by Sean Kennedy
Vade landed on Jacob’s shoulder as he turned to the next locker. “SMITH” the second tag read, but the third door’s label read “FAITH”.
"It’s you!" Vade thundered from his shoulder.
“I don’t think so, I've never seen this before." Jacob said, but still the feeling of deja-vu persisted.
“It can’t be.” Jacob put his hand on the pad. “I'm not the only person with the name...”
Two cheerful tones interrupted him, and the door slid back as a soft blue light illuminated the locker’s interior.
Jacob saw an open negative space to slide his body into; a perfect casting made to fit his tiny frame. Like an iron maiden, its armored cockpit beckoned, calling for Jacob to take his place.
“Looks like a good fit.”
“I... I’ve never… seen this before...” Jacob said, but that seemed like a lie.
“That doesn't matter. You’ve never seen anything from your future, but it’s still yours.”
Jacob reached in and touched the cool ceramic alloy, its panels open like vertical clamshells. The longer Jacob stood in front of the strange locker, the more it seemed familiar.
He turned and stepped backward, placed his bare foot on the cool armor pad, and slid himself perfectly into the half shell impression. The suit felt soft against the neoskin film. His hands brushed against the two gauntlet openings, and he felt custom molding slip over his fingers.
Jacob relaxed, and as he did, he leaned back and his head touched the back of the helmet depression. The locker made two high pitched beeps, and starting from his feet, there was a rapid sequence of clacking as armored panels snapped closed over his body. The shuttering locked in his chest and throat, and before Jacob could react a shield slid over his face.
There was darkness, then his vision returned, but he wasn’t inside the armor looking out; he had become the armor. Flashes of running and jumping, tumbling across ships hulls in moonlight appeared in his mind.
A large prompt filled his view. “Initialise Transfer” with selections for “Continue” or “Cancel.”
Jacob decided he should continue. The prompt vanished as a powerful surge filled him, as though his mind was hit with an information wave, flooding his consciousness.
Chapter 18
Initiating transfer now.
Jacob awakened to a seizure of rattling. The vastness of space stretched around him in pristine clarity as fluid shielding absorbed the atmospheric forces high above a red desert planet.
Overlaid holographic images appeared in his heads-up-display (HUD) as he fell towards a drop zone near the edge of a huge canyon that cut a gaping wound in the planet below.
Jacob fell like a drop of chrome from the cloudless sky into stillness. As his mind formed questions about the atmosphere, the HUD gave its answers.
Toxic
95.32% carbon dioxide:
2.7% nitrogen:
1.6% argon:
0.13% oxygen:
0.08% carbon monoxide:
Trace amounts of, nitrogen oxide, neon, hydrogen-deuterium-oxygen, krypton and xenon.
Jacob wondered: Where is this? And the HUD’s view expanded into a map of the solar system.
Mars.
The red planet reflected against Jacob's liquid shielding as the atmospheric shudders slowed to an easy caress. A woman's voice, soft and smooth filled his mind.
“Initiating pilot control in six seconds.”
“Mom?”
He heard no response as glowing numbers decremented at the bottom of the HUD.
3... 2... 1...
“Pilot control initiated.” The armor said.
Jacob’s liquid body burst. The cooling reentry fluid scattered into the atmosphere. As Jacob emerged, his consciousness shrank to the limits of his new form.
What am I?
Hummingbird 8; Kaizen Exoskeleton Power Armor, the HUD read as a wireframe model of Jacob's bright yellow body rotated in his lower left vision.
Jacob thought he looked more like a crab than a hummingbird. Long triple jointed bipedal legs dangled beneath a crab shell torso that hunched forward, the angled contours of his back shielded telescoping turbines under a drop chute.
A tri-barrel mag-cannon and a long range rail gun were mounted on the shoulders of a headless body. Two long powerful arms reached out from beneath the weapons, with each joint shielded to allow no weakness. Retractable mono-blades were housed above articulated hands, hidden from view.
