by Mark Wandrey
The suit wasn’t designed to be run from inside his pinplants – and Aetherware had never been customized for that purpose. Instead, his pinplants established an interface with the suit and fed it biometric data, which was accomplished in a normal suit via haptic skin sensors built into the helmet. With the suit fully powered up, Jim simply spoke. “Close canopy,” he said, and the clamshell canopy quickly descended, came together, and closed with a thump. He felt a tiny bit of pressure in his ear as the full atmospheric system sealed, and then the inside of the canopy came alive. It was like he was looking through glass to the outside, only there was thick hardened steel between him and those looking up at him. He used a finger gesture to activate the suit’s exterior loud speakers.
“I’m powered up, all good,” Jim told them. As he looked around a series of reticles followed his gaze, his weapons systems indicators. There were also a number of bar-graph indicators letting him know vital stats for his suit. Remaining fuel, current power output of the generator, backup battery status, life support endurance, and many other statistics were there.
“Good,” Hargrave said, taking a slate from a tech. “Let’s go over functionality.” While he hung suspended from the lifter, Hargrave had him do a long list of seemingly mundane motions. They felt incredibly clumsy at first, but after each series of motions, changes were made to the suit’s internal calibrations and eventually the movements felt natural. When they were done, Jim could control the arms and legs perfectly, and the suit no longer felt like it was fighting his actions. He had to consciously think about how it felt to move, to maintain constant awareness that he was surrounded by hundreds of pounds of movement-amplifying battle armor. “I think we’re ready,” Hargrave said to the side.
“Let’s give it a try,” Murdoch said, Jim turned his head and saw the other man button up his canopy and step closer while all the unarmored humans backed away. “Ready to release?”
“Ready,” said the techs. And a second later Jim’s suit dropped to the ground with an echoing clang. He tried to stand, promptly over-compensated and fell backwards against the lifter with a sickening CLANG!
“Shit,” Jim barked and leaned forward. It turned into a stutter-step, and he would have face-planted if not for Murdock who expertly caught him with his own suit. The two metal behemoths slammed against each other with a screech of metal on metal that sent some of that new paint flying into the air.
“Easy son,” Murdock said and got him back onto his feet. “Want me to control your suit?”
“No,” Jim said. “I need to figure this out myself.”
“Okay,” Murdock agreed and stepped back. Jim slowly turned his suit, weaving slightly until he was aligned along the practice area, and took his first step. It was more of a stuttering stumble. Murdock caught him once more, this time from behind by a set of handles installed for just that purpose.
“Take your time,” Murdock advised. He hung on as Jim experimentally took tiny baby steps, letting him get used to how the haptic feedback system interacted with his body’s actions. After a few stumbles, Jim slowly began to perceive that tiny, almost immeasurable delay between his moving his foot forward in the suit, and the suit responding. It made him second guess his own moves.
“What’s going on?” Hargrave asked.
“There’s a delay between my movements and the suit’s response,” Jim explained.
“Safe the suit,” Hargrave ordered. Instantly Jim felt the suit freeze and come to attention like a soldier on a parade ground. His movements had no effect, and a yellow telltale announced “Suit in Safe Mode” on his HUD, heads up display. “Jim, this is Adayn. She’s our chief armorer and is a specialist in CASPers.” A woman who looked to be in her late twenties came around so he could see her and Jim blinked. Most of the men and women who worked on the suits and weapons were grease-monkey types. They tended toward short hair, well-worn jumpsuits, and calloused hands. Adayn did not fit that description in the least. She was short, had a beautiful face, and her outfit was spotless. She also had nearly waist length raven-black hair braided in an elaborate ponytail that currently fell over her left shoulder and down her back. She looked up at him and smiled, her sky-blue eyes twinkling in an almost mischievous grin. Woah, Jim thought and grinned back without realizing she couldn’t see him.
“Commander Cartwright,” she said, “I’m going to access the engineering controls on your suit.” He just stared at her in rapt amazement. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful girl in his life. It was creating a short circuit between his brain and his mouth. “Sir?” she asked.
