Hardwired Faith (The Exoskeleton Codex Book 1)

by Sean Kennedy

  Vincent Slate came out of the chair and grabbed Crew’s throat in his meaty fist, choking off the sentence.

  Eric Crew’s eyes flashed wide before Vincent’s nanite augmented muscle drove Crew’s head into the mahogany desk, his temple bouncing off the immaculate leather writing pad with a hollow thud.

  Crew’s eyes rolled back into his head as Slate dragged him across his desk, his arms coiling like pythons to envelop Crew’s neck. By the time Slate counted to five, Eric Crew was unconscious.

  “You’re going to need to kill the camera feeds in the school.”

  “I thought I heard a thump.” Mac replied, then a moment later “They’re down. There's a VTOL pad on the south-west side of the building. You’ll need to get there.”

  “I can see it,” Slate glanced out the window.

  “I've suspended Crew’s medical monitoring, you’ve got one-five minutes before auto-polling triggers.”

  Vincent released the choke, dropping the facility administrator like a corpse on his red leather couch.

  He slid up beside the office door and forced a smile, opening it just wide enough to speak to the pinched clerk beyond.

  “Can you come in for a moment?” Slate said, and with a confused bluster, the man approached.

  Slate opened the door and the clerk made it two paces, the sun just touching his shoes, when he saw Crew on the couch and Slate’s knife hand struck his carotid artery.

  His refreshed combat programming and nanite boosters almost broke the clerk’s collarbone, but the hit was still technical enough to have the desired effect. His body stiffened and fell like a board into Vincent's arms as he lowered him, unconscious, beside the door.

  He grabbed Crew’s body, and easily picked him up with boosted muscles. Vincent hooked his elbow around a leg, and grabbed the sleeve of Crew’s high-quality suit.

  “I’m on my way.” He weaved his body out the office door.

  Through the safety glass, Slate saw the faded FIRE stenciled door lead to a wider stairway exit. With his nanites raging, Slate pulled open the door and floated down the steps carrying Crew.

  A small entrance mat sat beside a bright red locker in a shallow lobby at the base of the stairs. The VTOL landing pad lay just outside, beyond double safety glass doors.

  Slate’s mind had a fresh install of all first aid and transport regulations, part of the base training of every soldier. He knew these easily identifiable red metal cabinets held mandated medical supplies beside every VTOL pad.

  He dropped Crew onto the concrete, and pulled a transport board from where it hung beside the locker.

  He swung out the accordion stretcher, and as the locking segments snapped open beside Crew’s body, Slate rolled Crew onto it, and his hands expertly flew to the straps securing him to the board.

  A gradual static roar of VTOL engines grew louder, like a rushing ocean wave from beyond the glass.

  “One-two-four seconds." Mac’s voice came through the ear bud.

  With Crew unconscious and secured, Vincent Slate grabbed the top handholds by Crew’s head and dropped his back against the two exit doors, letting his bodyweight pull the board towards the VTOL pad.

  Across the open concrete lay a second set of doors, and beyond their safety glass shade were figures carrying something awkward, trying to make their way outside.

  Two security t-droids were struggling with lag against the real world door springs as they maneuvered a second spine board; a spine board that held the boy in the photo.

  “Two droids coming out the pad’s southeast doors, can you kill them?” Slate asked as he knelt beside Crew, watching the telepresence pilots struggle.

  “Five seconds,” Mac said and Slate stood up, moving to close the distance.

  In each of the five seconds, Slate made two strides across the open asphalt. A confident walk, as though he was supposed to be there, as though he had new information to pass on to the t-droids.

  three... two... one...

  “Shot,” Mac said, severing their telepresence repeater connection just as Slate laid his hands on the spine board they carried. The two droids lost the connection, and their autonomous systems reset, relaxing into a standby stance; engines running, but no one at the wheel.

  “Five-seven seconds,” Mac relayed in his ear.

  The roar of the approaching flyer grew as Slate laid Jacob’s spine board down and gave him a quick check. He was breathing and had a strong pulse.