Jacob moved his mechanical limbs, feeling the the wind shift around his body like the currents of a great river. By turning he could shift his falling, and he began to steer himself from falling into flight as he explored the limits of his new body.
The wireframe diagram had an image flashing on its back above the turbine housing. By the time Jacob recognized it, ‘DEPLOY’ flashed on the display.
A parachute flew from between his turbine shrouds and Jacob felt the strain of inertia pumping adrenaline into his being. As his yellow body slowed, his turbines extended from the shrouds, making his body a moth-like delta craft as the atmosphere blew through his turbine blades.
Jacob flexed, and his turbines spun up, shifting his path in the sky. Beneath the roar of his descent, the strange stillness of the tawny Martian desert stretched towards a rising horizon.
“Drop chute will disengage in 3... 2... 1...”
The tension vanished as the parachute detached and Jacob’s flight systems took over.
“Please follow the flight path.” The voice said, and a bright green triangle appeared in his HUD like a distant gate.
Jacob flexed his back, controlling his turbine wings with new instinct. He guided his descent towards the holographic gates, surfing the great waves of atmospheric pressure beneath him.
The first triangle accelerated the closer he got, until his body rocketed through the center in a yellow blur.
Another triangle gate appeared, a little closer and a little smaller, and Jacob flew towards it. As he passed through the second shape, a third one appeared, smaller again, and farther to his left. Jacob had to make harder maneuvers to reach it, but he passed through the center cleanly.
Each time he passed through an emerald shape, more triangles appeared making him twist and turn, forcing him to stretch his new abilities. The last gates were barely big enough to fit his armored body, but Jacob flew through them all.
“Drop sequence completed. Well done. Beginning flight sequence.” The voice said.
The planet’s surface was now closer, and the HUD projected a flashing red octagon onto Martian desert beneath him.
...All things happen at speed...
The ground came at him faster as Jacob's reality became descent. The ground effect data appeared in Jacob's display as a single great mountain peak reached up from the surface.
As Jacob angled his body to fall with the mountain’s slope, a faded red line laid out an optimal path. Like a giant metal wing, the pressure built under Jacob's turbines.
The triangle shape of his body harnessed the ground effect; a trick of physics that let Jacob float on the atmospheric pressure under his wings, skipping a few dozen meters above certain rocky death on the mountain landscape.
Boulders and jagged rock plains made the dead world’s skeleton a blur. Jacob flew down and away from the barren rock of the mountain peak, following his holographic flight line towards the valley below.
A huge red ocher dust plume was kicked up by the terrific force of his flight. Traveling hundreds of miles an hour only a few feet above the planet's teeth, Jacob felt a hyper sense of calm as his flight data combined into the consciousness of the moment.
The rush of alien wind over his body was intoxicating, and his senses stretched beyond the moment. Like the fibers of a rope, his instincts became strands of fate pulling Jacob faster, following his chosen path in the eternal moment. The ground blurred beneath him as his breathing slowed with the ease of a warrior.
“Flight sequence completed. Well done.”
Multiple red targeting triangles appeared in Jacob's display, flashing over a distant landing zone near the edge of the great Mariner Valley.
“Initiating localised communication.”
Jacob’s senses were filled with the hiss of radio static.
“...need support... they’ve broken...” One static voice was silenced as another broadcast over it.
“Legion forces have breached the life support...” A voice was screaming, his panic thrashing the spectrum. A wire model in Jacob's HUD showed a bouncing acoustic line as his armor took hold of the signal.
“They’re killing... any call sign please... we are under...”
The world blurred as targeting data merged into his focus. The Hummingbird’s optics created a telescopic frame of the distant outpost.
Jacob saw the damaged pioneer space shelters, it was a Kaizen science facility, its bright white domes in stark contrast the to the red surface. Traces of smoke faded into the perfect sky.
Jacob's audio picked up the unmistakable deep hollow tones of armored rifle fire. War and death; signs of man on an alien world. With a great thrashing dust tail kicked hundreds of feet into the air, Jacob became the approaching storm.
