Astral Fall

by Jessica Mae Stover

  She stood with her hands on her talons, sheathed at hip, as though ready-to-draw was her at-rest position. “Move your gravis higher up your IF ladder. Rank its access as prime. Given my record with a talon, some are surprised when I argue that the gravis is the best weapon we have. It won’t kill someone in a combat suit, but it buys time and, since it has a less permanent effect on the target, prevents second-guessing. You’re more likely to use it without hesitation. It also moves materials, especially the ones you don’t want to puncture or blow up with talon fire. And it’s hard for anyone less than a chessie to anticipate how it will be deployed.”

  “With a couple of quick gravis moves, a Nova could align nine pirates in security suits, and then sniper them straight through a few times. If she could hit the right spot.”

  “I suppose. Theoretically.”

  If I hadn’t been at Leto Cross, I wouldn’t have known she was there. Her intel face is perfect; she gives nothing away. Except the day Crave recruited me, when she looked like she was arguing against it.

  Thwip made the adjustments she suggested and checked his intel data to see if he had more unit history yet, specifically Leto Cross, and found that nothing new had arrived since he last checked the night before. “I’m ready.”

  “Pulse your material conservation and x-acto up another level, then pulse your element blast to your ring finger, high enough for emergencies but low enough that it takes a longer pulse combo to access. Don’t want to accidentally set that off.”

  That’s an understatement. “Have you ever used the EB?”

  “Yes.”

  Cosmos.

  “I hope not to have to again. It’s ungodly.” She walked toward the deck’s exit ramp and he trailed her. “But maybe sometimes God needs a divine instrument to deliver a brutal package for the larger good, and we serve. That’s all I’ve got,” she threw over her shoulder. “Weapons deck is yours. Go through your gear. Engage the training sim. Skregs!” She pulsed through Skregs’ mute, compelling him to return to color from greyscale. “Watch his tether.”

  “Copy that, ‘Feathers.’ ”

  She muted Skregs in sarcastic response, and he barked a laugh, then greyscaled out. The sound of her footsteps on the WD’s ramp was imperceptible as she left Thwip behind.

  All right, noted. Charis does not like to teach.

  Thwip scanned in the WD’s warehouse-size depths, toggling between different scans before slightly readjusting his master composite. The deck was 150 square meters. The pallets of weaponry containers sealed in protective casings were rounded at the top, giving them a lumpy look. He skimmed their hashes and read arms categories ranging from PT gear to heavy mech to craft armaments. A large rectangular space across from the entry ramp extended beyond the rest of the back wall, and housed a fire course sim set up for target practice. It picked up his scan, and on his IF gave him the option of engagement. He accepted.

  PARTICIPANT MUST BE POSITIONED INSIDE THE PROTECTED SIM AREA BEFORE COMMENCEMENT.

  He positioned himself inside the sim area.

  PARTICIPANT POSITION ACCEPTED. ARE THERE ADDITIONAL PARTICIPANTS?

  Thwip glanced at his IF. The unit remained in private or greyscale. He cleared his IF of non-weapons-related data, magnified his talon mechs, and chose a moderate-level sim to start.

  “Commence sim.”

  COMMAND UNCLEAR. ARE THERE ADDITIONAL PARTICIPANTS?

  “Negative.”

  ONE PARTICIPANT.

  Thwip unsheathed his talon, and the sim’s safety shields locked in around the course, protecting the Vesper from stray fire. The trial commenced without warning. He scanned and tracked the targets, taking aim from where he stood, shooting for the first time in trepid.

  What in hell…

  All the targets had dropped a tenth of a second before he pulsed his weapon, as though someone else had shot them first.

  Thwip cast his scan around and remagnified the sim’s communications on his IF.

  SAFETY WALLS DISABLED.

  PARTICIPANT TWO ADDED.

  His local scan positioned Charis halfway up the corridor in static position. Crave came into scan, revealing his presence, and walked past her with a talon in hand.

  Thwip stifled a laugh—it was the kind of thing he might have done himself when he was less serious, pre-military, but he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be funny since it was hard to imagine Crave as playful. He watched for a lesson.