  Slate carried Jacob back inside past the two listless t-droids. He laid the board along the walls inside a staircase lobby, similar to the one that Crew was in. Jacob would be safe in here for the few moments he needed, but only those moments.

  It would have to be enough. Slate pushed back through the doors as the deafening roar of VTOL engines tore the sky, and a blocky craft like a gigantic metal bumble bee with six hyper turbines appeared over the rooftops.

  Slate ran over to where he laid Crew according to the Space Corps loading standard operating procedure. The quick reaction teams in these flyers were always veterans. Insurance transports preferred them to fly into hot zones like the quarantine to retrieve clients.

  All medical gunships had the legal authority to defend their patients, and so medics became angels of both mercy and vengeance. Where Slate placed himself, how he crouched, and the patient's placement were all tells that Slate was one of their own.

  The great dropship engines flared over the VTOL pad, its awkward mass lowered with practiced ease as Slate shielded both his own and Crew’s eyes with his hands from the kicked up dust.

  He looked through his fingers to see two med-techs in combat exoskeletons jump the last fifteen feet to the tarmac, their mechanical legs taking the weight of the landing with an easy crouch.

  As the two approached, one stopped a few meters back and moved off to the side. Vincent knew this would be the trigger man, covering the conversation his partner would have.

  “We were told the patient was a minor!” A voice blasted through the black faceplate of the exosuit as it crouched, examining Crew.

  “Change of plans.” Slate yelled over the turbines “This is Eric Crew, the school's chief administrator. He dropped in his office, and we got no idea why. He’s a better contract, if you want it.”

  “They’re gonna get too much interference to talk to anyone,” Mac said in Slates ear.

  The armored medic looked to his second and Slate caught a flash coming from the supervisor’s helmet as they scanned him. A moment later the slight shift of their armored stance meant they knew who he was.

  “Sir.” The voice said, and Slate made a hard face that he hadn’t used in years.

  “Retired.” he yelled and shrugged with a thin smile.

  “We can take the minor as well.”

  “The minor is my nephew,” Slate yelled over the VTOL noise. “We have private resources to deal with him on site. I hereby refuse service; but it’s still not a wasted trip.” He gestured at Crew with a knife-hand’s battlefield conviction.

  This medic was a field operator, and as the Space Corps last sergeant major amongst the uniforms, Slate still had some pull with field troops. The med-tech gave a quick nod and the second armored medic stepped forward to grab the other end of the board.

  The VTOL turbine’s whine heightened as they carried Crew up the lowered ramp and into the medical bay with practiced speed. Slate saw the goggles of the VTOL pilot looking out the cockpit window, and Slate gave him a nod, which the pilot returned.

  A moment later, Crew was loaded, and just as the loading ramp raised, the VTOL thrust straight up, howling off into the sky. The pilot was showing off for the old sergeant major by doing a combat exfil, and Slate had to admit it was a good one.

  The fading noise of the VTOL flyer mixed with sliding gravel as Mac pulled up to the side of the launch pad. Slate rushed to the side entrance where Jacob lay inside, still tied to the spin board.

  Slate released the straps faster than the untrained could cut them,
and scooped Jacob’s tiny body into his arms. He felt weightless as Slate turned and began to run towards the recovery truck.

  Mac had the passenger door opened by the time Slate reached it. Slate pushed Jacob’s unconscious body between them in the cab, slamming the door behind him.

  “Drive!” Slate said, and braced himself against the momentum of Mac’s instantaneous reversal. Mac’s immersion goggles were still on over his serene expression, driving through the virtual display of reality around him.

  Through a path between buildings, the vehicle turned towards the entrance gates. Part of Mac’s augmented reality now involved the school's administrative controls, and Mac timed his approach to have both the inner and outer gates open as the recovery truck rolled through.

  Just past the gates, Mac released his control of the facility systems, and as they accelerated, they heard security alarm sirens echo through the grounds.

  Chapter 11

  Stan Rutger relaxed in the easy glow of his VTOL gauges. Most kids wanted to fly through the lenses, but Stan liked to see with his own eyes where he was flying; otherwise, why even fly at all?

