by Chris Lowry
The rest froze and stared at him in fear. They stood up straight, ghillie suits dangling from thin limbs and dropped their weapons.
Lt peeked over the steps to see Moss man and the rest doing the same, even the men hundreds of meters away as they stared at his hiding spot.
He stood up and kept his rifle trained on them, dancing the sights from man to man. It was nice to be respected, even better to be feared, he thought.
A shadow fell crossed his field of vision and he whipped around, startled.
Babe towered on the concrete steps in the suit of armor. A blaster rested across his forearm, aimed at the bandits on the asphalt. His face was hidden behind a reflective faceplate, the matte black suit giving him an alien appearance.
“Damn Babe,” Lt whistled. “You look like a real bad ass.”
“I didn’t before?” the helmet gave his voice a robotic metallic ring.
“No,” Lt mounted the steps to stand behind him, putting an extra layer of protection between him and the bandits just in case they decided to start shooting.
“You looked pretty bad ass before,” Lt said. “The bat was the clincher. Pulled together the whole ensemble. But this. This is a whole new level of bad assery.”
CHAPTER THREE
Lt left Babe to supervise the prisoner taking and returned to the hole in the wall. Steph leaned against the plaster next to Danish.
“What are you going to do with them?” Burmage licked his lips as he shuffled behind Lt.
“I ain’t going to do nothing with them. What are you going to do with them is the question.”
That seemed to send Burmage into a small fit of hysterics. Lt ignored his mutterings and studied the people in the corridor around them. They looked defeated, beaten, half stared.
“Oakley,” he pointed at Steph. “Get out there, find Chief and Sherill and the three of you bring back some rabbit or squirrel. Hunt up as much as you can find in the next two hours.”
She quirked up an eyebrow but didn’t argue.
“Doc!” Lt yelled through the opening.
Doc appeared further inside the room, a headband holding a magnifying eyepiece strapped to his forehead, a soldering iron smoldering in his hand.
“You got Babe suited up. You ready for the next one?”
Doc nodded.
“Get in there Danish,” Lt assumed his post guarding the door as the young man hustled inside the hole.
“Crockett, get a fire going in here or out there. Hustle up some roots for the stew.”
“You okay to pull guard duty alone, Lt?”
Lt just squinted, answer enough. Crockett double timed for the opening before Lt could say anything else.
Behind him, he could hear Doc instructing Danish on how to don the armor. There was an order to it. He planned to learn firsthand soon enough.
“What’s the plan, Lt?” Waldo leaned against the other side of the opening.
“Food, Waldo.”
“I meant after we eat.”
“We ain’t eating. Not yet. We’re going to feed these folks.”
Waldo cleared his throat.
“That’s a lot of people, Lt. An army moves on its stomach. Can we afford to give it away?”
Lt studied the crowd, noting the bowed heads, the quiet desperation that hung like a miasma in the air.
“I like killing Licks, Waldo. Let me tell you, it gives me a good feeling, like doing an honest day’s work. But if all these folks die, what’s the fucking point to it. It’s like a yin and yang thing, a balance. We found us a gift today, and good Lord willing, I plan on us putting it to some good use. But I want to give a little hope too. Hard for a man to feel hope when his belly is grumbling. Harder still when he’s looking into his little kid’s eyes, and can hear their belly grumbling. That make sense to you?”
“I think it’s almost poetic, Lt.”
“Don’t break out your fucking handkerchief yet,” Lt snickered. “These folks still might die. Just not tonight, not on my watch.”
Burmage hustled out of the dark end of the corridor and waited until Lt acknowledged him.
“Your man has gathered the prisoners,” he said when Lt locked eyes with his.
“Those weapons are yours,” Lt said. “Ask around and find folks who know how to use ‘em.”
Burmage nodded and scurried away.
Danish ghosted up behind them, his foot skittering on the plaster dust the only sound of his arrival.
“Your turn,” Lt nodded Waldo through. “What do you think?”
Danish flexed the fingers in the gloves, bent into a squat and back up again.
“It’s like a second skin,” Lt could hear his grin through the helmet.
He stared at his own skull like face reflected in the faceplate. All day hikes under a sixty pound ruck had burned every last vestige of fat off his body. His skin was stretched taut over razor sharp cheekbones. His eyes looked sunken, and dark under a pronounced brow.
The faint reflection made it look like a ghost was staring back at him through the helmet, and Lt bit back a shiver.
“Doc!” he shouted.
The man in the monocle popped up again in the lab.
“Once you get Waldo suited up, we need to have us a meeting.”