“Jim,” Murdock said and rapped on the back of his suit, which was like being inside a ringing bell.
“Ouch,” Jim said, and tried to cover his ears. Of course, with his suit locked, he’d have more luck trying to lift a pickup truck with his bare hands.
“Pay attention, kid.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Jim apologized. “Go ahead.” Adayn nodded and came forward, taking out a special slate with a cable she attached to Jim’s suit.
“Accessing haptic controls,” she said. Jim’s indicators showed she was modifying the system. “Can you tell me what it feels like?” Jim described the phenomenon. She made some entries, then disconnected. “Okay, try that.”
“Take it off Safe,” Hargrave said, and the suit’s status light returned to green. Jim took a step, and then another, and another.
“Hey, I can walk!” he laughed.
“Take it slow, kid,” Murdock said behind him.
“Don’t let go,” Jim ordered.
“I did two steps ago.” Murdock laughed.
Jim spent a few minutes walking, turning and just generally practicing movement. It took shockingly little effort to move. He understood now how a trooper could fight for hours in one of the suits. His fuel indicated ninety-nine percent after his practice maneuvers.
“Okay Jim,” Hargrave said, “let’s move on to some more advanced stuff.” They ran him through a series of basic actions, starting with getting back on his feet after falling down. That one took almost an hour to master. Next was climbing steps. Less time for that one. Then came manipulating small objects without destroying them. Adayn had to do some more haptic adjustments after he accidentally crushed a steel ammo crate like it was a pop can.
“The CASPer will never play a piano,” Murdock said, “but with some practice you’ll be able to pick up an unarmored human without injuring them.”
Not anytime soon, Jim thought as he picked up another ammo crate, and this time only slightly dented it. “I think I’m getting the hang of it,” Jim said as he caught a steel pallet Murdock tossed him on the first try.
“Good,” Murdock said; “let’s take it up a notch.”
They moved to advanced control of the CASPer. First jogging, then running. After Jim demonstrated a basic mastery of that skill, he proceeded to jumping with suit legs, and his first attempted use of the jumpjets. That resulted in his first serious crash-and-burn. He lifted off badly, tried to compensate mid-jump, did it poorly, and tumbled. Murdock shot in and managed to check the fall, preventing Jim from coming down cockpit first. The impact resulted in a crushing rebound that sent Jim crashing to the deck, first on his shoulder, then rolling into one of the reinforced nets strung around the maneuver zone.
“Ouch,” Jim moaned as he rolled himself and the suit into a sitting position.
“Believe it or not, kid, that wasn’t the worst first jump I’ve ever seen.”
“What was the worst?”
“Guy killed himself and trashed his suit,” Murdock said simply.
“Yeah, that’s worse.” Jim flexed his neck and flinched. The impact had strained a few muscles. Then he realized that yesterday, the impact might well have killed him. The treatment. “I’m okay,” he said and, following the training Murdock had given him earlier, rolled over, and got the suit back to its feet without help. “Status board indicates damage to some arm actuators,” he reported.
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��Checking,” Adayn said. “Nominal function, you should be okay.”
“Tough suit,” Jim said.
“Saved my bacon more than once,” Murdock replied. “You want to go on?”
“Yeah,” Jim said as he worked the new kink in his neck. “I’m ready.”
“Good man!” Murdock said, the approval in his voice evident. “Let’s go.”
It was three more hours before Jim went through the shutdown routine with his CASPer, backing it into the maintenance harness and setting all the safeties. The suit status said ninety-five percent of his hydrogen fuel remained, after almost five hours of continuous use. Their endurance amazed him, and as the canopy split and opened, he said as much. Adayn was standing on the gantry as it was rolled into place, a smile on her pretty face.
“They’re designed that way,” she said. “Granted, you were just playing around.”
“Playing,” he scoffed.