  Crave and Charis’ faces colorized on Thwip’s IF as her eyes narrowed at Crave. “You shooting up my deck?”

  Crave jerked his head competitively toward the WD, raising a challenge. She drew her weapon and walked with him back toward Thwip. He aligned himself with the entry ramp and could see them coming. It was a straight shot, and Crave had taken out the targets from the far end of the connecting corridor. They entered with talons drawn, passed Thwip, and took parallel positions inside the sim in front of him. They must have been setting a different trial than he used; the course hash shifted to a different number.

  SAFETY WALLS ENABLED. PARTICIPANT THREE ADDED.

  “Skin on weapon?” Crave asked her, dimming the lights.

  “If you prefer, but it only makes it easier for me to beat you.”

  “Unit be advised, we’ll be de-suiting for a few minutes.”

  Without pulse gloves, they won’t be able to hit with rapid precision.

  “Copy that,” Skregs said.

  Thwip sheathed his talon and left the sim area to watch from outside.

  PARTICIPANT ONE REMOVED.

  Charis raised her talon and formed a circle with her thumb and index finger; Crave returned the signal. The lights cut and the sim began. They both hit the first target, and then quickly removed their hardhoods.

  Shit. How are they going to target to hit the rest?

  Second shot—they pulled their auttie yanks. Third shot—they unsealed their suits, pulled their suits down to the waist, and took off their pulse gloves, giving up a piece of gear between each target round until they were shooting in their basic greys, using skin-on-weapon pulsing with no hardhoods for targeting in the dark. Thwip watched the motion scan on his IF analyze the physics of the forces involved.

  A beep rang out to signal the end of the round. Charis pulsed the safety on her talon, shook her red hair, and began to resuit, along with Crave. She chewed on another dark strip, offering Crave one, which he thanked her for and folded into his mouth all at once. Thwip’s hood scanned the strips, but he didn’t have enough time or the right scans ready, and it identified them vaguely as fertilizer.

  The scores arrived with a ripple on the unit’s IFs. The numbers were in the hundreds of thousands.

  This competition must have been going on years, maybe a decade. They keep a cumulative score.

  Stunned by their precision, Thwip went through the data twice. They’d both hit all of their targets, some without the benefit of IF and pulse gloves. Charis was faster on half of the shots by at least 0.2 seconds, a fractional lead that, repeated over the years, gave her a significant margin in quadruple digits.

  Crave pulled his hood on, joined Charis and Thwip outside the sim space, and pulsed them all a comparison of the new total score to the previous total; he had closed the wide gap by a few points.

  “Creeping up on you,” Crave said, highlighting the difference in their scores as he pulse-locked the talon and tossed it to her. She caught it with her regloved hand.

  “Not by much.”

  Crave turned to Thwip. “You need to be shot.”

  Wheck returned from private mode, blinking off sleep. Both he and Skregs unmuted the loop, and were now watching what was happing in the WD.

  “Why don’t you just come down here, then?” Charis said to them.

  Wheck yawned. “Now Char, you know I can spectate adequately from the exquisite comfort of my sleep hold.”

  “Shoot him already,” Skregs said. “I have to step into a briefing in a few minutes.”

  “I
t’s a required part of trepid training workup,” Charis said to Thwip. She crossed the module and mounted Crave’s talon next to his other equipment in the open trepid containers. Pulsing the lights up, she tossed Crave his short-range talon, which he sheathed smoothly on his right hip.

  “If a Nova has to be shot, another Nova will do the honor. And you’re no longer a recruit, so I won’t do it without consent,” said Crave.

  “Shot in safety so that I won’t be unprepared the first time I’m shot during a mission?” Thwip asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I consent.”

  Crave unsheathed his talon—

  “Wait. What’s the most powerful weapon this suit can take?”

  Crave and Charis turned their heads toward one another, and via his IF Thwip saw them smile simultaneously.

  She walked to the WD’s left wall, removed the heaviest long-range talon from Crave’s gear, checked the power supply, downed it to safety, and swung her arm to toss it to Crave—

  ZPHHHT!

