by Richard Fox
The Armor’s breastplate swung open, revealing a matte-black cocoon within. Hydraulics lifted the cocoon out of the chest cavity and the cocoon split down the middle. Steam floated out of the seam.
“I don’t understand,” Ely said.
Hoffman coughed and swallowed back blood. “Masha…she’s on the Crucible. She’ll get you to the Crusade.” Hoffman struggled through a suddenly dry mouth. “You get to the Crusade, Ely. We all…we all did this to get you there. Don’t stop. Don’t quit.”
“No…you’re coming with me. You have to!”
Hoffman shook his head. “You get to Lady Ibarra and you…you ask her to speak well of me to Saint Kallen. Will you do that for me?”
The cocoon opened with a whine. Inside was just enough room for one person, the inner wall a crisscross of evenly spaced lines. An open clamp of glowing metal was mounted on the back.
Ely’s face contorted with confusion. “I’m not Armor.”
“You are now.” Hoffman shoved Ely into the cocoon and pinned him against the back. The clamp snapped over Ely’s neck and he struggled to free himself. Hoffman stepped back and the cocoon closed, locking Ely in total darkness.
Ely kicked out, calling for help. The clamp refused to budge as his feet splashed into liquid. A bitter cold seeped through his vac suit and the liquid rose higher in the cocoon.
“Hoffman! Let me out! Let me out!” The liquid came over his chest and splashed against his face. Cold as ice, it tasted stale and sweet. Ely tried to pry the collar open, but it wouldn’t budge as the thick liquid hit his neck and poured into his suit.
Ely gasped then sucked in air as the fluid filled the last of the cocoon. It was thick as syrup and robbed his body of heat. Ely’s struggles weakened and his lungs burned for air. He let out a final cry and choked as the fluid invaded his lungs.
He coughed and gagged as he took in more and more.
He lost feeling in his body as the cold faded away.
****
He was falling. Falling past smears of color and stretched memories until he wasn’t. Ely blinked and there was grass against his face. Dandelions and what looked like little ferns swayed in a breeze he couldn’t feel. Ely brushed a hand against the ferns and the petals closed against themselves.
He sat bolt upright. He was in a grass plain, the edges lost to a white mist. Deep-purple clouds roiled overhead. He worked his fingers into the soil and dug up a fine white sand.
“Something’s wrong,” came from behind him.
Ely cried out in surprise.
A man in simple fatigues was there. His boots fastened with thick straps instead of laces. Sandy-blond hair waved in the breeze and he had an electric guitar slung over one shoulder.
“Am I dead?” Ely looked around, but the man was the only standout feature in the green grass and surrounding mist.
“What a question,” he asked, but his mouth didn’t move as he spoke. “How long has it been?”
“If…if I’m not dead, then where am I? No. Hoffman! I need to help him! Let me out of…” Ely ran into the mist, but the edge stayed the same distance away. The man appeared in a flicker next to him.
“What is this?” he asked and an outline of Ely’s body appeared between them. Rotating circles of light appeared around the base of Ely’s skull.
“That’s a piece of a Qa’Resh probe that’s fused to my nervous system, obviously.” Ely shook his head quickly. “Hoffman! He’s dying and he needs my help.”
“Kesaht’ka…he was there for me.” The man raised a hand and the outline vanished. His fingers were stiff. Artificial. “I owe him.”
“Then let’s help him!” Ely reached for the man, but his hand went through him like he was a ghost.
“Like I said, something’s wrong,” the man said. “There may be a workaround if I—”
Ely was suddenly back in the cold darkness. He couldn’t breathe and his limbs wouldn’t move.
Ely snapped back into the meadow and he took a deep gulp of air. “Don’t do that again!” he begged.
“Turning it off and on again usually works. Oh, Trinia, you said this would work.” The man dropped his hands to his sides and walked a tight circle around Ely. “Let’s speed up the interface and do a re-map.”
Ely raised a hand, but his arm moved painfully slow. His mind didn’t seem affected, but when he tried to speak, the sound came so slowly, he felt the vibration of his vocal cords.