She chuckled. “Yes, playing. What you were doing is nothing compared to what the suits are capable of.”
Murdock’s suit was docked next to him. Unlike Jim’s, there was no gantry. He just extracted himself, swung around, and without looking climbed down the outside of the ten-foot-tall machine to land smoothly on his booted feet. He was drinking from a water bottle chatting with another armorer while Jim was still struggling with all the haptic connections. Adayn laughed and leaned into the cockpit.
“Here,” she said, “let me help you with that.” She began unhooking the connections. As she leaned over him to release the last of the restraints, Jim was distinctly aware of her breasts pushing into his chest. “There you are,” she said and backed out, “how was that?”
“Wonderful!” he said, grinning ear to ear. She gave him a demure grin and walked down the gantry. Jim tried not to watch her bottom sway as she went down the stairs, but failed.
“You gonna stare or get outta that thing?” Murdock asked.
“Sorry,” he mumbled and began to squirm his way out. While Murdock’s extraction looked like an old Earth fighter pilot climbing down in a 2-D movie, Jim’s probably resembled a rhinoceros giving birth.
“Need help?” Hargrave asked from nearby while he examined the suit’s diagnostics.
“No,” Jim mumbled. It took an embarrassing amount of time to finally crawl free and get to his feet. He was sweaty and tired, but he’d managed to not kill himself getting familiar with the CASPer. “I did it!” he said and smiled. “I actually operated a CASPer.” Adayn looked up from the diagnostic she and Hargrave were doing on his suit. She grinned and gave him a thumbs up. Jim felt his heart flip-flop inside his chest. He wanted to climb back in and learn to do back flips on the off chance she might smile at him like that just one more time. “When can we practice again?”
“Tomorrow,” Murdock said, tossing the empty water bottle into a nearby garbage can and heading for his own suit. “For now, I have another checkout to run.” He gestured to where a different suit was being rolled up, and a trooper was coming out of the changing room holding haptic connections just like Jim had. It was obvious Murdock had more work to do. With his training done, Jim decided it was time for dinner and headed for a car to his tower. At the door he glanced back to look at Adayn one more time. When he saw she was looking at him, he felt his face burn and quickly left.
Jim finished the afternoon in his office, approving and reviewing reports. The final hiring dossier had come in from the personnel office in Houston. They had a new chief pilot, Jane Wheeler, who was the daughter of the Wheeler’s Dealers’ owner. They’d parked her in recruiting and she got bored, so she’d started looking for an adventure. Probably couldn’t pass up the chance of working for one of the Horsemen, either. Murdock had recommended her for the vacant position; he knew her from when she’d recruited him into the Dealers before he’d come over to the Cavaliers. Jim nodded when he saw she had experience in the Phoenix. Good call.
Also listed in the report was a reply to his inquiry about hiring one Rick Culper. A formal request had been sent to the guild, but the response was that Rick Culper already held a contract with the Winged Hussars as a private and was currently off-world. Jim was disappointed he couldn’t hire his friend, but also pleased to know Rick was on board with one of the Four Horsemen. Maybe someday they’d cross paths, if they both lived long enough for that to happen.
So he now had more than 100 employees, most of them either direct combat personnel or combat support. That was impressive in a way and sad in others. He knew from the company’s records that, just before his father died, the Cavaliers had more than 2,000 employees. Of course, they’d been worth almost a billion credits in liquid assets at the time and several times that in equipment. He was taking almost everything they could muster off-world, and it was a force that would have constituted the smallest unit they would have sent off-world only a year ago.
He hadn’t decorated the little office in the old airport administrative building very much. He had better things to do. The one thing he had done was put up a picture of his father, Thaddeus Cartwright. The man stared at him from years gone by, a slight smile on his lips and a hint of optimism shining in his eyes. When had that been, five years ago? Ten? He couldn’t be sure.
“Am I doing this right, dad?” he asked the picture. Of course, it didn’t have anything to say. He sighed and went back to work.