  The tinkling sound of a weapons proximity warning hit Thwip’s aurals, and his innerface redframed. He stumbled backward, spun to the right, and skidded to the floor, watching the spray of numbers that haloed him with equations of force. His IF generated a diagram that advised him on how he could regain his footing and exert offensive maneuvering.

  “Status?” Crave asked.

  “Golden.”

  His chem balancers slid.

  Charis wove her way to where he was slumped against the back of the sim’s safety wall, grasped him at the elbow, and pulled him the rest of the way to his feet. She still held Crave’s talon.

  “You shot me,” Thwip said.

  “You’re not supposed to expect it. I shot you with Crave’s talon-seven while Crave shot you with his gravis. That’s how we spun you in the air and then smashed you into the floor.”

  Thwip touched his suit at the shoulder. Though the suit remained intact, the talon shot had left a slight imperfection in his trepid’s seamless exterior knit. Running his hand over his back, he found no damage from the gravis. It had moved him, but it hadn’t marked his gear.

  “Now we know what happens when we get hit by the new talons,” Skregs said.

  “Beyond what the techs and manuals promised us,” Wheck clarified, then returned to private mode.

  Charis pulsed Thwip her SOC point of view of the moment she shot him. As she spoke, he watched her move to toss Crave the talon, then fire it on Thwip instead. He flew backward and smashed into the floor, and then rose without damage when she helped him to his feet. “Even with the sevens, an enemy would have to hit a Nova at least twice in the exact same external location immediately to breach trepid; unlikely to happen on a moving target.”

  “Unless perhaps Charis is involved,” Crave said. Then he jogged up the ramp and grey-scaled out, muting the loop as he physically left their position.

  Charis nodded, as if that was not a compliment but fact. “Armaments and dynamic delivery. I handle weapons tech, but my extra specialty is inflicting maximum damage while in motion. I can sniper in movement in three-dimensional space. Freefall, zero grav, wherever, whatever. I hunt.”

  His body map lit, translating the sensation of her thumb passing over the rapidly reshaping dimple in his shoulder.

  “Even if you were puncture-shot twice in the same place, the split would reknit over your body wound. That’s just a small trepid tear. Larger damage that results in material loss can be regenerated as long as you maintain your element storage. But matter has to come from somewhere. Enough force can penetrate or shred trepid, and heavy mech can get through to create damage beyond repair. A narrow force or explosion could ghost us if the shape charge was directed effectively and the suit couldn’t dissipate the energy, but we don’t trap easily. Scan ahead, plan ahead, and avoid getting caught in ‘the five deadly situations.’ ”

  The exterior of Thwip’s trepid finished reshaping, leaving no trace of her hit. The interior assessed and addressed his levels and health.

  “How many times can it heal and regenerate materials before it maxes?”

  His IF rippled with intel; a report on trepid defensive capabilities coupled with the protocols for unit decisions based on various weapons threats.

  “That’s the long answer. The short answer is that it depends on the hit and what you have in supply and in situ to regenerate any lost suit material. Assuming the hits aren’t executed in quick succession in the exact same spot, the damage limit is so high that it’s inefficient to attack trepid with personal arms or smaller concussives and incendiaries. Even the localized element blasts won’t touch us—since we can deploy them, the suits are protected from them. Hashing in through the hood IF hash mechs is also inefficient.”

  “According to the trepid reports Blyku provided me, that’s never been accomplished.”

  An affirmative signal from her lit her image on his IF in gold for a moment. She moved back to the trepid container, looking over the weapons marked under her fletching.

  “We’d be able to disarm an enemy before they shredded our suits. If the threat targeting us was serious, then they would first plan to make us vulnerable, trap us unaware and pin us down, and then use something heavier. Explosives. Channel mines are unlikely to work unless clustered so that the shape charge is right, and there’s a high margin of error, so it’s better to use something with true force behind it, like H-fives. That’s what I’d do. I’d use something large but highly controlled, along with a few different contingency forms of trapping and delivery, to increase my chance of success. Layer it on and make it novel, so the attack is a perfect storm that traps the target—in this theoretical, us—while overwhelming the gear. But every threat has access to different resources, and that has to be taken into account. It’s all in that loop report.”

