by J. N. Chaney
What, they think I’m going to go berserk? It’s a new arm, not a new brain.
But he stood patiently as the techs came back and ran their tests. Evidently, they had the same results as Punch because Rev was cleared.
“If you would approach the firing line, Sergeant,” the range SNCOIC, the staff non-commissioned officer in charge, told him.
Two of the techs flanked him as he stood up . . . and almost fell over. The IBHU was heavy. He’d been training with a dummy arm, but this was different. He had to wait a moment for the servos in his harness to adjust for the weight disparity between his left and right sides.
“OK, I’m ready,” he told the techs as he stepped forward.
Between his previous augments and the new ones, Rev could handle the weight of the arm and power pack on his back, but it was the same as when he lifted weights prior to being conscripted. His muscles could handle the weights, but they felt heavy, putting a strain on bones and joints. Multiply that feeling by twenty, and that’s how it felt now with the looming mass hanging over his head.
If he was ever supposed to be a super-maneuverable warrior, juking and jiving as he closed in with a Centaur, he was going to need a lot of practice. It wasn’t going to be as easy as he was led to believe.
When he reached the range firing line, the techs fell back as if they were afraid he’d detonate like a wounded Centaur. But Rev was too excited to feel offended. Whatever misgivings he had just felt were replaced with a feeling of raw power. It made no sense from a logical perspective, but being connected to his IBHU made it part of him. He felt like a modern-day Zeus, ready to throw lightning bolts at will.
“OK, Sergeant Pelletier. I want you to go through your motion progressions now,” Doctor Chakrabarti said over the range net.
Rev didn’t want to go through his progressions. He wanted to blow something up, and right there in front of him was a Centaur paladin mock-up. But with a sigh, he started his progressions. It was not much different than doing the Marine Corps Daily Seven, exercises designed to stretch and warm the body up before heading out on a run.
Then the doctor asked him to extend his hand. Rev grimaced. This was surprisingly the most difficult thing he’d done in the simulations. Rev wouldn’t always be running around, blasting Centaurs. Sometimes, he would just need two good hands, and his IBHU was equipped with one.
Sort of.
This wasn’t another social hand, essentially looking like his organic right hand. It was a skeletal framework with the only similarity to a real hand was that it had five appendages. He refused to call them fingers. From appearances, they looked like crosses between human finger bones and short octopus tentacles. Two could be opposable, and all of them could fuse together in any combination to make grasping clamps. One had a suite of sensors that could test and identify materials, currents, and frequencies.
The reason using the hand was so difficult was related to the arm itself, which was designed to act as if it were a part of his body. Aiming and firing one of the weapons was supposed to be as natural as pointing a finger at something.
The hand was not part of the same biosynth neural pathways but rather more common prosthetic designs, so Rev had to consciously move and control it. Added to the fact that this hand did far more and in different ways than his organic hand, it was pretty difficult for him to master.
He gave the command, and the hand emerged from its slot and deployed. It looked just like the simulation. With a sigh, Rev haltingly put it through its paces. Rev knew the hand would prove useful, but, for the moment, it was the bane of his existence.
Finally, they were done, and Rev stood in excited expectation. Too early, as it turned out.
“I want you to confirm that your weapons systems are disengaged,” the doctor told him.
“They are,” he said into his throat mic.
“Did you check them?”
“Check weapons system,” he told Punch.
“Confirmed. My weapons are disengaged.”
He wanted to get on with it, but he had to grudgingly admit that maybe she was right. He had no Yellowjackets nor rounds in his magazines, but with the powerpack on his back, his beamer cannon was live, and firing it was not like physically pulling a trigger. It wasn’t quite controlled by his mind, but it wasn’t far off. It was basically him pointing at the target.
“I want you to draw on the tin-ass ahead of you.”
Tin-ass? You’ve been spending too much time with us Marines, Doc.
There was a small relay incorporated into the IBHU, so the doctor and all the brass could follow along and see what he did.
Nothing like being on display.
The first couple of times, the doctor left him alone to draw on the faux-Centaur. The IBHU moved like it was a part of him. It was as easy as pointing at something with his right arm. Maybe all the time spent in the simulator was paying off.
After ten minutes, the doctor transitioned to having her give Rev a signal, in this case, a tone. Rev waited, like Doc Holliday at the OK Corral, ready to draw. He didn’t ask Punch for his times, but he felt fast.
And then, Doctor Chakrabarti called for a break while the techs gave Rev a thorough check. They must have found nothing wrong because they turned and gave the doctor a thumb’s up.
Once they’d retreated, the doctor told the gathered observers that things were going well, and she was going to authorize a live test of the IBHU. Even forty meters behind him, Rev could feel the excitement level rise—and not just with them. Rev’s heartbeat jumped up as well.
Finally!
The range SNCOIC’s voice reverberated across the area. “Attention on Range 401. We are going hot.”
“Sergeant Pelletier, don’t worry about speed on this. We just want a clean shot,” the doctor passed.
