FST-3 includes two PhDs, a software genius in the person of O’Reilly, and Sergeant Cassidy, who’s racked up more than twelve years of service. Throw in my admittedly mediocre academic credentials and relatively few months in uniform, and you’d think we would have sufficient collective smarts to decipher EEEK.
You’d think wrong.
It took several days, a slew of emails, countless phone calls and the belated arrival from Phoenix of a rep from Harrison Robotics before we could make sense of the schematics. All the while the weird-looking piece of equipment stood in a corner of the CHU that served as our test facility.
Excuse me. That’s C-H-U, pronounced choo. It’s short for Containerized Housing Unit. Our site has five of ’em. Two are linked together to form our test and administrative center. One serves as a combination rec room, dining facility and workout area. The latter is used exclusively by Sergeant Cassidy, by the way. The rest of us wouldn’t be caught dead on a Universal Gym.
The remaining two CHUs constitute our sleeping quarters while forward deployed, e.g., stuck out here in Dry Springs. The three guys occupy one. I share the other with Pen. Unfortunately, she snorts and whinnies while asleep as well as when she’s awake.
I think I mentioned that we’re pretty much at the bottom of the DARPA food chain. The thing is, even DARPA’s rejects are state-of-the-art. That’s where the “advanced” in Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency comes in, you see. As a result, our test lab is crammed with enough computers and high-tech instrumentation to re-orbit the International Space Station.
Our test engineer is a skinny, nervous twitch by the name of Dr. Brian Balboa. Naturally, we immediately anointed him “Rocky” but I challenge you to find anyone less Sylvester Stallone-ish. Rocky isn’t as out-there brilliant as Pen, but he’s darn good at making all those black boxes of instrumentation sing. Remind me to tell you sometime why he’s no longer assigned to DARPA Headquarters.
Even Rocky had trouble with EEEK’s computerized components, however. And the more frustrated my team became, the more the contrivance smirked at us. I kid you not. With its head full of wires, crossed arms and casually bent knees, all it needed to complete an air of sardonic amusement was a cigarette dangling from its lips.
“Look.”
As agitated as the rest of us, the Harrison Robotics rep stabbed a finger at a monitor. He was bald as Britney Spears during her weird phase and at least two hundred fifty pounds heavier. His name was Benson, Al Benson. My team had instantly dubbed him All Bent.
“You folks have to stop thinking of these as machine parts and . . .”
“They are machine parts.”
That came from O’Reilly. Naturally.
All Bent scowled and directed his comments to me. “We designed the exoskeleton as a natural extension of the human body.”
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “how many human bodies has it extended so far?”
“Several.”
He didn’t quite meet my eyes. Not a good sign.
“Including yours?” I wanted to know.
“Well . . . No.”
“Why didn’t Harrison Robotics send us someone with hands-on experience?”
All Bent squirmed and provided a reluctant answer. “One of our engineers broke a leg when a brace failed. Another slammed into a concrete wall at full speed. He’s still on medical leave. But we’ve worked out the bugs in the power unit,” he rushed to assure me. “You’ll be in complete control at all times.”
I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box, but I’m no dummy. I know how many billions DARPA pours into the civilian sector to develop new technologies. Harrison Robotics was a small firm. Until now, the company had specialized in computerized artificial limbs. EEEK would take them into the much broader—and far more profitable—arena of direct combat support. Naturally they’d brush aside little things like broken legs and head-on collisions with concrete walls in pursuit of Big Bucks.
On the other hand, if their device lived up to its hype, maybe it would increase the capability of our war fighters. The robotic legs could carry infantry grunts farther, over rougher terrain. The frame attached to the spine could support heavier loads of equipment. Mechanical arms could push or pull extreme weights.
I have to admit such esoteric matters as extending troop endurance and improving combat capability never mattered in my other life. The civilian one. Minus the boots and ABUs. It might not have mattered all that much to me now if DARPA hadn’t insisted on a month-long orientation before exiling me to Fort Bliss.