Doc nodded and went back to working on the suit, a man in his element.
“Stand guard,” he told Danish and went back up front to see to the prisoners.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jake and Steph marched back through the fence with almost two dozen squirrels. Lt motioned them toward the trench fire Crockett had built. There was a small debate on just roasting the meat on a spit as opposed to a stew.
“Stew goes further,” Lt ended the debate. “Besides, these folks ain’t had a lot to put in their bellies, they’ll sick it up. Keep the stew thin, and they can thicken it up later.”
As Crockett cleaned and dressed the meat, chopping it into small bits and dropping it into several large pots nested in the embers, Lt gathered his squad around him.
Babe, Waldo and Danish stood to one side in their new suits of armor. Oakley, and Jake bracketed Crockett as he cooked. Doc was the last one to join them, pulling the headpiece off and holding it in his hands.
“Alright,” Lt said. “Crockett’s going to put that stew on to cook, and then suit up. Doc, why don’t you tell me a little more about these things. They’re more than just body armor, I take it?”
Doc cleared his throat.
“These are just first generation prototypes,” he said. “Some of the enhancements we added later are lost on Mars or in destroyed bases around the globe.”
“I ain’t too worried about what I don’t got Doc, just want to know what I do.”
“Bio-enhanced feedback,” he said. “Strength, endurance, stamina. Think of everything you can do, and multiply it by a factor of ten. That’s the nanotechnology.”
He pointed to Babe’s helmet.
“Reticular targeting with plutonium charged plasma blasters.”
“Like they took to Mars?” said Waldo. “Space guns. Cool.”
“Plasma,” said Doc. “Hot.”
“We got us some grade A weapons then,” said Lt. “What else.”
“The first gen were bulletproof,” said Doc. “But not alien proof. Their weapons proved to be more difficult to predict.”
“What do you mean?”
“They operate on different light frequencies.”
“That’s just how they look,” said Lt.
“And how they interact with our atmosphere,” Doc explained. “The light has a heat value associated with it, and combined with the alien construction.”
He shrugged.
“We haven’t been able to stop them from piercing the armor.”
“Got that boys,” Lt shouted. “Don’t get shot.”
“Not by aliens,” Doc added. “The first gen is like a small wearable tank. That would be a good analogy.”
“A tank is big and blocky,” said Waldo a
s he aimed a sidekick at Babe’s head, stopping inches from the visor in a demonstration of perfect control. He stood, balanced on one foot, the other extended full and held it.
“This is not big or blocky.”
“I called it a second skin,” said Danish.
“That’s what it feels like, Lt,” Babe said. “You’ll see.”
“I will see,” Lt answered. “Now we know what it can do, let’s figure out on what needs doing.”
“We’re going to save Lutz,” said Babe as if it were obvious.
“Yeah, that’s on my agenda.”
“No Sir, Lt. That is the agenda.”
Lt squinted at Babe but gave him a pass for a moment.
“The agenda is fluid Babe.”
Babe stared into the squinting eyes for a moment, then bowed his visor.
“High command sent us on a mission to form a coalition. They don’t know about these suits. I haven’t decided if I’m going to tell ‘em yet.”
He ticked off two fingers.
“So far as I see it, we got two items on the docket. Organize the resistance. Save Lutz. And whoever else we can free.”
“What about us?” Jake asked.
“What about you? Doc earned his keep, as far as I’m concerned. You and Oakley are still open for debate.”
“We’ve worked with you,” said Steph.
“Worked with, yeah,” Lt shot back. “Still ain’t one hundred percent where you stand yet.”
Jake nodded. Steph looked like she was about to say something, but caught the nod out of the corner of her eye and sighed instead.
“Lutz,” Babe reminded them. “If we use these to go get Lutz, we’d kill two birds with one giant rock.”
“I ain’t said no, Babe. I’m saying wait. Doc, you got six suits? How many on the workbench?”
“Two, and one in cold storage. Both require a lot of work.”
“You got what you need here?”
“I think I have most of it,” he said. “The facilities remained intact. There are ongoing issues of power supply and management, plus computing issues that have yet to crop up.”
“You’ve got computers in there?” Steph gasped. “I haven’t seen a working computer in, well, ever.”
“Three years,” said Waldo. “Alien’s popped an EMP in the atmosphere and took out everything.”
Lt pursed his lips.
“How did those survive Doc?”
Doc rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.
“Technically, we don’t know if it was an EMP.”
“Knocked our asses back into the dark ages though,” said Waldo. “No computers, no cars, no tech.”
