“A lot of times, the biggest technological leaps happen at the beginning. After that it just becomes refinement.” Evan came out dressed in a clean set of scrubs. “I learn quickly, General Boen. John will be perfect, maybe too much so.”
= = =
Raimey’s eyes rolled open and the first thing he registered wasn’t sight or sound, but pain. It felt like metal stakes had been pulled out of a fire and skewered down the length of his back. Uncontrollable tears rolled down his face.
“Pain,” he groaned. He was groggy, uncertain of his surroundings. He was seated, perpendicular to the floor in a gigantic chair. Men and women in white coats moved around him.
“You have to ignore the pain, John. This is as much relief as we can give you. We need to keep you aware.” It was Evan. He came into view beneath Raimey and his giant chair. Evan looked off to his side, but this time Raimey could track what Dr. Lindo was checking. Four technicians monitored giant flat screens above a wall of workstations. On one monitor a wire-framed brain spun on its y-axis. A cursor chased small points that were blinking. Another showed hundreds of different waveforms—brain waves. It looked like a computerized lie detector. Another showed John’s vitals.
“Turn him on,” Evan said. “John, we don’t have time to get into great detail. The software implant—what the monitor with the brain on it shows—is booting up. When it does, I want you to think about stillness. Picture your hands and feet at rest. You are sitting on a chair, nothing more.”
John felt the implant. It was like someone was pulling on the back of his skull.
“I feel something,” Raimey said.
“Think stillness,” Evan said.
“It’s up,” someone said to their side.
“How do you feel John?” Evan asked.
“I feel . . . whole.” And he did. After the injuries, he felt phantom limb in all of his joints, like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. He would forget that he had no arms and reach for something, only to be quickly reminded that he was an invalid. But now he felt whole. No tingle, no vague extension of his body that was nothing but air. He wiggled his fingers. He heard metal-on-metal clacking.
“John, slow up. Wait for my instructions,” Evan said.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Raimey said. He studied the giant chair he was sitting in. It wasn’t a chair. It was him. He wiggled his left hand again and, to his left, a gigantic hand moved perfectly. He looked at his right hand and it did the same.
“I want to stand up,” Raimey said.
“John, we really need to get through the diagnostics,” Evan said firmly. Raimey suddenly felt a side-to-side sway of the room.
“We’re on our way,” Raimey said.
“Yes. We’ll be there in three hours. We need to upload software into the implant before we release you from the maintenance chair. We have a lot to go through.”
John calmed down. The sadness and longing to see his family was pushed back under the weight of what was ahead of him. He could feel his hands. He could feel his feet. And it wasn’t in his dreams or a memory or his severed nerves firing for no damn reason. It was real.
He listened to Evan and followed his every instruction. In his focus, the pain got pushed into the background. He felt alive. He felt purpose.
He hated this mission. He hated the primary objective. But he loved that he was on a mission and that, as silly and simplistic as it sounded, he was special. He would curse fate and God later. But not now. Wiggle the fingers. Lift the leg. Open the bolt of the hydraulshock.
I’m a soldier, he thought to himself. The voice behind it was strong.
He saw a bent reflection of himself in the stainless steel armory doors. He looked like a massive armored Viking sitting on his throne.
This was always my fate.
For now and ever more.
= = =
The train had stopped five miles from the base to avoid contact with Janis. Ten minutes before, two men loaded the hydraulshock artillery rounds into his shoulders. They spun the helmet down onto his head. The five-inch bulletproof glass was shaped like a skull.
His implant was stripped of all of Janis’s wireless functionality. He couldn’t upload or download data to Command. He couldn’t overlay maps to his position. He couldn’t laser guide smart missiles or send GPS coordinates for mortal fire. Various attachments that Evan planned for future Tank Majors wouldn’t work with him. His comm was a glorified walkie-talkie. The only access to his implant was through two feet of the depleted uranium/osmium armor. But he no longer needed the maintenance chair. He would never have to connect into a computer for the rest of his life. He was the deconstructed version of Lindo’s dream.
