by Mark Harritt
“Suck it up, buttercup. You gotta get up.”
Mike groaned. He knew that voice. He looked down at the bottom of his cot. A behemoth stood there, partially blocking the light. Mickey, the self-styled ‘Beast of Brooklyn’ was considerably leaner than he had been. Still he was bigger and stronger than anybody else, even Murph. God alone knew what he had in his genetic landscape, but whatever it was, it was big. Mike’s money was on bear or gorilla. Mickey was bald, his hair line low on the side of his head, cropped short since he couldn’t shave it anymore. He had gone to the other extreme with his beard. It was a full, thick, golden red beard that curled down to his chest, probably inherited through the Irish side of his family. Mickey had his rifle slung across his chest.
Mike levered himself up onto his elbows, the sleeping bag sliding down, “Why?”
Mickey hooked a thumb over his shoulder, “There’s hostiles inbound on the big screen.”
Mike swung his feet out of the sleeping bag as he sat up. He felt the dirt on the floor through the soles of his feet. In the back of his mind, he thought that they needed to sweep the room.
“What’s going on?” Mike asked.
“Multiple hostiles moving on our position.”
“How far out?”
“About ten miles, maybe twenty to forty minutes, depending.”
Mike nodded.
Mike looked around the room. There were a few others in there, Yee, Drapier, Daughtry, Joseph, and Stein. Stein had started out in administration, but he had proved his worth with a rifle, and he was part of the security team now. They were all in various states of waking up.
Mike looked back at Mickey, “Okay, I’ll make sure they’re all out there.”
Mickey grinned, and turned to go back out the door.
Mike looked around for his pants. The cobwebs cleared a bit, “Mickey, who’s in the Mechs?”
Mickey stopped and looked back, “Jen, Michelle, Keisha, Diane, and Rita.”
Mike stopped, “All five mechs? That serious?”
“Lots of smaller targets as well.”
“Spawn?”
Mickey nodded, “Maybe.”
Mike was completely awake now. He looked around the room, “Alright, everybody get your butts moving. Full body armor. We don’t have time to waste.”
Mickey slipped out the door.
Mike pulled on his clothes, jumped up, slung his belt on with his pistol, picked up his rifle, and walked quickly out of the room into the tunnel. He turned right towards the armory. Since they were security, they were in the first room closest to the armory. Non-combat personnel were beginning to walk past, moving to safety.
Mike hurried into the armory. Everybody that was going to fight was getting suited up. It looked like a bad sequel to a popular movie. They looked like storm troopers in the body armor, though dirty grey instead of white. The over layer was the same type that was used on the mechs. It had the same inflating foam as an under layer. It looked like medieval armor, though with a modern twist, carbon fiber and spider silk.
After the death of Airman Babcock, his chest crushed by a giant bear, they realized that the security team needed body armor. The body armor that they’d developed was pretty amazing, the engineers and techs working with Mike’s team to design it. It was a moving target that the techs were working to upgrade and improve.
It wasn’t one size fit all, but rather, molded to fit the person using it, each piece of armor stenciled with the name of the person it fit. The spider silk and carbon fiber cloth were the underlying strata to keep the armor pieces together. The vests that carried their battle rattle was constructed off of the pattern of the old multicam vests that the team used to wear.
The last part of the armor was the helmet. It was the same helmet that the Mechs used, with blue tooth and a heads up display to identify friend and foe. It fit like a motorcycle helmet, though it didn’t have a visor. Instead of a visor, a series of lenses were arrayed around the helmet surface. They fed an image back to the heads up display inside the helmet. Because of this, there were no weak points to be exploited. The soldiers and airmen looked like robots, their humanity hidden by the body armor and smooth mask of the helmets.
Catcalls greeted him.
“Hey, look who decided to get out of bed and join us.”
“Sleeping beauty, who kissed you to wake you up?”
