Immediately, red flags sounded off in his mind. The floor had obviously been cleaned recently and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
“We’re being watched,” She whispered, as if even her voice inside his mind space could penetrate the silence built up in the motorpool.
CLANK! “Aaannnddd that was the door.”
Now fully comprehending the fact that he was being set up, Euphretes crept to the center of the room and prepared for the fight of his life. With two right eye winks, Euphretes turned off his helmet’s interior sound proof environment while also amplifying his speaking voice.
“Let’s go boys! It’s about time we got to this part!” The bold words rang out into the darkness, echoing off the billions of angles within the motorpool. It created an eerie sense of being surrounded by his own voice. Silence resumed control once the sound waves had their fill. Just as Euphretes thought that he was in the clear, the shadows began to stir.
Eight soldiers proudly wearing the Baikal Special Forces insignia quickly surrounded Euphretes. “Baikal soldiers on the Huron Capital, because that’s not obvious,” Euphretes skeptically exclaimed to the voice in his mind space, now seeing that he had been double crossed.
“Just don’t lose the objective and we’ll be fine,” She reassured.
Covered from head to toe in jet black armored plates with charred red protective under suits, their equipment was extremely sturdy against multiple forms of projectiles. Each Baikal armored Kit maintained a total of forty-two armored plates to protect as much surface area as possible without hindering the free movement of the wearer. Another twenty-two, softer armored plates capable of bending up to twenty degrees shielded the obliques, lower back, and legs while eleven protected each hand.
Underneath the plates was a single compression suit fitted specifically for the individual and covered every square inch of skin up to where the neck and jawline met. It was designed to protect against shrapnel, smaller slugs, and blast overpressures up to twenty-five psi. Additionally, the suits protected the wearer from the outside elements in even the most extreme environments. The Baikal’s Kits offered a two-hour survival window in temperatures as low as negative three hundred and fifty degrees and up to a sweltering three hundred and twenty-five degrees while also providing immediate first aid. Local anesthetics, artificial blood clotting agents for puncture wounds, antiseptics, and even norepinephrine were all interwoven into the suit to keep the soldier in the fight for as long as possible. However, it did have weaknesses.
Regardless of the suit’s maker or wearer, all armored Kits struggled to protect against localized blunt force trauma. In the suit’s attempt to prevent nearby organs from receiving critical damage from explosions, the material slightly amplified concentrated blunt force impacts instead of dispersing the energy. Because close quarters combat was a rarity on the battle field and large explosions far more common, the suit’s weakness was a compromise that the wearer had no other choice but to overlook.
Computing systems on their helmets provided the wearer maximum situational awareness. Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree tracking systems that assessed threats around them and highlighted weaknesses found in their enemy portrayed their data to the helmet’s visor. Additionally, each helmet was connected to every aspect of the suit in order to provide real time information on the status of the wearer’s equipment and how much more abuse he could sustain. It required a remarkably adaptive computer to interpret and translate all of the data for the human wearer to understand. Projecting all information onto the helmet’s interactive visor, the computer was essentially an RAI without the personality and ability to think outside its given parameters.
The Baikal Kit was powered by a solid state copernicium core interacting with a static electric cage made from compressed quarks pulled from a Neutron Star. It was called a Miniature Quark Engine. When the wearer made any sort of motion, the cage would spin with immense angular velocity around the core and generate more than enough power to sustain the helmet’s needs. Any unused energy was sent to a small battery pack attached to the lower back. Together, the Kit would allow up to one hundred and fifty days of continuous wear before needing a replacement engine. For normal wear and tear however, the Kit offered four years of reliable use with minimal preventative maintenance required.
While Euphretes’s gear looked similar, it was the most updated and technologically advanced set in the Galactic Group. Worn by all of his military’s top soldiers, the equipment easily held the advantage in a gun fight. The exterior had royal blue protective plates that attached to a black protective under suit.
The helmet was not Euphretes’s personal one however, and therefore not calibrated correctly to his cognitive abilities; a struggle for him early in the mission. It assessed far too many potential hazards and dumped them on his visor, often overstimulating and distracting him instead of assisting. If he had the time, it would have been an easy fix, but Euphretes was not given the chance to grab his personal helmet before being forced into a camouflaged Transport and sent to Ozark’s surface. Noticing the Captain was without his helmet while exiting the craft, the Transport’s Crew Chief, with a grin, tossed him a spare one. “Good luck using this one,” he mumbled under his breath.
Regardless of the fact that it was currently unable to provide him better visibility in the poorly lit environment, his helmet’s visor was nonetheless a critical asset to him. Because the targeting systems were still functioning properly, he was able to see all eight soldiers, even those behind him. His six o’clock view was radically limited however. Two small square sections placed just within his outer peripherals were all that could be allocated without interfering with the wearer’s actual field of vision. To the average soldier, the small boxes often went unnoticed unless they were consciously worried about their flank.