Part of my familiarization program included a tour of the Soldiers’ Support Center at Natick, Massachusetts. That was pretty interesting, actually. Those guys are doing some slick stuff. My orientation also included visits to several advanced research centers like MIT and Boeing’s Skunk Works. The kicker, though, was a trip to Bethesda Medical Center, just north of D.C. While there I talked to men and women who might not have lost legs or arms or eyes if they’d been better equipped.
I’m not going to get schmaltzy on you, but . . . Well . . . Those interviews changed my perspective on a lot of things, this job included. I guess that’s why I get that annoying feeling I told you about, the sense that I’m part of something important. I can’t shake the hope my team might stumble across a new technology that could alleviate some of the pain and suffering I saw at Bethesda.
Even more irritating is the thought that sneaks into my head when I don’t guard against it. If I stick out this assignment . . . If I complete my four years in uniform . . . Maybe, just maybe, I’ll break the downward spiral that’s been my life up to now.
Which is why I refused to let EEEK get the best of me. Determined to crack him, I scowled at the metal carcass. The skeletal creature smirked back. With some effort, I managed to suppress the notion that it was only waiting to get me in its clutches.
“Let’s go over the power ratios one more time,” I insisted. “I want to know precisely how much movement it takes to work the extremities.”
NOT much, I discovered when I finally decided to climb aboard.
A simple on-off switch activated EEEK’s built-in computers. Once he was powered up, I shed my tiger-stripe ABU blouse, tucked my dog tags inside my standard issue yucky brown T-shirt and folded myself into the metal frame.
Correction. It wasn’t actually metal, but a feather-light composite that looked and felt like steel. The leg braces attached to my combat boots at heel and ankle. A springy tongue extended below each boot to air-cushion my steps. A web vest secured my spine to EEEK’s. My hands slid through loops on the arm braces and into glove-like controls.
Encased in the frame, I felt a weird sort of reluctance to connect the headpiece and flip down the visor. I had the uneasy notion I was sublimating my brain to EEEK’s. I couldn’t escape the fact that his circuitry could process more data, more rapidly, with more accurate results, than mine.
I mean . . . Electronic “eyes” that register images in a continual, 360-degree sweep? Infrared sensors capable of identifying the heat signatures of everything from field mice to an incoming missile? A visor with more three-dimensional graphics than the latest version of Mortal Kombat? Gimme a break!
Most of it was off-the-shelf electronics available in games sold to pimply teens and perennial adolescents like my ex. What made EEEK truly innovative was that Harrison Robotics had combined the electronic circuitry and lightweight composite frame with an advanced ergonomic design that blended technology with robotic muscle.
“Minimize your movements,” All Bent warned. “The gimbals respond to the slightest . . . Wait! Lieutenant! Don’t lean forward like that!”
His frantic shout came too late. One slight bend at the waist and I was kissing the floor. It took the combined efforts of my entire team to haul me upright again. I swear to God I heard EEEK snickering.
“Minimize,” the Harrison rep reiterated. “Just think about moving.”
I got the hang of it. Eventually. Still, I spent
a full day banging around the test facility, making sure I could interpret the data EEEK bombarded my visor with, before I ventured outside.
Bumping into walls and instrumentation stands was one thing. Dodging cacti and twisty-limbed mesquite was another. My first foray in the great outdoors left me cursing and the sadistic robot I was strapped into grinning from ear to composite ear.
Did I mention I’m a little stubborn? I hung in there. Not that I had much choice. The test parameters called for a twenty-mile run. In full combat gear. Carrying a sixty-pound pack. Someone—me, unfortunately—had to complete the run before FST-3 could write our field test report and stuff EEEK back in his crate.
I do know my limitations, however. No way I was ready to go full battle rattle for twenty miles. Not with the temperature hovering around 110 in the shade and the August sun so vicious that not even the scorpions would come out to play. Girding my loins—literally and figuratively—I managed two miles at a springy trot. The following day I upped it to five. Before I extended the distance much farther, I decided to test EEEK’s low-light optics and terrain-following sensors.