“It had aspects of an EMP, but it seemed selective. For instance, some bases where the aliens have established headquarters maintain utilities that work, in service to their occupation.”
“Inside the wire, they have something we don’t,” said Lt. “But out here, Waldo’s right. We’re in the stone age. But this is about to jump us right up to the space age. And no matter what fucking age you are, it’s clobbering time.”
“Crockett’s going to stay here with you Doc. Get those other suits up and running. The rest of us are going to reconnoiter where they’re holding Lutz,” he locked eyes with Babe. “To see what we’re up against, and make contact with a couple of outposts to coordinate.”
He held up three fingers.
“Three birds. Big fucking stone.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Lt didn’t like leaving Crockett behind to guard the Doc. But with Sherill trailing them by a couple hundred meters, rifle at the ready, he felt a little better at their prospects.
Leroy dead. Rook dead. Suds wounded and Lutz pow. He was down half his squad and damn it, he did not like it one bit. Even the addition of Jake and Oakley didn’t sit well with him yet.
They were both gung ho to help, even the boy despite his grumbling and smart ass mouth. But eager to please didn’t buy much stock in his book, not when their origins were so suspect.
He flexed in the suit as they walked. It did indeed fit like a second skin, the material felt thin, but he could also feel the strength in it. Doc didn’t tell him about the needles that inserted into an artery in his leg, and a vein in his arms.
He felt the pinprick as he slid into the suit and settled into the contours of the fabric.
“What the fuck was that?”
“The nano,” Doc answered as he adjusted the helmet.
“Nano?”
“It’s injected into your bloodstream,” said Doc.
Lt almost shot him. He considered it, and his hand moved of its own accord before he stopped short of drawing his weapon.
“You forgot to mention that part Doc.”
“Did I? I must have been overcome in the excitement,” he said. “I apologize for the oversight.”
Oversight. That’s what the Pede called failing to tell him that tiny machines would be whirring around inside his bloodstream, connecting him to the tech he wore.
But he had to admit, it felt damn good.
The nanotechnology was working on tiny injuries, Doc told him. Microtears in the muscle fibers, cellular reconstruction. Lt could envision a trillion tiny robots reconstructing him from the inside.
He felt stronger. He felt refreshed.
It was an addictive feeling and it made him wonder a few things. Like if the technology was limited to just the suits, or if they could create injectables to help the population.
That was grand scope thinking, and he had always been a man who admired big hairy goals.
But he didn’t want to lose sight of the mission.
“First things first,” he told himself.
“What’s first?” asked Oakley.
She was suited up next to him, but carried an M-16 rifle instead of a plasma gun. He had it strapped to his back, Babe had Jake’s strapped to his.
Lt relented and put them in the tech after the stew was done and he wasn’t thinking about being hungry. The truth was, he had been haunted by the vision of his own skull staring back at him through a helmet.
The rational side of him knew it was just a reflection, but a small bone of superstition made the idea stick, and he wasn’t sure what it meant.
The people in the warehouse ate. They expressed their thanks and gratitude by killing the bandits with their own weapons.
Lt wondered if they would show mercy, or if the banditos would have reciprocated if the gun was in the other hand. But the refugees were fed up, and angry. Killing the men who took so much from them returned a small measure of control to their lives.
That and food ignited a spark of hope, just as he predicted.
“Patrol,” Babe froze and hissed a whisper.
Lt watched the others duck beside and behind the trees. He chided himself for forgoing the ghillie suits and worked his way up to Babe.
They were on a small rise overlooking a two lane blacktop that rounded a curve on the left, and ran in a long straight line until he could no longer see it in the distance.
The patrol hovercraft meandered from the horizon, aimed at the curve.
“Path of least resistance,” Lt observed.
“Sir?”
“Shortest distance between two points, Babe.”
He couldn’t see his face, not behind the visor that reflected his own mirrored visage. But he used his imagination to watch the wheels turning in Babe’s head as he put it together.
“Straight line.”
Lt motioned Danish and Waldo further up the road, settled Jake with Babe behind the tree and took Oakley with him.
“On my mark,” he ordered them.
They hunkered down to wait.
It didn’t take long for the hovercraft to pass them. Lt let it get ten meters beyond his position, almost even with Babe, then opened fire.
He aimed for the engine compartment, a bulge on the fuselage that powered the craft. The laser blaster ripped through the alloy and sent it crashing into the asphalt.
It skittered along as his squad opened fire, peppering the canopy and body of the ship with smoking craters.
