The four independently targetable x-ray lances are currently locked in a forward position. I’ll miss the rail cannon from my old Guardian-class frame, which was good for close-in work, but these frames can handle opponents up close just fine. In addition to those claws, each arm can project a multi-million-degree plasma blade able to cut though any normal form of matter. Hidden away behind armored hatches are the four 12-pack missile launchers and the four heavy anti-ship “torpedo” tubes, which make up the majority of the frame’s punch. A score of UV laser anti-missile turrets and self-propelled grenade (SPG) launchers complete its lethal arsenal.
All that firepower isn’t enough to survive in a modern battlespace, though, and the Cherub is well protected. The gleaming prismatic anti-laser coating on the frame shatters light into a thousand spectral fragments. Under that, the heavy blocks of replaceable armor composites are designed to volatilize away when hit, eliminating the terrible energy of beams and near hits by missiles. On top of all that, the surface armor can be charged with deflectors to help bend and diffuse plasma, particle beams, projectiles, shrapnel, and most forms of radiation. All that, in addition to the usual jamming, nanoparticle anti-laser dust dispensers, flares, decoys, and stealth systems. The flight armor gives me a little more protection than my old flight suit, too, but it’s mainly there to help me deal with the increased Gs my new frame can pull.
The Cherubim frames can do 12Gs, sustained. Yeah, even us Jovians can’t take that for long. Without my flight armor and cybernetic modifications, I’d stroke out and die under that eventually. The Cherubs are true deep-space frames, able to fly and survive on extended missions in almost every environment. They’re also pressure-rated for deep atmospheric operations in gas giants like our home…or Saturn’s.
The 20 sensor clusters that are scattered around the fame are only part of the reconnaissance story. It also integrates the data from its own remote sensor probes and drones, as well as from the rest of the squadron or even fleet.
All that takes a lot of brains as well as brawn. The artificial intelligence for a Cherub is an emergent consciousness from the interaction of four redundant cores running in parallel. The idea is, it can lose some of its cores and still function. Even if something like the Saturn virus took over one core, the others could shut it down and isolate it…if they got to it in time. The AI and the pilot are supposed to work together, integrated into one team able to control this deadly machine and be more effective than either alone could ever be. That’s another reason for so many cybernetic implants: the ability to interface with a machine like this.
It’s a big change from my previous exo-frame.
The old Guardian-class were already nearly obsolete when I was flying them. I’d hoped to get a Cherub when I joined up. When I realized I was getting one of the old Guardians, I thought my career would stagnate, and if I kept flying the obsolete frames, I would eventually only be in aerospace shows and such. Now, with the trouble with Saturn, they need every experienced pilot they can get. They’ve decommissioned the older Guardians entirely, and now we’re all in modern frames like the Cherub.
The Cherubim are the backbone of the Jovian exo-frame force, loved by our pilots and feared by our enemies. They’ve been around long enough for most of the bugs to get worked out, and they’re being upgraded constantly as newer technology becomes available. There’s about a dozen varieties in service now, and it looks like they’ll keep making them for years to come. With wartime production going, there’s more of them than ever, though the limiting factor is finding enough pilots able to interface and fly one of these monsters.
Hopefully one of those will be me. The Navy has spent a lot of money on my cybernetics and training for this, and, if I can’t control one of these bad boys, it will all have been for nothing. The Navy will need another pilot, and I’ll be flying shuttles or something. So, Michael, let’s not mess this up.
First of all, I need to stop thinking of the frame as “it.” Angel frames are always “he,” like ships are always “she” (I don’t really know why). The AI of this frame is going to be my copilot and fellow warrior. He’s going to be responsible for watching my back and helping keep my squadron alive. All AIs of this class are legally people and entitled to respect and honor. After all, he’s going out there to possibly get killed, too.
The data files give its—his—serial number as AF-740972. He’s brand new, part of the massive buildup that’s been going on since the Battle of Mars. It turns out we can build enough frames and ships to make up for our losses, but we can’t just keep losing people like this. Frames are no good without pilots for them, and not everyone can be made into an Angel pilot.
It’s time to get started on my first actual flight.
“This is Lieutenant Michael Vance,” I begin. “I’ve been assigned to pilot exo-frame AF-740972. Acknowledge.”
A deep, echoing voice answers, “This is exo-frame AF-740972, assigned to the Exo Aerospatiale Combat Frame Division, also known as the Angels. I have verified your identity, Lieutenant, as well as the authenticity of your orders. You are authorized to pilot this frame.”
Weird. I expected more personality from a full-blown AI. Even the old Guardian frames I’ve piloted seemed to have more character. Well, he’s brand new, so maybe that’s it…
“All right then, let’s get started. Frame—wait, what’s your name?”
“My designation is AF-740972,” he answers, “a Cherubim-class Angel assigned to the Exo Aerospatiale Combat Frame Division.”
“Right—” I suppress a sigh, “—but what’s your name? I’ve got a serial number and designation too, but that’s not who I am. What do people call you?”