It could take half a lifetime to train the mind to naturally scan the peripherals out of muscle habit. Training the mind to consciously watch both and not even realize it? Well, that was thought to be a myth. In truth, less than one percent of all Special Forces soldiers across the Galactic Group could achieve this mythological ability. Unfortunately for the eight assailants, it took Euphretes less than a year to utterly force both abilities into submission.
The surrounding soldiers started to slowly close the gap inward but still kept a hefty twenty-two-yard buffer zone. Each had a fuzzy orange outline with yellow hues marking weak points while analytical details about their posture and potential weapons popped up. Remarkably, not a single one held any form of weapon on their person, as if they wanted things to get interesting.
“So that’s why I wasn’t authorized a weapon,” Euphretes mocked, ensuring his audience of eight could hear him. The craftiness of their betrayal only strengthened his resolve to make the poor fools circling him quit long before he did.
W: None Confirmed
A: Baikal Gen3 v. 1a
-Spec Ops
P: Forced Aggression
-Fear vs Order
-Uncommitted
E: Favors Hip, Right
-Potential Recovering Hip, Left
The information was projected onto the soldier standing directly in front of Euphretes. Written in a vibrant translucent white to contrast with the dark armor, the text was easy to interpret without interfering with his mind’s ability to look beyond it.
“I can feel their anxiety,” Euphretes commented to his mind space. “I can sense their fear! Good, let it fester,” He scoffed. “I’ll let them come to me for a change!”
“Just try not to cause permanent damage. We may need them right away.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” he said rolling his eyes.
“Yea yea, you know you needed it.”
The lack of any sort of aggressive movement by the surrounding combatants drew their conversation back on track. “It’s like they can’t make up their mind,” Euphretes thought to himself as he quickly ran through the day’s events; his miserable run of bad luck standi
ng out like a sore thumb.
“I agree, it’s like they’re stalling for guidance on whether or not to end this here before we allow things to really get out of hand for them.”
“All the same. But I don’t see any lethal weapons on them, and until I do, they can stew in their indecision.”
“Can you blame them though?”
Euphretes stood at an unnerving 6’10”, and had the build of a professional athlete. Without his armor, he weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. With the armor, he tipped the scales at nearly four hundred. He was more like a marble statue than human. It was little wonder that the eight Baikal soldiers were stalling even when they had their prey surrounded.
Finally, after another thirty seconds of tense stillness, an overly dedicated soldier succumbed to the torturous wait and charged. Before Euphretes’s brain could even register the first hint of movement, his left shoulder started to lightly sting with pins and needles just underneath the skin’s surface. A marvelous adaptation to his central nervous system, the alert came directly from the presence in his mind space. Years of combat triggered his eyes to shift left out of muscle memory just after the stinging occurred. Adding to the already ridiculous advantage held by Euphretes was the fact that his brain turned a switch in moments of combat or duress, allowing the vital organ to process light up to two times faster than the normal human, giving him the ability to perceive events around him more slowly.
The “go big or go home” attacker recklessly charged toward his target. Euphretes didn’t move a muscle. Instead, he scrolled through his mental list of non-lethal take downs for this very situation, all the while ignoring the annoying arrows pointing in every direction across his visor. He spotted what he was looking for and made his decision.
“Good choice.”
Euphretes spun around at the last second and shifted his center of gravity slightly to the right. The sudden movement and change in position caused the swing of the attacker to completely miss its mark. As the punch flew through the air, connecting with nothing, the material around his rib cage opened up, leaving him vulnerable to attack.
WACK!
“Not so hard!”
CRUNCH The cringe worthy sound of bones cracking could be heard through the combatant’s armor.
With staggering speed, Euphretes landed a wrecking ball like blow to the ribs as the attacker’s momentum carried his body past his target. “It’s a lesson that could save his life down the road; so it’s gotta hurt,” Euphretes replied, watching the attacker fly past him and stumble for a few more steps until gravity overcame his body’s inertia. Ending up hunched over on one knee and gripping at his side, the soldier found himself oblivious to the world around him as the surge of pain filled messages flooded his brain. There was utter silence in the massive bay, as if by mutual agreement, so everyone could witness the repercussions of the powerful blow. Two seconds later…
“Argh! Ugh! Ugh! ARGH! Ugh!” The cries of agony momentarily filled the entire motorpool before fading out as the yearning to vocalize his misery succumbed to the pain caused by his very outcries.
“Ok, you’re right. Too hard. My bad,” Euphretes’s contrite tone remarked, hating the idea of causing another more pain than necessary.