He waved them off, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
As he walked over to his body armor, four more bodies came into the armory behind him, Joseph notably absent. Mike walked over, and sat down his rifle so that he could pull on his armor. The body armor was unique. The plates were made of stiffened monomolecular graphene stiffened with a polymer solution. The fabric was the same monomolecular graphene interspersed with spider silk. It looked like bulky shirt and pants.
He had to put the pants on first, the lower armor held up with straps that routed over his shoulders. He had to take his boots off to put the pants on. He pulled them on, stood up, and looped the straps over his shoulders. The armor was lined with the same type of ballistic padding that the mech armor used, which inflated when a small trickle charge was run through it. He sat down to pull his boots on and laced them up. The last thing he did was tighten the straps to secure the armor around his shin and over the boots.
Next he pulled on the upper torso body armor. It pulled on like a shirt. Mike picked up the top and pulled it over his head. The body armor settled, and Mike locked the upper to the bottom with heavy clips to keep them from separating.
“You need some help with that?” Tom asked.
“Yeah, battery, radio, straps. You know the deal.”
There was an open receptacle on the back left shoulder. He grabbed a battery off of the table and slapped it into the receptacle. Tom picked up one of the quantum entangled radios and slapped it in next to the battery, and shut the cover. The foam inside the armor began to inflate. The armor was strictly defensive and not power assisted. The techs were working on an upgrade that would change that.
“You good Mike?” Tom asked.
“Yeah, It’s inflated, go ahead and tighten the straps.”
Mike’s body was jerked from side to side as Tom worked on the straps. When Tom stopped, Mike grunted to indicate that it everything was okay. Tom handed him the combat vest, which Mike settled over his body armor and strapped it to fit.
Last was the helmet. Mike picked it up and put it on. Mike felt the tug and his head tilted as Tom plugged in a wire from the body armor to the helmet. Mike flipped the switch. At first, he couldn’t see a thing, then the faint glow of the screen appeared. Quickly, it flared into a heads up display. The room was displayed with an overlay of combat information.
There was no checklist to work though on this helmet since there were no mech armor systems to spool up. The A.I. in the helmet was still pretty sophisticated, though a lot of the functionality wasn’t needed. He still had location of friendlies, which was being populated on his display as he waited. Names of the friendlies populated as well. It was damn hot in the body armor, so Mike turned on his refrigeration unit. With the heat and humidity on this world, they had to have air-conditioning in the body armor. Everything immediately cooled down about ten degrees.
He turned his head to the side to look around him. Tom buckled the bib that protected Mike’s neck, and Mike was battle ready. The collar on the shoulders of the body armor diminished his capability to look around. Not by much, but just enough that it was noticeable. He knew it was there to protect his neck from strikes, so he had learned to live with it.
“Radio check, over,” he broadcast.
The radios were quantum entangled, so they didn’t broadcast so much as immediately understand what was sent. They could transmit over long distance and through any medium, including rock. The radio was set up with multiple channels. There was a command channel that only Mike, Ken, and Jennifer could talk on. Luis was on that channel as well, so that he could monitor the situation with the drone
and cameras, and talk to the leaders as needed. There was a general channel that everyone could talk on. There were three team channels, one for the Mechs, one for the security team, and one for the Spec Ops team, or Mech, Sec, and Spec. Mickey had taken the naming convention further, naming Luis and John the Tec team during training maneuvers. The name stuck. Mike, Jennifer, Ken, and Everett were also able to open up a private channel to each other as needed.
He heard a familiar, melodic voice in his ear, “Roger Mike, I hear you five by five.”
“Hey Jen, your team ready to go out there?” he asked.
“Yeah, Teams up, ready to go,” she replied.
“Ken, what about your team?”
“Waiting on one. I’ll give you the heads up when he’s ready.”
Mike knew immediately that Ken was talking about Joseph. Mike was going to have to talk to Murph about that problem. If anybody could kick Joseph in the ass, it was Murph.
“Team, I need a SITREP.”
