by Chris Lowry
“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 as 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 op
ened 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.
The top ejected with a powerful explosion that rocked them back, even in their suits and four Lick soldiers spilled out, weapons blazing.
Jake and Steph opened up with the conventional weapons, smashing snouts, cracking scaly skin.
Babe drew a target on one of the soldiers and almost fired as his head exploded. Sherill up in a tree had locked in on their position.
The shooting was over in seconds.
“Lt!” Waldo screamed.
Lt jumped up and raced toward the forward position. His movement was effortless, almost balletic due to the suit and the robots floating in his bloodstream.
He could hear the amplified footsteps of the rest of his squad racing after him.
Waldo knelt beside Danish on the ground. A smoking crater occupied where his stomach should have been.
“I told him to stay down,” Waldo explained.
Lt dropped beside them and worked the helmet off Danish’s head. He took off his own and set it down next to his knee.
"How did I do Lt?" Danish coughed through a mist of blood.
Lt wiped the crimson stain off the boy’s lips.
"You did fine Danish. Real fine. You were a Jedi Knight of bad ass Lick killing. Some of the best I ever seen, I shit you not."
"Really," Danish gasped and took a long rattling breath. "What's a Jedi knight?"
His eyes glazed over as he stared into the abyss, the life sneaking out of him in a long slow wheeze.
Lt wiped the back of his hand across is nose and sniffed.
"We know," said Steph, her voice thick with emotion, eyes swimming in unshed tears.
"He ain't ever heard of a Jedi, Lt moaned. Fucking Licks. What kind of fucking world do we have if you don't know who the fucking Jedi’s are?
"I don't know," she sighed.
"I think it was rhetorical," said Babe.
"No," said Steph "I don't know what a Jedi thing is either. Were they like SEALS?"
Lt snickered through his clogged nose as he stood.
"Something like that," he told her.
"What do we do with him?" Babe sniffled through tears.
"We got to hide him Babe. We need that suit."
"It's shot up Sir. Won't do any good now."
"Yeah, maybe," said Lt. He took a moment to compose himself over the body of his dead soldier, and bowed his head.
"You praying?" Jake asked.
"Something like that."
"You still believe in God?"
"Don't matter what I believe, not anymore. Only matters is what he believed. He wanted to live in a world where it was possible. So, I said a little prayer to God, or to the gods of War, or Odin, I really don't give a fuck, which one, so long as they make his transition a little easier. Fucking Licks. Kid didn't deserve to get shot, didn't need to die out here in the middle of the fucking woods."
"He was trying to do something good," said Steph.
"You think this is fucking good?" Lt snapped. "One more kid gone. One more human slaughtered. How many of us got to die to save one man?"
"All of us, Lt," said Babe. "Lutz would do it for you."
"You think so Babe? I think you guys would let me go on doing what I do inside, and you get to doing what we did out here. How many patrols have gone unmolested since we started trying to round up a coalition? How many Licks get to go on breathing while Danish is dead, Rook too. Suds out for the count. Lutz captured. And the Lick still out there."
His voice came in a low fast growl, rage burning in his ice blue eyes.
"You want to tell me it's worth it? You want to tell me it's okay to trade his life for someone else's? How about yours? Who can I trade you for Babe?"
"Lt-."
"Don't say nothing," Lt held up a hand to forestall his comment. "You think I'm losing it, cause I can see it in your eyes. You think this dead kid here is the straw that broke the fucking camel's back. I ain't no damn camel Babe. And he sure as fuck ain't straw. I'm just sick of this alien bullshit. We kill 'em ten at a time, maybe less, maybe more. And all the fucking while, they're still here, still got more of 'em. We need something bigger. Something bolder."
"We need to destroy their mothership."
Lt glared at Jake.
"Say that again."
Jake ran a gloved hand across the chest plate of his suit.
"We have these, but you're right. What are you doing with them? Makes harassing the patrols easier?" Jake waved a hand at Danish on the ground. "But they're supposed to keep us safe."
"Destroy the mothership," Lt said, almost to himself.
He cradled his blaster.
"Babe, Steph, I want that suit off Danish. Divide it up and ruck it out. You," he pointed to Jake. "Dig a grave for his body. We ain't gonna leave him out here for the critters to get."
Babe and Steph kneeled over the body and began to strip it. They packed it away piece by piece into their backpacks, stealing Danish's own for even more space.
Lt wandered to the edge of the road and glared at the still burning hulk of the Lick hovercraft. His eyes studied the smooth lines and shallow curves of the construction.
The polymer metal was dented, crumpled, electrical fires melting the shape in spots. He sniffed the acrid stench of burning plastic, the computer brain being fried.
The Lick could bury their own dead, he thought. If they even bothered to come retrieve them.
Then he knew how he was going to get onto the LIck base and rescue Lutz.
It came to him in a moment of clarity as he leaned a shoulder against the tree and watched the aftermath of carnage stretched out in front of him.
"Babe!" he called out.
"Lt?" the man said from several meters behind him.
Lt looked over his shoulder and saw his second waiting, balancing under a double load of suit and his own gear.
"I had me an idea Babe. You ready to move up to the majors?"
"I'm not even a Captain yet, Lt."
Lt snorted.
"Minor league to major league," he explained. "Baseball."
"I don't remember," said Babe.
"You don't have to remember," Lt told him. "I'll remember enough for the both of us."
He led him back through the woods to the others so they could outline the plan.
CHAPTER SIX
The group marched in stoic silence, the loss of Danish weighing on them.
Steph drifted closer to Lt.
“Why did you call him Danish?” she asked. “You call me Annie Oakley, Jake Chief. I don’t know the other’s real names.”
Her soft voice carried through the silence of the woods, only the insects humming to betray their presence.
Lt tilted his head so he could see the reflection of his helmet in her visor.
“I wanted a fucking donut,” he said. “Told the boys to keep a lookout if we were scavenging. You find any donuts in a bag, bring ‘em to me straightaway. We run up an old gas station convenience store. Things a burned out shell, roof half caved in. Lick must have sent a round through the wall or something. But you never know what kind of treasure might be inside, if a place like that’s been overlooked. That little fucker comes running out waving something in his hands, screaming he had a donut for me. Turned out, it was a cheese Danish.”
“Danish,” Steph breathed.
“Danish,” agreed Lt.
“How did it taste?”
“Plastic melted to it from the heat. Couldn’t eat it.”
She nodded, and as they kept walking, she fell back in step with Jake.
“We got any intel on this place?” Babe asked.
“Yeah,” said Lt. “See that mountain? It’s ten klicks from here. That’s where we’re going.”
“They built
a compound on a mountain? That’s stupid,” said Waldo.