I set the launch time for two A.M. My team of dedicated professionals protested vociferously, but I held firm. The high desert cools off at night, you see. Not a whole lot this time of year, but enough to make the run semi-bearable.
So come two A.M. I encased myself in composite and took off. I headed south this time, toward the periphery of Fort Bliss’s three-point-four zillion acres of test range. I sure as heck didn’t want to head north. Although my team coordinated all its activities with the Fort Bliss Command Post, there was always the possibility those guys might forget to mention a little thing like a night firing exercise of a Patriot missile battery.
No missiles streaked through the star-studded sky. No explosions lit up the horizon, near or far. I moved slowly at first, getting a feel for EEEK’s night vision capability. To my relief, he had eyes like a bat. His infrared imaging enhancement clearly illuminated hazards like clumps of spiny cholla and cracks in the hard-baked earth.
It also illuminated the odd-shaped hump ahead long before I picked up its stench. When the stink did hit, I figured I’d come across a dead coyote or mule deer. I was moving fast by then, too fast to swerve, so I decided to bound over the carcass and keep going.
Bad decision. Reeeeally bad.
I misjudged the distance in the dark and the springy foot pedal that gave EEEK its bounce caught on something, pitching me forward. Just in time, I threw my weight backward. The gimbals kept me upright, for which I’ll be forever grateful. I don’t even want to think what would have happened if they hadn’t.
“What the hell . . . ?”
Gagging at the noxious stink, I lifted my visor to see what had snagged my foot and found myself staring down into the bloated remnants of a face. It took me several stunned moments to realize a second corpse lay sprawled almost atop the first.
I was up to my ankles in putrefying human remains.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN my traumatized brain kicked back into gear, I let loose with a screech loud enough to wake the dead. Not these dead, thank God. Decaying flesh spewed as I kicked free of the ribcage that had snared EEEK’s foot pedal.
“OhGodohGodohGod!”
Shrieking, I lunged a good fifty or sixty yards before I thought to lower the visor and whip around to scan the darkness behind me. No ghostly figures had risen up from the desert floor to give chase. No poltergeists flew through the night air in my direction.
Still, I stumbled another dozen yards before I could bring myself to halt EEEK’s forward momentum. Wrenching one hand free of the control glove, I grabbed frantically for the radio clipped to my belt.
“O’Reilly! Cassidy! Anyone! Come in!”
“Speak to me, oh Goddess of Gadgets.” O’Reilly punctuated his reply with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Whazzup?”
“I just stumbled over some bodies.”
“Huh?”
“Bodies.” My voice rose perilously close to another shriek. “Like in dead people!”
“Jesus!”
I heard a loud thump that I guessed were his chair legs hitting the floor. The thud came nowhere near matching the volume of the hammering inside my ribcage.
“Call the county sheriff,” I got out. “Give him my coordinates.”
“Will do. Want us to come get you?”
Hell, yes, I wanted them to come get me! I had opened my mouth to order the entire team to pile onto ATVs when I remembered I was supposed to be a lean, mean fighting machine.
My notions of officership are still a little hazy around the edges but even I recognized that I wouldn’t present a sterling example of a leader if I turned tail and ran—as I very much wanted to do.
“I’ll stay at the scene until the sheriff arrives,” I said with immense reluctance. “Just get him out here fast. And notify the Command Post at Fort Bliss of the situation,” I added belatedly.
I wasn’t sure who exercised investigative jurisdiction over putrefying remains on a remote patch of government range cut by two county roads. At this point, I didn’t really care.
O’Reilly confirmed the coordinates transmitted by EEEK’s built-in GPS and promised to get on the horn immediately. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d signed off that whoever or whatever caused the death of these two people might still be in the vicinity. I grabbed the radio again, but common sense intervened.