+Think at me.+ The man’s voice sounded in Ely’s mind.
“I can’t be dead. Why would Hoffman do this to me and why are my thoughts so loud now?” Ely kept moving with barely perceptible motion.
“Your brain is just a mess.” The slowdown didn’t affect the man as he walked in front of Ely and crossed his arms. “Was there another piece of Qa’Resh tech in there? Someone was poking around and they weren’t very subtle.”
“Hoffman. He needs me.”
“I’m doing a workaround. If I screw this up, you’ll redline. That is not a good time, trust me on that one.” One of the man’s hands blinked out of existence then was replaced by a fist with a raised finger.
“Who are you?”
“I am Armor. Your Armor. Specifically.” He looked to one side and his nose scrunched up. His upper lip and mouth never budged. “What? They put me in a Mark II suit? Archaic, even by the standards of my time. Is it a museum piece?”
“Hoffman mentioned Fort Knox.”
“How long have I been waiting?” the man asked.
“Doesn’t matter. We need to save him!”
“I’ve got your time perception dilated as low as I can while I’m humming through your autonomic nervous system and finding shunts around the Qa’Resh damage. Do you know how deep it’s penetrated into your occipital lobe? It gets into your cerebellum, you’ll be a vegetable. If you’re lucky.”
Ely’s right eye twitched out of synch with the rest of his body.
“Ah, progress. So you were telling me what year it is? Where we are?”
“It’s…2146. I think. At least that’s what I was told and as much as I don’t want to believe it…there it is. I was in Terra Nova and got hurt when—”
“2146?” The man stopped, his eyes darting from side to side. “That’s far too long. What happened to the Crusade?”
“How the hell should I know? There’s some lady on the Crucible that’s supposed to get me there, but Hoffman put me in Armor on the Breitenfeld and whatever purgatory I’m in now is the worst possible cherry on a shit sundae!”
“Breitenfeld. Terra Nova. What did you say your name was?”
“E…Ely Hale. My dad’s the governor back there. Maybe you saw him in a movie?”
The man turned away and paced back and forth. He stopped and slung the guitar around, his still hands hovering over the strings. A tune began to play.
“I’ve got a workaround. Enough to get us moving, but we need to take it slow or you’ll redline.” His head bobbed in time with the song.
Ely’s limbs tingled, the sensation increasing until it felt like needles jabbing against his skin.
“Who are you?”
The song picked up tempo.
“I am Armor. The Breitenfeld, really? How did she survive the Line? Let’s go with a classic while I build synch. Something apropos and in the original Swedish…Ingen vila till natten. För i gryningen går vi mot strid…
****
Hoffman listened as Ely railed within the cocoon, which the suit retracted into its chest. The breastplate closed over it with a whir of tightening bolts.
“Good luck, kid.” Hoffman lost his balance for a second but caught himself against a rail before he went down. The pain of the wounds was still a hot blade in his side, and he was thankful for it. It meant he wasn’t about to die.
He unsnapped his helmet from his uninjured thigh and slapped it over his head. He brought up a hidden comms menu and activated the one-time-use quantum dot embedded in the helmet’s earpiece. It took a few seconds before Masha c
onnected.
“Sure hope you’ve got good news for me,” she said, “because I’ve got this tiger by the tail and it is feisty.”
“Principal’s loaded in the suit. Either him or the ghost should come online any second now…one for transit. My armor’s void-compromised.” Hoffman’s vision blurred and he closed his eyes.
“Someone’s got to get back to the Crusade, Hoffman. Pass on all the intelligence we’ve collected. Might as well be you and the Hale kid,” Masha said.
“Are you…” Hoffman fought down nausea. “…are you actually concerned for my welfare all the sudden? Did the Geist get to you?”
“We had our differences, Hoff, but let’s not pretend that we didn’t develop a degree of professional courtesy as the years—you move again, Sabastian, and I’ll shoot you right in the dick!”
“Everything OK up there?”
“I’m holding the whole Crucible hostage. Some of the bridge crew aren’t happy about it, but you wing one guy in the crotch and the rest lose interest in being a problem. The time horizon for this mission succeeding is getting lower by the minute. Have I mentioned that?”