His targeting system found small dark specks darting amongst the facility structures. One bounded into the air and landed atop the white geodesic dome, and Jacob's optics were able to bring the the attacker sharply into view as the HUD displayed the enemy armor schematics.
Legion forces had caught their camp with no security. The HUD confirmed they were X21 Legion armor, smaller than Jacob and harder to hit. The standard armaments included a heavy field exo-rifle with mag-grenades, and some were issued shoulder mounted missile launchers.
A thousand yards out, Jacob lifted his body to slow his approach. The yellow armor stood like a war god, floating through the Martian desert. Jacob saw four Legion exosuits bounding with jump jets towards him.
“Weapons systems online, multiple targets detected.”
The soothing tone of the machine made the information calming, like the mathematical perfection of destiny. An awareness of weapons filled him. Just as he had known how to drift into the ground effect flight, the tactical knowledge of the Hummingbird systems waited in his mind.
He knew his body hid forty missiles between his wing shrouds. Glowing red target reticles enveloped the four Legionnaires as they bounded high, spitting fire from their exo rifles. Jacob felt the bullets ricochet off his armor, snapping like stings.
His turbines retracted into the shroud, and Jacob dropped to the surface letting his triple jointed legs absorb the impact in the transition from a flying god into a bounding nightmare in a cloud of dust.
“Kaizen Base this is Hummingbird 8, I am approaching from the east and am engaging enemy targets now.” Jacob felt the tri-barreled mag-cannon spinning into a whining whisper.
Jacob was twice their size in his armor, but the Legion’s X21 exoskeletons were lightweight shock troops just under three meters tall and a terror on the ground.
A quick burst from the spinning tri-barrels sent ferrous projectiles six thousand feet a second towards the black armor. The rounds caught the first bounding Legionnaire in the chest and the armored torso exploded, hammering the raider into the surface like a meteor as Martian dust exploded around the encased corpse.
More exo-rifle rounds snapped at Jacob; the three other armors had pressed low, capitalizing on the virtue of being small as they spit bullets at him. Reinforcing holographic frames came from the sides of Jacob's vision, locking onto a prone enemy in the distance. A support gunner, someone to suppress him as the others deliver the killing blow.
With a thought, spikes of hatred flew from the housing hidden in Jacob's back. A smoke trail curled like a wing as it chased a missile across the sky to slam into the target, and the Legion armor ceased to exist as the impact blast drew ripples of dust in expanding waves.
Jacob's legs were bouncing him in an easy staggered line, bounding at evasive angles as he twisted his torso searching for targets.
“Hummingbird 8 this is Oasis, please help us!!” The transmission screamed.
BOOM!
An explosion knocked Jacob sideways, and he felt his armor curl, shielding him from the impact. The smaller, faster Legionnaires were flanking from the side, and in the suspended moment of his blasted bound, Jacob’s HUD found one of his enemy’s outlines through the dust.
Jacob threw rage with another spiked wing of smoke. The missile raced across the plain’s red patina. The targeted armor dodged to the right, avoiding the missile’s impact before vanishing in the dust cloud.
Jacob landed, rolling over the Hummingbird’s shrouded wings and bouncing onto to his clawed feet before bounding towards where he had seen the wounded armor.
Billions of years of unmoved microparticles were kicked into a fog by the battle. Martian mineral dust acted as a screen against his targeting system. His mag-cannon spun, and Jacob fired fanning bursts into the cloud.
BOOM!
A powerful rocket blast hammered Jacob into the dust. He knew he couldn’t take another hit from behind like that. From the red haze, the wounded Legion armor was upon him with a savage frenzy.
Jacob felt the curved mono blades eject from his forearms as he rolled with the rocket’s impact and sprang towards the wounded Legionnaire, catching the shoulder mounted rocket launcher and shearing the weapon away.
Most of the armor’s left side had been smashed by Jacob's missile, and the cockpit was exposed beneath where the left arm used to be. Its right arm swung around and drew a powered boarding blade from a lower back sheath.