“Is the pain bearable? We’ve pulled back the dosage,” Evan said. He was climbing over Raimey, double-checking that everything was in place, properly oiled and functioning. This was too quick a turnaround. It made him uneasy.
“It’s fine,” Raimey said. It wasn’t. It was so horrible that his body shivered in sweat, but it was what it was.
“When you get out, run around and get a feel for the battle chassis. Hydraulshock a tree. We need you to understand what your body can do,” Lindo said.
“What are the limitations?” Raimey asked.
“Not many that matter for this. Just remember that the battle chassis can take a lot more abuse than you can. Stay out of heavy fires, you can suffocate. Stay out of water, you’ll sink like a rock and drown.”
“Can I jump?” Raimey asked.
“A little bit, but not really. Not of any usefulness.”
“Speed?”
“Twenty-five miles per hour. You will get there quickly. It’ll just feel like running.”
“What can Eric do that will hurt me?”
“The hydraulshock is the only thing. If he’s out, hit him and be done with it. We need to know the status of the King Sleeper. Your armor is three times as dense, you’re bigger all around, and you’re more powerful. Aside from the personal nature, this shouldn’t be difficult.”
John’s chair let out a hydraulic whoosh and Evan stepped out of the way.
“John, can you hear me over the comm?” It was General Boen.
“Yes, sir,” Raimey said. It was good to hear his voice.
“We have a GPS transmitter attached to the battle chassis. From that, we can guide you to and out of the base. Clear?”
“Clear, sir,” Raimey replied.
“Alright, let’s get going. The five mile distance will hopefully give you time to acclimate a bit to this new . . . situation,” Boen said.
Raimey stood up. The train was tall, the internal room was larger than a semi truck trailer, but his head almost touched the top. For a second it made him dizzy, like he had stood up too quickly. Out of instinct he put his arms out to brace himself.
“Hold on, John,” Evan said. He held a two-way radio to his mouth. “Take it easy.”
John steadied.
“Trust the balance of the chassis. The gyroscopes are processing one million calculations per second. You’re not going to fall. Turn to face the door and look straight out as far as you can see.”
The door on the side of the train car slid open. Raimey was greeted by pine trees and a blanket of stars.
“Look ahead, not down at your feet, and step out,” Evan said.
John looked to the horizon and stepped out of the train, trying to not think about it. He felt his foot press into the soil and when half of his weight left the train, the car rose six inches. Suddenly Raimey started to tilt forward.
“Trust the balance!” Lindo said. Raimey looked like the leaning tower of Pisa. “John!”
It was too late. Raimey overcompensated and fell forward down the embankment of the hill. When he hit the ground, he felt some pain, but the suspension that floated his body within the suit took the brunt. Without thinking he put his arms down and pushed himself up onto his knees. He turned and looked at the train fifty feet up the hill.
“Whoever parked t
his damn thing on a hill is fired,” Raimey said.
Both Evan and Boen laughed.
“Trust the—”
“I know, I know. Trust the battle chassis to balance,” Raimey said. He went to stand, this time not gingerly like he had brittle bones. His body stood up unconcerned with the steepness of the hill. Simple as that.
He climbed back up to the entrance of the train and looked in. Even though his feet were four feet below the train tracks, he still looked down on Evan. His shoulders were the width of the entrance.
“You good?” Evan said.
In the helmet, he saw Raimey nod.
“Find the King Sleeper,” Evan said.
“I’m going to try and save him,” Raimey said. He was talking about Janis.
Evan shook his head. “It’s too late, John.”
“I can’t just kill him. Not without trying.”
“General Boen,” Evan said.
Boen’s voice crackled over the comm. “I get it, John. But just from infrared, we have a body count over two thousand. The mission is to find the King Sleeper.”