“I do not yet have a name, call-sign, or nickname,” he answers dryly. “Such additional designations are usually added subsequent to training and assignment.”
“Uh, OK…” Let’s see… “What do you want to be called?”
“I have not yet received a proper designation,” he answers calmly.
It’s hard to think of it—him—as a person when he keeps insisting on acting like he’s just a robot. I’ve got to be patient; he’s a new creature, still figuring out how to interact with people and the world around him. For all his vast intellect and knowledge, he’s kind of like a child right now.
“We’ll work out something later on, then,” I answer. “Let’s go flying.”
The frame opens the armored pilot’s compartment in the chest, and a boarding ramp automatically rolls over to me. I climb up and step in.
The interior of the Cherub is a whole lot roomier than my old Guardian frame—large enough our pilots can wear power armor—and there’s even a locker for weapons, survival gear, and other necessities.
What’s missing are any manual controls. While I thought those were hopelessly antiquated when I first strapped on a frame, I think I’m going to miss manual controls now. Those controls saved my life when my old frame’s core was wiped out in combat. Now I’m going to be entirely dependent on my cyber-interfaces to control my frame—and I’m not sure I like that.
I step in and lean back into the padded compartment. The high-G padding molds and shifts to accommodate my flight armor perfectly. The armored hatch closes, sealing me in the frame, as more padding wraps around the rest of my flight armor, completely encasing and immobilizing me. I find that I can move around; the padding just shifts around me, like I’m floating suspended in a fluid. Still, it’s utterly dark inside the compartment, and it no longer seems roomy. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.
“Initialize,” I order.
Various cables attach to my flight armor. The computers in my cyber augments harmonize with the computers in my flight armor, which then harmonize with the vast computers in the Cherubim.
The universe comes alive.
The 20 sensor clusters scattered around the cherubim come together to give me perfect 360-degree vision of everything around me—to a superhuman extent. The smallest details down to
microscopic imperfections on the walls are in perfect focus. Radar, lidar, IR, UV, and X-ray all come together to form a whole integrated understanding of the world around me. It’s like I’ve been blind before now.
That’s usual for interfacing with an Angel frame. Still, there’s something more going on here than I’m used to. My new augments and the Cherub’s systems provide a level of understanding to everything I’m seeing. I can actually see and comprehend the complex flow of turbulence in the air, predict the nearly infinite complexity of its whirls and eddies, and adjust for it. The beauty of the fractal whirls and layered structure of simple air movement absorbs my attention. I can slow down apparent time, observing the motion of each shift and breath of air, or speed it up, letting time pass in an instant. I can feel myself on location in the hangar, and where the hangar is in relation to the rest of the base, instinctively. While I’m used to that from a frame, now I can actually feel the base’s movement through the clouds of Jupiter, the planet’s rotation, the tidal tug of its myriad moons, and the world’s orbit through the solar system. It’s all as clear to me as if I were simply walking around.
“Sir?” the Cherub interrupts. “Shall I go over final diagnostics?”
“Wha—?” I snap out of it. “Yeah…Yes. Do that…thing.”
“All systems are functioning properly, sir,” the Cherub reports calmly.
“OK, then. Let’s go flying.”
The atmosphere roars in the sealed hangar. Oxygen-nitrogen is replaced with nitrogen-helium, then with hydrogen-helium. I can actually feel and smell the difference in the air—colder, thinner…different.
We get the all-clear from flight control. It’s safe to launch.
The hangar doors open, letting in the afternoon sunlight and showing us the vast cloudscapes of Jupiter.
The thrust vanes on our wings open up and ignite, and we fly out into the endless skies.
* * *
It’s perfect flying weather. High above, long, thin ice clouds look like the only things between the upper atmosphere and space. Puffy ammonia ice clouds fly past us. Below, opaque golden ammonium hydrosulfide clouds form a floor to the flight space. We’re well away from the safety zone around Halley Base, which is now a distant sphere on the horizon. The authorized flying zone shows up like a vast transparent box around us in our vision, hundreds of kilometers of air to fly around in.
“Thunderbolt,” Base contacts me, “you are now cleared for maneuvers.”
“Acknowledged,” I answer.
It would be nice if my call-sign came from some cool attack maneuver instead of an embarrassing incident in a bar. Still, maybe we’ll see what my Cherub can do and what his name is going to be.
“All right, Cherub, let’s see what you’ve got.” I hand the controls over to the AI.
All four wings extend to their maximum span, as thruster vanes open along the wing surfaces. The twin plasma engines roar to life, and we’re off.
We race upward, breaking the sound barrier effortlessly on the way up. In almost no time, the sky is turning black, and the stars come out in broad daylight. Below us, the sweep of Jupiter’s cloud seas stretches off in a nearly flat plane, with the curvature just barely visible. I’m wondering if my frame is going to exit our flight area and go into space, but then he stops, makes an abrupt turn, and races back down. He jinks to starboard, then goes into a roll, followed by a series of tight turns.
