. You know what we do with bugs in Chabahar? We step on them. My brother is going to do the same thing to you, you oversized insect.”
“Are you trying to bait me?”
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with pests? Bait them with poison and kill them?”
“Perhaps you’re hoping I will become angry and kill you prematurely, but you’re wrong. You will die at your appointed time. No sooner and no later. Besides, you don’t even like your brother. Our investigation into your family revealed that, while your brother feels a familial relationship to you, you feel nothing toward him.”
“There’s really no reason for me to explain the dynamics of my family to you. Do bugs even have families? I’ll bet you eat your young, don’t you?”
“Killing all of our children is hardly something that would ensure the longevity of our race, but defective ones are often destroyed, yes. It is the way things always have been, and why our race is so much stronger than yours. Yours allows genetic aberrations to continue unabated; ours gets rid of them. We are stronger because of it, as indicated by our present circumstances.”
Asbaran Solutions (The Revelations Cycle Book 2) Page 9