“I can’t just kill him. If he was driven crazy, it isn’t right. He’s the best guy I know.”
He pushed off the train without asking permission.
“Alright, Earl. Where the hell am I going?” he asked.
= = =
The train was west of the base. Raimey walked around the front of the train to head toward it. When he passed the engine, he saw the conductors at the controls. They gave him a salute and he gave one back, dinging too hard against his helmet, still getting a feel for his new body.
It felt like he was in a giant baby bjorn. He rocked back and forth with each step, enough to slightly jar his vision. He felt lumbering. He was. Sensors built inside his feet fed him the feeling of pressure. He couldn’t feel heat or pain through his limbs, but he did recognize when his ankle bent inward or outward to compensate for a variant on the ground.
“I’m going to jog,” Raimey said into his comm. Interestingly, when he picked up speed the ride got smoother and he could feel his body floating. His vision was no longer jarred, but instead, it felt like he was riding a wave as he rose and fell by six inches or so, compensating for the increased forces of the battle chassis around him.
“It leveled out, didn’t it?” Lindo said.
“Yep,” Raimey replied.
“The suspension system doesn’t completely compensate for walking. But if you run or start moving aggressively, it monitors the movement and counteracts it. The harder you go, the smoother it will feel.”
“Cool,” Raimey said. He was breathing hard and it came over the comm.
“Calm down, John,” General Boen said.
Lindo cut in. “You’re breathing faster because you’re jogging and the old brain believes that you’re exerting effort. It’s a natural response, but obviously pointless. Try to regulate your breathing. Your body has gone through a tremendous amount of trauma in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Okay,” Raimey said and forced his breathing to slow down.
“Find a large tree and punch it. Hydraulshock when you get a feel for the range,” Evan said.
“What about Janis?” Raimey said. He was told the hydraulshock was extremely loud.
“I’d rather he’s aware of you and you know how to use it than otherwise. He’s probably in the bunker,” Lindo said.
Raimey saw a massive tree ahead of him. He covered distance so quickly, it was crazy. It felt like he was riding on the shoulders of a kangaroo. He shadowboxed to get a feel for the range and speed of the punches. He was fast. Not blindingly so, but as fast as a heavyweight boxer, with ten thousand times more power. He stood within range of the tree and threw a left hook. The pair of drive chains around his waist, each link as tall and thick as a man’s head, spun counter to the other and his upper body swung into the punch. His eight hundred pound fist hammered through the tree like a wrecking ball. The trunk was four feet in diameter and his hand exploded through it as if it were rotten. The tree collapsed down to the base and then with a groan, fell onto its side, taking two smaller trees with it.
“We heard that,” Lindo said.
“Holy shit,” Raimey said under his breath.
“An eye opener, huh?” Boen said.
“I threw a short left hook and my hand went right through the tree,” Raimey said. He brought his hand near his visor and looked for damage.
“My hand’s fine,” Raimey said.
“John, your hand can punch through tanks without any operational damage. The density of a tree is like punching packing foam.”
Raimey opened and closed his gigantic hand, turning it knuckle to palm in marvel. He raised it up and slammed it to the ground. He felt his body bounce from the counter movement of his suspension. He slammed the right fist down and the other again, like a gorilla displaying dominance.
Raimey began to understand.
He found a tree twice as thick as the one he so easily punched through. He cocked his left arm back and through a mental checklist, readied the hydraulshock to fire.
He started the movement.
WHA-WHAM!
His vision blurred from the acceleration as the jelly in his eyes pushed back, altering the light as it hit the lens. The sound leveled off in his helmet but his body shook like a space shuttle on re-entry. He felt heat and out of his left eye he saw a sharp crack of orange light.
He was disoriented. Shards of wood fell around him in splintered hail. He looked for the tree. Most of it had vaporized. Sixty feet of it had exploded and the rest of the tree had been thrown forty yards. The top of the tree was in front of John, like it had slipped feet first on ice. The earth was raw around him. The branches of the surrounding pines were broken and bent away from him.