The team started with Everett, and worked through the ranks until Tom replied, “Tom reporting, Green across the board.”
Mike leaned over to pick up his rifle. He slung it over his chest.
Ken reported, “Mike, Sec team’s up.”
“Alright, Spec team on me. Sec team, start deploying outside. Mech team, you ready to take up positions?”
Ken started rattling off commands to his team on a sub channel. Mike headed towards the door with his team behind him.
Jennifer answered him, “Roger Mike, Mech team is taking up position on the wall.”
Mike walked out of the tunnel, stopping short as the Mech team moved forward. Beyond the ledge, sheets of rain decreased visibility. Water sloughed off of the cliff face, creating a curtain that Mike could barely see through. It was a miserable day, though soon it would be a miserable night. It was twilight, the daylight waning. The landing shimmered in the light cast from the tunnel and lights used for Mech maintenance on the ledge.
Randall, Weitz and McFarland walked by with the rest of the techs, heading into the tunnel. Randall and Weitz ignored the soldiers as they walked past. Randall had that superior look on her face and Weitz just looked annoyed. Bobby McFarland had a completely different attitude, wishing everybody luck.
If there was one thing that all factions agreed on, it was that the mech armor had to have constant maintenance, upgraded with any reasonable weapons or tech they found on the static ‘net that they could fabricate. In this world, the only thing that kept the monsters from killing them was the Mech armor. Techs were constantly busy making sure that the mechs were in perfect working order.
With the unlimited energy offered by the quantum batteries, it made sense to concentrate on energy weapons. Two new weapons had been added to the mechs. Both were non-lethal, but they would incapacitate anything that they were aimed at. One was a short wave microwave weapon that made an assailant feel like their skin was on fire. The other was a subsonic sound weapon that immediately made an assailant feel sick to their stomach, and at high energy, could make them vomit and void their bowels. It wasn't pretty, but it was effective.
Mike waited until the last tech cleared out of the way, and then stepped into the rain. Twilight had turned to dark. His display went from regular light to starlight as he moved forward. Unlike conventional starlight, his view was three dimensional due to the multiple lenses on the face of the helmet.
It was sweltering hot in the humidity from the rain. He looked at an icon on his helmet, and the neural interface dropped the temp down another ten degrees. Immediately, he felt the difference as the suit shunted his body heat and worked to cool him down.
The rain poured down, working its way through the cracks and soon Mike was soaked. He wished he was inside one of the mechs. It would be nice and dry in there. It was going to be a very wet night.
“Ken, there are eight of you, and five of us. Spread your men across the wall, and we’ll intersperse between you.”
Mike’s team waited, letting the security team move into position in front of them. The Mechs heavy tread marked their progression to the front of the landing. The sec team moved to a secondary location, about twenty feet behind the Mechs.
“Alright, Spec, move in between Sec.”
Mike’s special operations team had a hell of a lot more experience at combat than the security team did. It was experience won by fighting terrorists around the world in the twenty-first century. Mike, Jennifer, Everett, and Ken had talked about it, and they all agreed that this was the best configuration for combat operations.
Mike and Everett realized that, while Mike and the team were good fits for the body armor, they could increase their combat capabilities by letting the women ride the mechs, and put Mike and his team back out on foot. That way, they could step in to bolster the courage of the other grunts. With the wall in place, the spec ops team had switched with Jennifer and her team.
Mike and Everett had run training scenarios to get them up to speed, and over the past few months, Sec and Mech had done pretty good. Combined arms still ruled the day. The training had involved the mechs and the grunts working as a team. Still, training could only go so far. There was no such thing as a fair fight in the real world. Combat was where you thrived or you died. You had an innate capability to apply controlled violence or you went home in a body bag. In this scenario, it was unlikely that Jennifer’s team would have casualties. If there were casualties, it would most likely be the Spec or Sec teams that had them.