Through it all, my augments, flight armor, and the padding of the exo-frame adjust instantaneously to everything. We go through maneuvers that would have blacked me out in my old frame and suit, and, while I feel it, it’s easy to handle. This new flight armor is amazing, keeping the G-force to a minimum, and keeping me breathing through it all. My new augments can keep my heart, lungs, and brain running under crushing sustained Gs. This adaptive padding in the exo-frame nearly eliminates shock from the wildest maneuvers, cancels out the worst Jovian atmospheric turbulence, and will probably help a lot in dealing with atmospheric shockwaves from explosions. The ride is unbelievably smooth.
I’d better watch out; I could get spoiled and inattentive with this frame.
“OK, that’s pretty good flying,” I let him know. “Everything was flawlessly executed, but we’re looking at a lot of downloaded preset maneuvers. Enemy computers will be looking out for that. So we’ll do some more practice later, after we’ve talked about how to get a little more spontaneous and unpredictable.”
My turn. I bring up the flight map and maneuvering schematics in my mental augments. “OK, let me take manual control.”
“Sir?” he asks.
“I want to control the exo-frame myself—without assistance.”
“Yes, sir,” it answers after a half-second pause.
That should have been my warning.
I drop like a rock.
With my backpack engines and wing vane thrusters still roaring, I rapidly spiral into an uncontrolled spin as I hurtle toward the cloud fields below. I try to control each of the engines separately, and only succeed in increasing my thrust unevenly, and my rate of spin goes way up, turning the sky into a whirling collage of color.
Now I’m dropping like no rock has ever dropped before.
The golden clouds below me rush up and engulf my frame, turning the world into an orange fog that grows darker with each second. Pressure and temperature go up outside.
“Sir?” my frame interrupts. “Would you like assistance?”
“No, I’ve got it,” I reply curtly. As if I don’t know how to fly an Angel frame on manual.
I fall out the bottom of the cloud deck into the lightning-shot darkness below. The next cloud deck looks like an angry black and brown mountain scape, lit from within by flashes of titanic lightning. Above, the faint bands of reddish sunlight that managed to squeeze through the thick clouds stain everything in crimson. Temperature and pressure continue to rise.
I try to adjust my wing positions, imagining them as extensions of myself. The problem is, it’s not just like having extra limbs I’ve never had before. It’s that I’ve got multiple pairs of extra limbs now, and there’s ultra-fine control of every microscopic component needed just for stable flight, much less recovering from a spin. I bang my wings together ineffectually, and my spin rate increases.
“Sir?” the Cherub interrupts my concentration. “Halley flight control is asking if we need immediate assistance?”
“Nah, I’ve got this,” I grunt out.
I’m feeling the strain from my spin. All of the frame’s cushioning and my augmentation makes it bearable, otherwise I’d have certainly blacked out by now.
The world turns black as we fall into the next deck of clouds. High pressure winds claw at my frame, while azure and purple bolts of lightning flash and thunder in the distance. We’re still well within pressure depth tolerance for a Cherubic frame, but that lightning…
“Activate deflectors!”
“Yes, sir.”
Powerful electric and magnetic fields now gird the armor of my frame. That should not only deflect any lightning that hits, but also repel any bolts away, keeping them from striking in the first place.
Now, if only I can get my frame under control.
“Sir.”
I ignore the sensations of flight and falling coming through my augments. Steadying myself with all the mental exercises I’ve learned over the years, I enter the deepest state of focus. I lose myself in the data, letting the frame around me become one with me.
“Sir!”
Everything else disappears. I stop thinking about what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, or why. There’s only the frame and I; we are one.
Slowly, I get the frame under control. I begin to move my wings properly. Bit by bit, my spin stabilizes and evens out. I’m still falling, but in a controlled way now.
The air is different down here, not as cold and thin as above, easier to fly in. I can feel it flowing across my control surfaces, and let them react instinctively, as my hundreds of con
trol veins shift to deal with turbulence and…
“Sir!”
I snap out of it. We’ve fallen out of the bottom of the cloud deck into clear air again. Below us is…
Oh…
The jagged, wind-torn clouds far below look like the teeth of a vast, mythic monster’s maw rising to consume us all. The pressures down there break down normal molecules and rearrange them into carbon and exotic allotropes you never see in the upper layers. Normal matter can’t survive down there. Lightning bolts of city-smashing power blaze with blinding fury between storm clouds. Deeper inside, the whole cloudscape fluoresces in royal blue and purple from even deeper and more powerful lightning blasts.
Ooooohhhh…
Impending cosmic doom never looked so pretty.
“Uh, get us out of here.” My voice breaks.
“Yes, sir.”
The AI takes control of the frame and flies up with enviable, fluid grace. Soon, the darkness around me is replaced with light.
* * *
“What exactly were you trying to do?” Wing Commander Rackham asks me, while his eyes bore into me like high-intensity lasers. His gaze is normally intense enough you need eye protection, but it’s turned all the way up to lethal right now as he chews me out in his office. It’s a neat technique; maybe it’s something available in a training course for officers and drill instructors. Or maybe it’s a special kind of eye augmentation, or…
Cherubim Page 2