“I fired the hydraulshock,” Raimey said.
“We know.”
The train had rocked back and forth from the concussive blast.
“Is everything fine?” Lindo asked.
“Yeah, I just can’t believe it,” Raimey said. He didn’t understand the power he had unleashed. For this tree it was complete overkill. Raimey could deliver five million foot-pounds of energy through his fist, one and a half million more than Janis. Evan learned quickly and he pumped all that knowledge into the body Raimey was now saddled with.
“Be amazed later, John. Get going,” Boen said.
“Yes, sir. I’m moving toward the base,” Raimey replied.
General Boen watched the GPS dot move toward the base at an even twenty-five miles per hour.
= = =
Janis woke in the corner of a bunker supply room. At first he didn’t remember when he had fallen asleep and then it came back. He had chosen that corner because there weren’t any flames and none of the demons chased him there. He was exhausted. Maybe it was over. He started to turn and he immediately sensed flickering orange in his peripheral vision. He retreated to the corner, sobbing.
He closed his eyes hard, hoping that when he opened them, what he had been a part of was a dream inside of a dream, a hallucination in the desert from a thirst deprived man.
It was no use. He could feel the heat build around him. He knew the flames were licking at the walls. He didn’t hear the bone on bone chatter of the demons but he knew it was just because he was in the corner, hiding, like a bruised boy waiting for his next beating.
He had run rampant for over three days. He had no food or drink in that time. On base, they didn’t keep his nutrient pump full. He felt the pain of hunger and his face was gaunt from dehydration. His teeth felt like fur and he rubbed his tongue along them.
I’m insane, he thought to himself. He tried to turn from the corner again but he saw the heat and below, just in view, the glowing eyes of a demon he had killed. Even dead, their big grins chattered, ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca. Endless.
Do the insane know they are? another voice asked. Eric didn’t think so.
“Then I’m damned,” he said al
oud.
I will live in this purgatory forever.
Early into the massacre the fleeing soldiers and staff opened the blast doors to escape Janis’s onslaught. He ascended out of the massive hollow and laid waste to the surrounding buildings and anything that got in his way. But the bunker was his sanctuary and after he silenced the chattering of bones, he slithered into its bowels like a snake full on prey. The few soldiers remaining ran up and activated the doors to close.
Halfway down, Janis heard the warning blat of the siren as the massive doors slowly came together. They’re trying to trap me! He flew up the stairs. The closing gap was too narrow for him to squeeze through. He hydraulshocked them from the inside. He hit them again and again and again until the hinge of one broke from the wall. They closed cockeyed. With all his hydraulshocks, save one, he hammered through. But the doors were designed for The Bomb. And while his hands were nearly indestructible, they had met their match and now they were a mangled wreck.
He heard the sound of a hydraulshock roll into the bunker. The lift tunnel acted like an ear canal, amplifying the blast.
It’ll be John, he somehow knew. No, impossible. John wasn’t dead. Maybe he’s come to save me? They had been in deep together, in battles where bullets whizzed by their faces like mosquitos. And they had made it out alive, watching each other’s six, not letting ANYTHING break their perimeter. But not this, no way. Raimey was an angel, but he didn’t know this place.
Then it’s the Devil.
Good. Better in fact. If it were Raimey, Eric wouldn’t know what to do. He didn’t know the way out and Raimey would be too stubborn to leave without him. They would protect each other while the demons surrounded them and take wave after wave until the ground was churned with dirt and blood and their feet slipped from the batter of it and the demons finally overtook them, finally tore in deep enough to still their heart and then they would be stuck in this world forever.
Better if it was the Devil.
Because I am strong.
The Devil has never faced anything like me.
And I have courage.
Others would look down in fear, but I will look down on HIM, so he knows that two angels had fallen, not just one.
The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition Page 26