“Ready on the right, ready on the left, ready on the firing line,” the SNCOIC announced.
There is no right or left. There’s just me.
“Shooter, you are cleared to fire.”
“Activate the weapons.”
Rev slowly raised the weapon and aimed at the target. He “thought” the impulse to fire, and with a blast, intertwined energy streams in a hodgepodge of frequencies lashed out, creating twinkling sparks of ionized air as the beams collided with each other.
The target broke into a thousand pieces, some shooting over a hundred meters in the air.
Rev stared at the destruction in awe.
“Holy crap!”
Rev leaned back in his seat as the van took him to the hospital. The others were in constant conversation, but he was in his own private cocoon, oblivious to everyone else.
The last hour had been a grunt’s wet dream. He’d fired his beam weapon twice more before shifting to the .50 cal, all the time turning little pieces of fake-Centaur into even smaller pieces. The observers had been beside themselves with excitement. The lieutenant general had returned, and he’d been so amped that he rushed out of the stands to congratulate him.
But no matter how excited they were, they couldn’t begin to feel how Rev experienced it. This was not like picking up a weapon and firing it, as much of a rush as that could be. Rev was the weapon. He’d been reaching out and destroying the target as if he were an ancient god.
He was powerful.
Not so much at the moment, he thought, as he looked down at his social arm. He slowly twisted the wrist, wiggling the fingers. He’d been amazed at it before, but now it was merely adequate.
A little less adequate than before, true. It was loose in the sleeve. Evidently, the stress his IBHU put on the sleeve had warped it a bit, and now his social arm did not have the same tight fit it had before. His old reliable Daryll promised Rev that he’d fix it after they got back from Camp Kamachi.
“So, what do you think?”
“That’s a wimpy answer.”
Rev let out a quick chuckle. Punch’s sense of humor was developing. It wasn’t just the corny one-line jokes anymore. But underlying the humor, Punch was right. This was Rev’s show, and the final decision was his.
Which one?
As Rev left the range after all the backslapping and posing with the VIP observers, he knew he couldn’t keep referring to his new arm as his IBHU. It wasn’t fitting. After a conversation with Punch, he decided that he needed a name, something appropriate like the famous weapons in history and myth.
He’d briefly considered Excalibur, but that was too common and tropish. He had to ask Punch what Thor’s hammer was named—it was Mjölnir—but that didn’t have the right feel. It was on the right track, though. As the van reached the highway, he had a list of famous swords, which he started to whittle down. And now, five minutes from the hospital, which was his self-imposed deadline to decide on a name, he was down to three.
In Hindu mythology, Pashupatastra was the irresistible and most destructive personal weapon of Shiva and Kali. It could be discharged by the mind, the eyes, or the spoken word. It was so powerful that it was capable of destroying creation itself, so it was never to be used against lesser enemies or by lesser warriors. It might be difficult to say, but the imagery was powerful.
Durendal was the sword carried by Roland, the legendary paladin serving Charlemagne. Tradition had it that when Roland cut a huge gash in the rocks with one blow, it created Roland's Breach in the Pyrenees in the process. Not as amazing as Pashupatastra, possibly, but the paladin connection had its own irony.
Fragarach, according to Irish mythology, was the sword of Nuada, the first high king. The sword was forged by the gods and was meant to be wielded only by those who posed above the stone of destiny. Tradition held that if Fragarach was held at someone’s throat, they could neither move nor tell a lie. The sword also placed the wind at the user's command, it could cut through any shield or wall, and it inflicted wounds from which no man could recover.
As the hospital came into view, Rev had to make a decision. His new weapon/arm was too special, too personal, to just have a military designation like the M-49. Tankers named their tanks, so why couldn’t he do the same?
Durendal was not as powerful a sword as the other two, but using the sword for one kind of paladin to kill another was ironic and tickled Rev’s somewhat weird sense of humor.
Fragarach was a more powerful weapon, able to cut through a wall. A Centaur courser was not a wall, true, but Rev was fine with the analogy.
Pashupatastra was difficult to pronounce (he’d had to have Punch repeat it several times before it sunk in), but being able to be controlled through the mind? That was, in a very real way, his modus operandi now with the weapon.
“Don’t pressure me.”
But Rev had already decided. The controlling through the mind was just too close of an analogy.
“It’s Pashupatastra. But we can call it Pashu for short.”
29
Rev’s high didn’t last long. As he returned from the range, the charge nurse grabbed him and told him he had a visitor waiting in one of the admin offices.
“Do you know who it is? Someone from my Raider team?”
“All I got was the message. Probably some documents you have to sign or other admin BS.”
“OK, I’m on my way.”
Rev made his way to the H-wing where most of the administrative offices were. In some ways, the Union military was the epitome of a bureaucracy run wild, but it was just something to put up with. And some of it was really well-intentioned, such as the continual effort to certify next-of-kin and insurance data. With the high mortality rate, it made sense. It still was a pain in the butt, however.