“You have, yes.” Hoffman beat a fist against the Armor and the helm’s optics flashed. “It’s getting there, Masha. Download your data to the suit when it breaks for the void. Is this how you thought we’d die? After all we went through?”
“I’ll take this over freezing to death over…where was that shit hole? With the Kesaht?”
The doors to the cemetery cracked open.
“I’m having…having some trouble remembering. I’ve got to go, Masha. You get him out of here, you hear me? For the Lady.” He swallowed hard, his mouth dry and begging for water.
“For us all. You were a worthy foe and an even better friend, Hoffman.”
“You too.” Hoffman took his helmet off and snapped the quantum-dot chip out. He opened a thick panel on the Armor’s side and snapped the chip into a housing. He closed the panel and picked up his gauss rifle, leaving his helmet in its place.
Hoffman dragged a leg to the edge of the catwalk as the cemetery doors opened with a bang.
Nakir entered, the lights reflecting off his chrome mask. A platoon of shock troopers stayed in the passageway just outside the doors. The Commissar raised his hands up parallel with his shoulders and turned slowly, showing he wasn’t armed.
Hoffman felt a numbing cold spread from his wounds.
“Where’s Hale?” Nakir asked as he stopped at the edge of the broken catwalk. He glanced down at the slain drake. “My pet wouldn’t have killed him…”
“Go look,” Hoffman sneered and flicked the barrel of his rifle at the gap. “Which one are you? What kind of tube trash did the Geist send after me?”
“I’m an original,” Nakir said as data ran down the side of his mask, “and you’re dying. Where is he, Crusader? Tell me and I won’t demand a tithe in penance from the chattel in Phoenix. Hundreds will go to the fields for this.”
“They’re all dead anyway,” Hoffman said. “But when the Crusade takes Earth back…their souls will be free. The Saint lives, you monster.”
Nakir knelt and looked over the dead drake.
“I raised that drake from the egg. Turned her myself…she was the best of her brood,” Nakir said. “She died in service to the Geist…you haven’t tried to kill me, so you’re either resigned to your fate or you’re playing for time. Which is it?”
The Armor stirred in its coffin and Nakir reared back. “No. Impossible!”
Hoffman smiled. “The Saint lives!” He jammed a hand into his pouch and pulled out a grenade. He slammed the trigger against his thigh and hurled it at the Commissar.
Nakir thrust his arm at the device and a ghostly swirl of energy caught it. Nakir flicked it back at Hoffman and held up a palm, forming a wall over the gap. The blast slapped the Strike Marine against the catwalk and he slid back against the railing.
Robot arms swung the jet pack against Ely’s Armor and mounted it to brackets on his back. The bulkhead opened behind the Armor and the coffin slid back on rails and into a tall passageway that led to a small flight bay.
“No!” Nakir leapt over the gap and pulled his fist back. Energy coalesced into a lance and he punched out at Ely. The bulkhead closed, deflecting the blast away from Ely and into the Breitenfeld.
The Commissar flexed his hand and a demon’s hand grasped at the air. The bulkhead shut with a clang and silence prevailed through the cemetery.
“I’m coming…Opal,” Hoffman muttered. The Strike Marine was a bloody mess, his face burnt and one eye ruined. He had a chain full of dog tags on the deck in front of him, and one rusty, bloodstained tag stuck out from the chain. “I said I’d be with you to the end. Now…be with me, old buddy. I need you. It’s getting dark and I need you.”
Nakir stomped on the dog tags and smashed them through the catwalk. “Your soul will pay for this.” Nakir grabbed Hoffman by the neck and connected to the harness. But Hoffman was already dead. Hoffman’s eyes lost their light and he went limp with one final breath.
Nakir grasped at Hoffman’s last breath, then pressed the air to his chest.
“You’re still in there,” Nakir whispered. “If your Saint takes you in, tell her I will find him and rip the probe from his body. Then the Geist will use it to finish Malal’s quest. Our victory is inevitable.”