  Zone Town fell back beneath him as he flew up and away, out towards the old shore and the strange farmhouse he knew was hidden out amongst the trash.

  Ten years ago, when he took over as Chief of Zone Security, he gained the nickname, Sheriff. Private policing in the quarantine zone had benefits and drawbacks, but being in charge meant a personal VTOL cruiser, a novelty that didn’t wear out as quickly as being called Sheriff did.

  In another life he flew Kaizen Mark 3 Gunship for the Space Corps, protecting precious asteroid ores and dropping armored exoskeletons to solve problems.

  In close Earth orbit, everyone shakes hands and talks about hope for humanity, but out on the belt, it’s cannibalism in the long shadow of space. Mining raids were deadly affairs. Unmarked Legion ships captured asteroid mined payloads to feed resource-hungry corporations.

  Once, long ago, when he was a young man with one foot out the airlock, he was doing rear security on an ore haul when something glitched in the Mark 3, and he suddenly found himself dead in the void, his bubble bathed in its red recovery light.

  It wasn’t scary for the first hour, training and bravado carried him through that, but every pilot knew a search beyond five hours was cost prohibitive. After six hours trapped in the bubble, Stan learned about fear in space.

  After seven hours and thirteen minutes, nothing had ever been so beautiful as the sight of the Space Corps recovery craft against the starlight. Anytime he heard salvage claws latching onto something in the zone, he was reminded of the sound it made when they latched onto his fighter.

  The Flight Sergeant Major had overridden all objections, claiming protocols that were dubious at best, but he kept refueling fighters from the emergency supply to find him.

  There was no easy way to know how much it cost to save his life, the margins were thinner when they returned to port, but all souls returned. Just another day for Flight Sergeant Major Vincent Slate and his navigator Commander ‘Mac’ McKenna.

  Back then, humankind was reaching for the stars through the government-run corps and the emerging genius of the Kaizen Corporation. Humanity had the galaxy by the tail.

  Then it just ...happened.

  Every vet has a story as to what it specifically was, but humanity's greed and politics corrupted the endeavor as it did with every great vision. Exploring space was an expensive investment, and the vampires looked at the money channeled into the future with hungry eyes.

  There were incidents with a few quantum-driven drones Kaizen produced, and the battle for online rights and artificial ethics turned savage.

  The unique learning drones Kaizen produced were labeled too unpredictable; targeted propaganda turned on the once golden corporation, dragging it down into a firestorm of media attack.

  Kaizen’s key involvement with the Space Corps gave its enemies greater force to disband it. Under relentless public persecution, Kaizen’s corporate founder and chief scientist Doctor Daniel Akakoda exiled himself to the Kaizen Martian Research Station. Then, with no ceremony or respect paid to those who lived and died at the edge of the known universe, the Space Corps was disbanded.

  Kaizen’s once dynamic corporation, exploring the frontiers of AI and space science became crippled, barely able to survive. The Space Corps ships were sold at a loss to hungry mining corporations, and the disbandment was framed like the next step forward in humanity’s great journey.

  Everyone talked like an expert, claiming those in the void didn’t have the perspective to grasp the big picture. No one asked the Corps what they needed to do, they just shook their hands, said thanks for your service, and shuffled the deck.

  Kaizen’s droid technology received a worldwide safety ban, and the designation allowed old money cartels access to Kaizen’s revolutionary intellectual property with no requirement for restitution.

  To the public, Space Corps pilots were still heroes, whatever that meant. Too many stories had been sold to take their notoriety away, but the honor of the Corps was destroyed.

  Being healthy and 'space famous' got Stan the bounces he needed to land on his feet. He had learned Mac and Slate moved into the old farmhouse at the edge of the hulls, living on the meager Space Corps disability deposits amongst the Kaizen droids that seemed to find their way to them. The records said Slate had terminal nerve damage and Mac showed signs of deep neural fatigue from their time off-world.

  Then today, he got a report that the Alcazar facility administrator woke up in a Medical extraction bird after trying to format Slate’s nephew. He thought the file names were wrong as he read about the Shidoshi Cornucopia takeover less than forty-eight hours ago; another Kaizen subsidiary project carved away from the bone.