Lord knows, I’m no expert on decomposition. My only previous experience with the dead was at my grandfather’s funeral. In keeping with my family’s long-standing tradition of loser-ship, Pop had passed out at the wheel of his semi after downing the better part of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I was about four or five at the time, and my mother insisted I had to file past his coffin. I remember thinking Pop looked like Play-Doh.
These guys were way past Play-Doh. The desert sun had baked them to mush, so they must have been dead awhile. Or so I reasoned. Erroneously, I later found out. Seems searing heat speeds up the process of decomposition.
I didn’t know that, however, and trusted my flawed logic enough to unstrap EEEK. He would require some cleaning when we got back to the test site. I would require several Valium. In the meantime I had nothing else to do but wait.
EEEK’s presence proved oddly reassuring as the minutes ticked by. Moonlight glinted on his frame, and the faint beeping of his computer gave me the sense I wasn’t out here with only two corpses for company.
I should tell you that even without the corpses, the desert gets darn spooky at night. Clouds moving across the moon throw eerie shadows on the baked earth. The sagua ros and mesquite take on sinister forms.
Then there are the noises. The first time a burrowing owl belted out its shrill, up-and-down warble, I almost wet myself. Moments later one of his buddies popped out of its hole and answered the call.
The thing about night sounds is that once you start listening for them, you hear them. All kinds of sounds. As if to challenge the owls, another songster piped up. It ran through a whole scale of notes, repeating them over and over until I was gritting my teeth.
I knew what it was. A western mockingbird. Despite a distinct lack of interest from the rest of the team, Pen—Dr. England—insisted on sharing her encyclopedic knowledge of the flora and fauna native to the north Chi huahuan Desert with us. I could hear her nasal whine in my head, droning away, almost as obnoxious as that mockingbird.
I was contemplating hurling a rock at the irritating warbler when a scuffling sound reminded me the night belonged to more than just birds. There was Pen’s whine again, going on about gophers and kangaroo rats and sand foxes and—quick grimace here—hooded skunks, badgers, duck-billed bats, and Mexican gray wolves.
And coyotes. I couldn’t mistake their distinctive yipping. The cries echoed well off in the distance at first but gradually moved in. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I remembered Pen’s terse admonition not to leave any trash lying around at the te
st site as the scavengers will eat anything, dead or alive.
When an excited yip sounded in the vicinity of the bodies, bile spurted into my throat. I had to force myself to my feet and climb aboard EEEK so I could peer through his visor. An instant later, I wished I hadn’t. Gagging, I yanked up my radio again.
“This is Spade. Where in blazes is the sheriff?”
“On his way,” O’Reilly assured me. “May be a while yet, though. His vehicle isn’t equipped with GPS. We’re vectoring him to your location.”
A shadow of movement sent another sour spurt into my throat. I swallowed convulsively. “What . . . ? What about the Fort Bliss Range Patrol?”
“Also on their way.”
That left me, several owls, one mockingbird, the bodies and a pack of coyotes. I signed off again and debated my next move. No way I was getting between flesh-eating scavengers and their late night snack, but I couldn’t just stand there.
After considerable internal debate, I picked up a rock and heaved. I’m no Dan Marino or Brett Favre. The missile thudded to earth well short of its target. Desperate now, I resorted to shouts and arm waving.
“Beat it! Scram! Shoo!”
It was the shoo that finally cleared the fog in my head. How stupid was that? How stupid was I? EEEK was designed to amplify and extend human extremities. I couldn’t throw worth crap, but he could. Weighting my pockets with rocks, I strapped myself in, powered up, and let fly.
THE sheriff arrived just after dawn. His black-and-white raised a plume of dust a half mile long. I climbed atop a small rise to flag him down.
He wasn’t alone. Accompanied by a deputy, he rolled out of the car, settled his straw Stetson low on his brow and squinted through the fast rising heat waves.
“Lieutenant Spade?”
“You were expecting maybe Madonna?”
The sheriff’s brows straight-lined under the brim of his Stetson. His deputy’s shot up.
Tough. I was in no mood for nice after hours spent chasing off coyotes.
All the Wrong Moves Page 2