He turned away and went to the edge of the broken catwalk. He raised his hands and the drake rose up. Armor plates peeled off the dead animal and swirled around the Commissar.
****
The man looked up from his song and winked at Ely. The meadow vanished into a smear and Ely was standing in an auxiliary flight bay with wrecked drones and a scrapped Mule transport against the tall doors—at least, they should have been tall.
Ely stood at almost three-quarters of the doors’ height. He glanced at the Mule and it was…smaller, like a scale model for a hobbyist. He raised an arm and felt a cool current against his skin. The hand that came up in front of his face was metal, the fingers squeaking with dusty servos.
“Ha-ahh!” Ely thrust the hand away from him. He spread his feet and massive boots clunked against the deck.
+—you hear me now?+ the man asked him. +You need to get these doors open so we can blow this joint.+
Ely slapped hands to his now-metal chest, then touched at his face, which was now a helm.
“What did you do to me? How did you…am I Armor?”
+Not if you keep thinking like that. The bay doors, Ely.+
There was a bang behind them and the blast doors that would open back to the rest of the ship rumbled with another impact.
A video screen popped up on Ely’s vision. A few seconds of Nakir standing over Hoffman’s body played in a loop.
“No…”
+He was gone before I brought our systems online. I don’t know who shiny-face is, but I assume he’s not our friend. The doors, Ely. You’re dangerously close to redlining. If I take control again, I’ll deliver a vegetable to the Crusade. Let’s not, yeah?+
The blast door bowed in slightly with another blow.
“There should be an emergency release,” Ely said, going to the bay doors, walking like someone who had had too many drinks, or a toddler new at the ambulatory game. He wasn’t sure which. The control panel beside the doorframe was far too small for his now-larger fingers, and he clenched his fist in anger.
+Of all the people…Ely. You are Armor. Use your suit!+
“To do what?”
The bow in the blast door grew larger with another hit.
Ely went to where the double bay doors joined and stuck his fingers into the seam. He pried, and after a moment of servos squealing, the doors jerked partially open. Ceres and the ring of dead ships were close, the infinite star field of the void beyond that. Air screamed out into the vacuum, carrying a storm of broken bits of equipment that smacked against Ely’s back and legs.
He felt the impacts, but not the immense pain that sh
ould have come with it. He slapped at his thigh where his emergency hood should have been.
+You don’t breathe air anymore. Get us out of here.+
“Did you put plugs in my brain?” Ely put one foot against the opening and hauled back. The bay doors creaked open, then there was a shudder as something broke and the door slammed back into the hull.
Ely looked out over the mass of garbage and ship parts floating in the void.
“Now what?”
+Jump.+
“Jump? To where? What—urk!”
Ely’s mind caught on fire as the suit hurled itself off the Breitenfeld. The pain subsided as he bumped against detritus and tumbled head over feet. His arms and legs flailed around, but there was nothing to grab on to.
+Don’t make me do that again. You won’t survive. Now that I have your attention, access the jump-pack controls and fire up the engines.+
A wire diagram of Ely’s suit appeared in a corner of his vision and the jump pack pulsed. Ely poked where the diagram was, but nothing happened.
+Concentrate, Ely. Activate the controls in your mind, not with your body.+
Ely willed his attention on the jet pack and the engines rumbled against his back. They kicked him forward then cut off with a pop. Ely was now coasting toward deep space.
“What did I do?”
+The induction magnets lost alignment. Problem with long-term storage and no regular maintenance. Give me a second…+
“Hale, you there?” Masha sounded like she was coming through a headset.
“Another voice in my head, great,” Ely said, tapping the side of his helm.
“You can hear me. That’s progress, at least. I’ve got you on the scope, but you’re not on a course to the Crucible and you’re moving way too slow.”
+Almost got this fixed. Tell her.+
“Why don’t you—never mind. Nice lady voice? The ghost, or AI, in my suit’s fixing the jet pack. What do I do when he—ah!”
The jet pack roared to life and the thick fluid in Ely’s cocoon sloshed around. He was acutely aware of having two bodies for a moment, then he was solely Armor again. He glanced down at his feet, where flames from the jet pack had singed his heels.