The initial round of the fallen soldier’s loud, guttural blasts of air managed to jolt the rest of his team out of their stunned stupor. As all eyes returned to the behemoth standing in the middle, the downed combatant’s broken body crumbled to the floor and curled instinctively into the fetal position. With the potential of ending things quietly no longer an option, the other seven were left with no other choice but to end the confrontation by force.
“Looks like they all want to learn the hard way.”
“Look at it this way, they volunteered for this part.”
“You do remember your forth year, right?” The soft voice rebuked as it sent images of Euphretes’s bruised and battered face through his consciousness that were just as vivid as the day they occurred.
With a smile on his face and in a loving, yet mocking tone, “You conveniently left out what happened to the other guys.”
“And YOU just HAD to be an idiot and prove yourself. Oh, by the way. Five o’clock coming in hot.”
Assuming that the giant man in middle of the room would be too preoccupied with the attackers coming from his front that he would neglect to monitor his rear, the assailant charged at full speed. While it was a tactic that should’ve worked, the previous soldier’s attempt to charge at Euphretes’s six o’clock should’ve told him otherwise. At first, it looked as if the sprinting soldier was going to try to smash his forearm’s extra thick armor plating into the back of Euphretes’s neck like a war hammer; but the slight twitch of his raised elbow was all it took to give his secret away. Before anything moved past that initial twitch, Euphretes had received his warning. The pins and needles at the back of his head instantly dropped to his right kidney, alerting him to the location of the next blow. Effortlessly turning ninety degrees to the right and taking a half step backwards, Euphretes watched as the Baikal soldier’s knee missed its mark.
“Looks like he learned something after all,” The voice jested as she noticed the attacker changing tactics last second.
THUNK!
The combatant’s left arm harmlessly collided with Euphretes’s shoulder.
WHACK!
Euphretes shot his own knee upward in the blink of an eye redirecting the attacker's momentum toward the suspected injured hip of his original twelve o’clock target, who was now barreling toward him.
CRACK!
THUNK!
KERTHUNK!
The two collided at near full speed. One was reduced to a writhing body on the ground with a bruised sternum, gasping for the oxygen that had just been violently forced from his lungs. The other was left unable to walk for the next twelve hours. Oddly enough he escaped with only a hair line fracture to the already injured hip.
“Was that so hard?” The voice mocked while still implying appreciation for his effort to reduce the kinetic energy of his impacts.
“Actually, yes.”
As soon as Euphretes completed his shove, three more assailants were on top of him. By now, his entire body vibrated and stung at differing severities, telling him more than his helmet ever could. The remaining two, Euphretes’s original two and eleven o’clock, got distracted by their downed team mates for just long enough to seal the fate of the other three.
Euphretes’s original nine o’clock had planned for a hay maker just under the helmet’s chin but was suddenly facing Euphretes’s armored back from his last-minute ninety-degree pivot. With no time to fully react, the soldier attempted to bear hug Euphretes from behind and take him to the ground. At the same time, the original three o’clock found himself staring at the giant’s chest. Finally, a fraction of a second behind them was Euphretes’s original six o’clock, who was charging in using an out swinging pattern to side swipe his enemy’s legs. This attacker was now facing Euphrete’s right shoulder and found himself abruptly out of room to change tactics. While trying to redirect his momentum and body for a full-blown drop kick, Euphretes couldn’t help but applaud the out swinger’s attempt.
“Looks like I’ll be taking one for the team regardless,” Euphretes expressed to his mind space as he finalized his game plan.
“It’s about time. I can’t be doing all the work you know.”
Knowing the bear hugger posed the greatest risk if he managed to get his arms clamped around his body, Euphretes focused on him first. With blinding speed and titanic strength, Euphretes twisted his torso forty-five degrees toward the out swinging drop kicker and used his tree trunk legs to plant his body to the ground like rebar. He then simultaneously forced his arms upward and away from his sides while throwing all of his mass backwards with the force of a raging stallion’s hind kick.
“Poor guy doesn’t stand a chance.”
VRACK! The brutal collision between the two opposing force
s created something akin to a sonic boom.
“It’s on them. They’re not coordinating their attacks at all.”
What could only be described as an invisible rope, viciously yanked the bear hugger off of his feet and back toward drop kicker. The sizable reversal of pressure forced upon the attacker’s body easily overcame his armor’s ability to keep blood in his brain for consciousness. Despite being designed to be able to sustain consciousness at the same level as an aviator’s equipment during dog fights, the unconscious soldier still managed to black out a micro second after impact. Meanwhile, drop kicker’s plans for an infamous ending to the skirmish turned south drastically. His angled approach unknowingly set up Euphretes perfectly.
Through the Abyss Page 6