The Sec team all had shotguns, with pistols as their secondary. Mike and his team all had their Sig 716s ready, Sig P220s as secondary.
“Ken, is your team in place?”
“Roger Mike, team is set.”
“Jen, Spec and Sec are in place. Can you share the threat situation with us?”
Since the A.I.s that the non mechs had were limited, most of the heavy lifting was done by the mech A.I.s.
“Roger Mike, hostile sit is coming to you, now.”
Mike’s display suddenly lit up with all of the hostile targets. A wall of orange showed up in front of him.
“Jesus Christ!”
Ken’s voice cut in, “Joseph, none of that! Everybody, check out your display. Threat is orange. Once it’s in range, it will turn red. Nobody engages until I give the word. Let me know that you understand.”
The sec team replied from the highest ranking, down to the lowest ranking, starting with Murphy, and ending with Kendrik.
Mike reported to Jennifer, “Spec team is a go.”
Ken was next, “Sec team is a go.”
“Roger, all teams are a go. Spec and Sec, we have primary. We’ll stop anything coming in. If something gets past us, take it down.”
“Roger, Mech leader,” Mike and Ken replied, in sequence.
Mike didn’t have the map display that Jennifer did, which would show where the hostiles were in relation to the friendlies. The only thing he could see was the orange dots that marked the threat in front of him. There were eight large threats, and hundreds of smaller ones. The smaller dots blinked in and out as the heat signatures moved behind trees and rocks. They looked like an invading army.
Mike thought, and the neural interface cued a private channel so that he could talk to Jennifer privately, “Jen, you’re in charge. You need to talk and let everybody know what you’re seeing. If you don’t tell them, they’ll start imagining the worst.”
“Thanks Mike,” Jennifer acknowledged his input.
Jennifer ran with Mike’s advice and started giving orders, “Okay, ladies, we have some targets starting to present. The eight targets in front are the grown dragons. That big one there is probably the Ancient. I’m going to paint him as target one.”
A number 1 showed on Mike’s heads up.
“The three small ones are probably the brooding females. They are now targets six, seven and eight.”
The four medium targets are the other males, they are now targets two, three, four, five.”
“I’m not going to number the smaller targets. Engage them when you can, targets of opportunity. We don’t know what’s going on. We’re on defense until we can figure out what the hell the Ancient is doing. When we have an idea, we’ll react. Hopefully, the wall will keep them from getting to us, and we’ll have a target rich environment.”
Since Jen had the situation well in hand, Mike switched over to the Spec team channel. He heard Rob talking.
“I’m telling you, Stephanie Lane has an amazing ass.”
Tom replied, “Dude, Michelle will beat your ass if you talk like that around her.”
“No she won’t. She loves me. She does exactly what I want her to.”
Mike decided to mess with Roberto, “You know you’re broadcasting on an open channel and Michelle can hear everything you’re saying, don’t you?”
There was a sudden silence on the other end. Mike started laughing.
“Oh damn, Mike, that’s just not right,” the relief in Rob’s voice was palpable.
Mickey’s voice rumbled into the conversation, “You have only yourself to blame.”
“What do you mean?” Rob asked.
“You’re the one with the roaming eye. Besides, Stephanie’s hanging with Rich.”
“He’s a boy. Stephanie wants a man.”
“If she wants a man, she’s not going to be looking at you, Roberto,” Tom replied.
“That hurts, Tom. Deeply.”
“You are so full of crap Rob.”
“Yes, that is why my eyes are br . . .”
Jennifer’s voice cut into the conversation, the command channel overriding, “Mike, do you see that?”
“What’s that, Jen?”
“The dragons have stopped.”
Mike checked his display. The hostile overlay had painted the threat red, “Kind of hard to see that on my display, Jen, though they do look like they may be stationary.”
In front of Mike, without the hostile overlay, nothing looked different. The dragons were hidden in the forest. It looked suspiciously liked they were acting tactically. Mike didn’t have a good feeling about this.