  Stan found it amazing what you can legally do to people. The system lets you do whatever you want, if you have the right lawyers helping you do it just the right way. But the dying have a rage beneath their surface, and it eats away at the mental walls they’ve built until it sets off a chain reaction.

  His security teams were set to drop in heavy and extract the child from the farmhouse; twenty officers in a VTOL dropship adorned in shiny armor, just itching to dominate that old junkyard.

  They knew the boy would give a couple of combat vets with nothing to live for something to die for, and the strike team was ready to help that process along, but what Stan knew, and the others didn’t, was the Kaizen.

  The zone cops out here were Deep City kids just putting in time. They’d never dealt with a Kaizen. Never felt the uncanny gaze of a learning droid; to them, they were just more scrap.

  With a telepresence unit, you knew that somewhere someone was controlling it, but the Kaizen units had quantum processors. The droid brains were continuously evolving energy-information: they couldn't be hijacked, controlled, copied or even modified once their core was sealed.

  A self-evolving simulated intelligence, the first of its kind thanks to Dr Akakoda, but it propelled the Kaizen Corporation too close to the sun. The unpredictable behavior made the Kaizen name synonymous with the illegal tech, until the all their simtelligent and, some would whisper, truly artificial intelligent droids became known only as ‘Kaizen’.

  The younger constables looked at the old sheriff like he was a madman going out to the house alone. It was a hard card for Stan to play, but as the last of the legends in a land of young bucks, he was able to call off the raid and try it his way.

  The landing gear kicked out, and the VTOL cruiser piloted itself down into a clearing in the cargo stacks around a lone central column at the access road’s end. Vincent Slate stepped out from behind the columns into the cul-de-sac, squinting against the dust in new coveralls with a freshly shaved head.

  He still had the same look he had when he was stalking the ramps and bays on the orbital ships; a great and terrible monster keeping pilots in line. Slate stood, not running from his fate, but meeting the patrol
cruiser like a warrior.

  “What a hard-ass,” Stan muttered as the cruiser settled and he slipped out of the seat’s harness.

  The armored gull wing ramp swung open, and Stan emerged in his brown security uniform shirt with worn gray slacks overtop Dayton cruiser boots. A once-white cowboy hat gave him some afternoon shade as he walked down the ramp.

  “Mornin’ Vince,” Stan gave Slate a nod.

  “Good morning sheriff,” Slate stood like a gunfighter under the great blue sky. With his shaved head and pristine coveralls, his sleeves and ankle cuffs rolled up in the desperate yet disciplined way of the Space Corps, Slate looked like the ragged flag of the shipwrecked. He was a symbol clinging to tradition in a barren and hostile land.

  “Looking good Vince,” in truth he was a shadow of the rippling flight deck master that led men through the greatest moments of their lives.

  “Never better,” Slate spoke with a steady tone and unblinking eyes.

  “Alcazar is pretty wild. They’re looking for blood.”

  “I bet,” Vince nodded, “how to do you want to play this, Stan?”

  “Well...” Stan spit and kicked at the hard packed dirt with his boot heel, turning to look out at the great wall of ship hulls where the seashore used to be.

  “You're pretty damn lucky that I'm still runnin the zone, or a tac-team would be wrecking your place.”

  “I’d say Crew was lucky too.”

  “That’s true,” Stan flashed a smile.

  “I’ll go with you Stan, right now, no fuss. I’ll leave the boy with Mac. You can throw me to the wolves, but you can’t take the boy.”

  “‘Ha! That would be something eh?” Stan shook his head, “Drop you into some rehab facility where you could train a few hundred hardened convicts? You’d raise an army before the year was out.” Stan said, and Slate blinked, unsure of what he was hearing.

  “I know Crew had it coming. I know the kinds of things he’s done, but we don’t have jurisdiction in Alcazar.”

  “So what then?” Slate asked.

  Stan pursed his lips in thought, “well, I've already arrested you, and questioned you, and pressed charges that you have pleaded guilty to.”