  Charis kept Crave’s seven on her and hung her previous-generation heavy talon in the trepid container, and sealed it shut behind her security swipes. “We shoot at oh five hundred daily.”

  “Oh five hundred—before wake time?”

  Skregs cleared his throat and spoke through the loop. “We’ve been letting you rest longer, in recruit sleep patterns. Due to your adjustment.”

  “Which is over now,” Thwip said.

  “Which is over now,” Crave confirmed, arriving on IF in color.

  Charis departed, passing Blyku and a trail of four medica-tech officers, and with their arrival, Thwip understood why she had secured the trepid container. The techs huddled around Thwip at a safe distance, scanning his trepid for damage. Two additional crew jogged down the ramp—WEAPONS SPECIALIST EMRI ETHERING, WEAPONS SPECIALIST HON TRIHA—undoubtedly called to post early by Charis to supervise the space.

  “Any pain or discomfort?” Blyku asked.

  “No.”

  Thwip pulsed his hardhood to transparent so she could see his face, and let her loop into his suit to monitor his health. While he waited for her to do her work, he scanned the area of floor and wall where he’d made impact. It held a slight imprint of his back.

  Without a suit, I’d have been crushed.

  “Immortal,” Blyku said, noticing.

  “Clarify,” Thwip replied through his hood. She gestured for him to pull his a-yank and, advising the unit that he would be leaving the loop, he did. A tech pulsed his safety latches in combination, lifted off his hardhood, and handed it to another tech, who held it out in front of him with both hands so that he could see it at all times. The ritual looked absurd, but protocol was that Nova hoods were not to be touched unless service required. Skregs was also watching remotely to ensure his safety.

  With his trepid safely inactive, the techs gathered close, and Blyku answered.

  “Dev on the first generation of trepid suits was coded with the covert project name Immortal.”

  Thwip worked his upper body out of his suit, and Blyku’s staff stepped back, clearing space for her to reach him. She examined the unmarked skin underneath his suit wher
e Charis had shot him, put a biomarker band on his arm, and then examined the suit where it had self-healed.

  “Charis is surgical. If she had shot you exactly here once more, then you would have been seriously wounded; your body isn’t yet treated to add another layer of healing protection if the suit’s breached. In the field, you might have died. In space you would have died.” She pressed on his arm where the shot would have landed.

  “Any pain or discomfort?”

  “No.”

  “If your suit is ever penetrated, there are twenty health treatments that can help. Radiation protection, immune system improvements, clotting… Now that your chem balancers are stable, we can gradually introduce them.” She patted his arm, and took his hardhood from the tech holding it. “The band’s readings match your suit’s. Your health status and tech are golden. You can suit up when ready.”

  “What did they call the second gen?”

  “Supernova.” She handed him his hardhood.

  “Continue.”

  “Then came the third gen.” She smiled, as though remembering an old friend. “Dev name: Immortal Supernova. Best of both previous generations, and then some. You’re wearing it, sir. Its hash is IST3.”

  Medica-Tech Giol Jupe stayed on the weapons deck with Thwip. Even in a controlled environment, being shot meant that he had to meet the required hours of observation. He dismissed the two weapons specialists and devoted the rest of his eighth day to training on weapon systems, reviewing the weapons procedures and packages for the mission and the interesting “extreme cases of trepid survival and resistance” section of the report Charis gave him, while intermittently reading about archery, hoping to understand her hardhood symbolism and connection to the mythological archer who shared her call name.

  Later, after he reported to the PT module and sat through Blyku’s treatments, followed by a battery of protocol tests, he resuited and returned to the 0-lab, ready to begin working on the fractal suit in his own trepid.

  Crave arrived at the same end-of-shift time as on the days before.

  “I have enough mobility now,” Thwip said, glad to avoid burdening him yet again.

  Crave hesitated in the entryway. “You want the lab to yourself.”