Rev found the designated office and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
He pushed it open. The office was bare, with a single desk and a chair placed in front of it. A grandfatherly looking man sat behind the desk, but his eyes were sharp and piercing, belying the rest of his appearance.
“Sit, Sergeant.”
Rev hesitated, unease rising, but he didn’t have much choice. He walked in and sat down.
“Thank you for coming.”
As if I had a choice.
“Are you Omega Division?” Rev asked, suddenly sure of it. He’d expected a visit after hearing about the Frisian accusation, but now that it looked like it was time, he could feel his panic rising.
“You don’t know the OD.”
“Why would you ask me that, Sergeant Pelletier?” the man asked in a calm voice.
Rev shrugged but didn’t answer.
The man said, “I would like to ask you some questions.”
And you didn’t answer mine.
That, more than anything else, merely confirmed that this man was Omega Division, and that made him the opposition. OD agents were all over the holovids, and rarely in a good light. Rev, like most citizens, didn’t know how much of how they were portrayed was true, but he was not happy that he was in this situation. Nothing good could come of it.
“Have you spoken to anyone about the Centaur body you and Sergeant Reiser discovered on Rohoer-104?”
Boy, he gets right to it.
“You don’t have to swear me in or something? Read me my rights?”
The agent smiled. “I don’t need to get you to swear to anything. The truth is the truth. As far as your rights, I’m merely asking you some questions. Surely, you, a Marine NCO, can’t object to that.”
Rev just stared at the man, trying to will his heart to slow down.
“So, I’ll ask again. Have you spoken to, or communicated in any way, with anyone about the Centaur body you found on Roher-104?”
“No, sir.”
“Hmm.” The man sat back in his chair, folded his hands, held them under his chin, and stared at Rev for a long moment over them. “I don’t think I really have to tell you that you shouldn’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” Rev said, his voice rising as the panic surged.
“I’ll ask you one more time. Have you spoken to, or communicated in any way, with anyone about the Centaur body you found on Roher-104?”
“No! I haven’t. You have to believe me.”
The man watched him, and Rev could almost feel the man’s eyes burn him like lasers.
“OK, then. Let me ask you this. Who is Hank?”
The question caught Rev off balance. “Who? Hank who?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me. You said you’ve never spoken to anyone about the Centaur body. Now I want to know who Hank is.”
“But I don’t know . . .”
But he did know, he suddenly realized. Hank was the name he and Tomiko had used to refer to the body. He felt his heart skip a beat.
“Have you spoken to Sergeant Reiser?”
“She is being interviewed now, yes.”
Then how the hell does he know about their nickname for the tin-ass?
And he does know. Rev’s mind raced as he tried to come up with an excuse, but if they knew about the name, then he couldn’t hide it.
“Hank was just a name Sergeant Reiser and I had for the body in case anyone was listening in.”
Like the Omega Division, it turns out.
“So, you have spoken about the Centaur to other people.”
“But she was there. The lieutenant, too. And then all the SeaBees. We were all together for a month. You know that.”
“I never differentiated in my question between those who were involved with the operation and those who weren’t. So, you have communicated with others.”
“When you put it that way, sir, yes.”
The agent was quiet for a moment and then said, “And that leads me to my next quest
ion. Have you communicated in any way with people other than those who were present during the operation about the Centaur body?”
“No,” Rev said forcefully.
He knew it wasn’t just the agent there deciding whether to believe him or not. There were sensors taking in everything about him now—his breathing, pulse, sweat, whatever they could use to indicate if he was telling the truth.
The agent said nothing. His throat was slightly twitching, indicating that he was probably subvocalizing with his AI. Most people wouldn’t pick up on that, but most people didn’t have Rev’s augmented eyesight.
Rev sat and waited. He was telling the truth, he knew, but still, he was nervous. Omega Division didn’t need the truth if they wanted to do something.
Finally, the agent pulled a small remote out of a pocket and pressed it. Immediately, Rev felt a . . . not a loss, but maybe a void?
“Punch?”
There wasn’t an answer.
“I’ve put your AI to sleep, Sergeant.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a small tablet, and attached a cable to it before standing and coming around to Rev. Rev stared warily at the cable, knowing that whatever the agent wanted to do, with Punch offline, there would be no witnesses.
“I’m going to conduct an II.”
Rev stood. An Invasive Interrogation was supposed to be only done by court order and in the most serious cases. It was essentially a brain dump. Most of what a jacked person had in their drives was supposed to be confidential, but no one really believed that. And that had been one reason that Rev had initially balked at getting jacked.
The agent looked up at Rev. “Really, son? Yes, with your augments, you can fight me. I wouldn’t last a second. But then what? You think you can stand up to the Union government?” When Rev said nothing, he continued. “I suggest you sit down and let me get this done. If you really are not the leak, then you have nothing to fear. I promise you that.”
Rev knew he was innocent. But to have his brain invaded? Everything he’d seen and said would be there. Maybe the thoughts themselves, but even with them, who knew what OD could do?