* * * * *
Chapter 12
The ship skimmed in low over the horizon, approaching the site with as much stealth as was possible. The captain piloted the ship himself as no one knew exactly what they were heading into. A courier had passed through the system over a month ago and had received no response when it attempted to contact the base. As a result, they had decided on this reconnaissance, and it was the project head himself who came to investigate.
“How long until we reach the site?” Ashattoo asked.
“Just a few minutes,” the captain replied. The Bakulu turned one of its eye stalks to regard the passenger. Ashattoo tried to ignore the smell of the gastropod. They were incredible pilots and versatile in space, but the briny fish smell...
When they’d emerged from hyperspace, they had tried to communicate with the processing and storage center but got no response. Ashattoo then decided it was best that they approach from the far side of the world. It would take more time, but increased their chances of coming in undetected. A Wathayat combat unit was available, but with 170 hours each way, any help they might need was a long, long way off. He kept wondering what could have happened? The briefing on the base’s defenses indicated they were formidable – considerable air defense and an entire company of Zuul mercenaries.
“The installation should be coming into sensor range,” the Bakulu said. On the tiny bridge screen, the sensors showed the planet’s mundane terrain sweeping by below. A moment later, the outlying buildings of the facility came into view.
“There it is,” Ashattoo said and gestured at the screen. “It must just have been a communications failure.”
“Unlikely,” the pilot said and overlaid additional data. There were no energy emissions from the installation at all. A moment later, the orderly lines of buildings gave way to complete devastation.
“Entropy,” Ashattoo spluttered as they flew over the remnants of Wathayat’s Slost depot. Weeks ago it was a massive gas transfer, purification, and storage facility. Now it looked like a giant had rampaged through it with a rake the size of a mountain, tearing the base from the surface of the planet and leaving miles-long flaming rents behind.
They flew along, following the surreal path of destruction. It moved back and forth around the base, leaving nothing untouched. Eventually they arrived at the center of the installation and came upon a single crater where once the main starport and receiving terminal had been. It was easily a mile wide and spoke of a massive high order explosion, possibly nuclear in origin. The sensors found no life anywhere.
“What are your instructions, administrator?” the captain asked.
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“This is all recorded?” Ashattoo asked. The pilot indicated it was. “Then get us out of here. We must report before whoever did this comes back.”
The scout ship angled upwards and rocketed into space, leaving the dead system behind.
The new contract luncheon was a tradition in most merc companies, and Jim had no intention of discouraging it. The restaurant was also traditional. In the case of the Cavaliers, they frequented a place called Little Joe’s, about a mile from the airport and museum. Jim had visited it once, when he was a pre-teen, to celebrate a particularly successful contract. As he pulled up in a cab with Hargrave, he noticed it wasn’t what it used to be. When he’d contacted them for a reservation, they’d told him any time was fine.
“I was here quite a bit back in my day,” Hargrave said as they got out, and the cab rolled away. The façade of the restaurant was faded, and the canopy torn in a few places. No one manned the valet parking station. “Looks like they haven’t done well lately.”
Jim and Hargrave climbed the few steps to the entrance and went inside. A bored looking woman stood at the maître-d’s station, watching a show on an older model slate. Jim stood waiting for her to notice, but when she didn’t seem to, or was purposely ignoring him, he went over and cleared his throat.
“What?” she asked without looking up. “No public bathrooms.”
“We have a reservation.” She looked up and then at him. She took in his company uniform as well as Hargrave’s.
“This some kind of a joke?” she asked. “There ain’t no Cavaliers no more.”
“We disagree,” Hargrave said and swept his hands down his own uniform. “Where’s Little Joe?”
“In the kitchen. There’s a big group coming in this afternoon.” She looked down at her slate and tapped at it. “You Jim?” she asked.
“That would be me.” As if on cue, the door opened again; and First Sergeant Murdock came in with a tall woman, both laughing at some joke. Behind them were a dozen more. She looked at the growing crowd in surprise, then turned and yelled.