The boarding blades were what the Legionnaires would use to cut their way through starship hulls during raids. It was shaped like a narrow meat cleaver and hummed with power like the Hummingbird’s oscillating mono-claws.
In the swirling red dust, the one-armed killer swung the blade wild as it lunged, but Jacob was too fast and caught the exposed pilot's compartment from the side. He drove his mono-blade in before hooking down and ripping out to the side, cleaving the pilot within.
Jacob’s mind began processing target location probability as his tri-barrels spun up and he sent out a fanning stream of cannon fire through the dust cloud. The rounds slashed the remaining Legionnaire across the torso, cutting it down in a wash of fire. The pilot's life bled out to the Martian atmosphere over the whine of Jacob’s still pinning mag-cannon.
The Hummingbird’s neural link identified more targets beyond the shifting ochre of the dust cloud. The HUD’s red outline marked two more Legion targets, one slightly ahead of the other, and closing from 200 meters.
Jacob drifted to the side with the grace of a dancer, until one Legionnaire lined up in front of the other and fired his rail gun, a sending a three-pound ferrous slug traveling nine times the speed of sound to punch a sixteen inch cavity through both..
Twin jets blasted from where the slug entered and exited, spewing their life supporting atmosphere into the Martian wastes. The second Legion crumpled in place, but the first stood in the low hunch of the armors emergency standby, waiting for the smashed pilot within to issue a command.
Jacob lowered himself into the still drifting dust, opening his sensors to take in the complete horizon as ancient particulates coated his yellow body.
His targeting system locked onto five more Legionnaires moving in a tight combat group. Jacob analyzed the blast dynamics and flexed, sending three warheads rocketing towards the enemy cluster.
Their armor was shredded from Volley’s impact, splattering the pilots like intestines across the desert sand. The sound of the blasts echoed amongst the mountains, mixing with the noise of falling fragments in the dust like heavy rain.
The fading echo rippled through the stillness. The dust settled around him as Jacob crouched like a sandy crab, waiting for his senses to to reveal another target from the HUD’s red halo of death. The wind shifted, and the ultrafine fog shifted with it.
/> Jacob knew the Legion wouldn’t come in without overwatch. Somewhere in the distance, at some unseen angle, Jacob was confident a final Legionnaire’s electronic sensors were sweeping as he was, seeking a target.
“Warning: a severe atmospheric event is approaching from the east.”
Without moving, Jacob drew his attention east and saw the horizon looked thicker than it had a moment ago. A moment later, it was thicker again as a sandstorm at the edge of the world rushed to meet him.
It would be mere moments until it overtook them, but the Legion’s overwatch was in a worse position than Jacob. The storm drew closer in a great wave, reaching high into the sky and swallowing the landscape.
Then, on the plains, thirteen hundred meters to the southwest, the Hummingbird’s optics snapped a frame around a transparent ripple like heat shimmering in the sun; camouflage of the Legion’s sniper
The Legionnaire waited until the last moment before bounding, letting the storm cover their retreat. The Hummingbird’s targeting system defined the distortion and Jacob fired his rail gun, ripping the atmosphere in the vacuum of the bullet's path. Jacob watched the shimmer vanish as the sniper’s armor fragmented just before the storm’s curtain swallowed him.
“Combat sequence completed. Well done.”
It took a moment for the Hummingbird’s senses to readjust to the raging sand scouring the yellow armor, but in the darkness, the sound changed. Jacob saw the temperature dropped and could feel something wet running off his body. He became aware the sandstorm had transformed into the darkness of a jungle’s night.
Alien trees, with beanstalk trunks and leaves like landing pads, stretched high above a soaked jungle floor. Moisture droplets streaked across his hummingbird lenses, as the great glowing eye of Phobos peered down through a patch in the canopy from high above.
Chapter 19
Beneath clawed feet, Jacob felt the unmistakable texture of soil.
Where am I?
Mars.
How can there be plants on Mars?
Unknown.
Why is it so dark?
