Three bullets resulted in two shattered targets. When he changed his second magazine, only three targets remained. Those exploded in quick succession as he sent a half-dozen rounds downrange.
He had no time to congratulate himself or even breathe more than once as another set of targets appeared much closer. These not only moved, but would randomly rotate or even disappear altogether. Nikos also knew from experience that this part of the test never had any discernible pattern.
The rifle clanged to the bench as he simply dropped it, drawing the armor-sized pistol in the same movement. Nikos's first few shots missed completely, and he grit his teeth against the mounting frustration.
The rest of the pistol's magazine he put to much better use. Out of the ten targets, only seven remained when Nikos dropped the magazine and replaced it with a full one. He emptied the second one in moments, scoring a number of hits and destroying two more targets.
Unfortunately, that only left him with one pistol magazine left, and if any of the targets remained when he ran out of bullets, the entire test would be marked down as an immediate failure. He needed to slow down and take his time, no matter what the clock said. A high time and good score was preferable to failing.
When the last target shattered to pieces, Nikos had two bullets left in his pistol. He heaved a sigh of relief and returned it to the bench. Next to the weapons was a cleaning kit, which he unpacked.
Normal practice held that a soldier took their weapons out of the range and back to the armory for cleaning, but Nikos's circumstances were slightly different. Unarmored people could, technically, operate and service the weapons he had been using if they had the proper tools. Those tools existed, primarily for the purpose of servicing vehicle weapons, but the scale of his powered armor meant it was more efficient for him to do it himself. Aided by his armor's strength, the cleaning process took no longer than it would have for a normal human to clean and inspect a normal-sized rifle.
In his ears, Enyalios's voice spoke. “Well done, Second Lord.”
“Thank you, First Lord.”
“Before you remove the suit, how can it be improved before the next test?”
Nikos knew that most of the suggestions and improvements would come from the technical staff watching and analyzing his performance. In fact, Second Lord Kyveli, Titan Control in general if he was being honest, rarely even asked for his input. Anything he had to say was usually passed through the armory master and then to the directorial staff.
But this time the Hexarch himself asked the question, and so Nikos paused on his way out of the testing room. Remembering his earlier trouble with balance, the head, and the neck of the suit, he carefully put together his suggestions.
“I believe, First Lord, that the suit relies too much on external stimuli. Armor this heavy should not be so easily damaged by blows to the head.”
“Sensors inside the armor did not detect any noticeable damage, Nikos,” Second Lord Kyveli said.
“Not to the suit,” he agreed. “But I'm talking about damage to my head. First Lord, the armor did exceptionally well protecting me from direct damage by the gigas, but,” he paused, “permission to speak freely?”
“Permission granted,” replied Enyalios's gravely voice.
“It knocked me the hell around, sir, and my head's still spinning. See if the techs can come up with something to stabilize against hits to the head and I'll be happy,” he said, then, “sir.”
“Understood. Is there anything else?”
He thought for a moment. “The throat. I won't be much good if one of those things tears out my own throat.”
“I will pass along your suggestions, Titan-Candidate Nikos.”
“Thank you, sir.” He said, feeling pride in even that tentative title. “Oh, and Kyveli?”
“Yes, Nikos?”
“Next time, I want two gigas.”
“That's inadvisable.”
“The mastigas aren't going to just come at me one at a time, Kyveli. I need practice fighting multiple opponents.”
“The answer is...”
First Lord Enyalios's voice cut through. “Permission granted, Titan-Candidate. Your next trial will be in three days. Enjoy the downtime until then.”
“Thank you, sir.”
As the door opened ahead of him, Nikos nodded, pleased. “Titan-Candidate” did not have quite the ring that “Titan” would have, but it was nice enough in its own right.
***
Three days later, Second Lord Titan-Candidate Nikos stood sheathed in powered armor once more. The technical staff spent that time working night and day to upgrade his suit again. The most obvious visual change was to the suit's neck. Exactly as he requested, the neck had been reinforced with a metal collar. He was surprised to see the collar attached to the body of the armor rather than the helmet, but once he had it on, Nikos understood that the design protected the suit's vulnerable throat while impeding his movement as little as possible.
A few other minor changes were obvious before he put the suit on. The weapon mounts had been adjusted slightly, likely based on some equation one of the techs ran to optimize shooting efficiency and minimize draw time on his weapons.
The joints also looked like they had been altered slightly, but Nikos was a soldier, not a machinist and could not even begin to guess what purpose those alterations served. He hoped it was to enhance the system's balance and reduce external shock, but he did not have time to ask the techs what, exactly, they had done.
Inside the suit, the first thing he noticed was increased comfort. That seemed to happen every time as the crew adjusted the inside each time to better fit his body and the way it moved. Reflexes and general movement felt more fluid as well.
As for his main request, he could tell no difference until the fight started.
While he waited, a Second Lord in a dark blue robe made of heavy, utilitarian fabric ran various checks on the outside.
“How do I look?” Nikos asked.
“Bored,” replied the other Second Lord.
“Daniel, buddy, I'm always bored.”
A laugh answered that. “At least you're self aware.”
“I am all kinds of aware!”
Daniel laughed again. “The suit looks fine. Our upgrades have meshed seamlessly with the previous generation of systems.”
“So what is this now? Version eight?”
“Not quite. We didn't do a major overhaul. Think of it like version seven-point-two.”
“Well, whatever version it is, how's it look?”
“I just said...”
Now, it was Nikos's turn to laugh. “No, how does it look?”
Daniel grinned. “Badass.”
“That's what I wanted to hear! Let's do this!”
Daniel patted the suit on the leg, the only thing he could easily reach. Nikos felt nothing, instead simply heard the sound transmitted from the armor's external microphones.
Nothing happened for several minutes as Daniel exited the testing area and the rest of the technical crew ran their own tests prior to beginning. After a nearly ten minute wait, a voice finally broke through Nikos's growing boredom.
To his surprise, First Lord Enyalios, not Second Lord Kyveli spoke. “Are you ready, Nikos?”
Now, adrenaline surged through Nikos's veins. That was good, he thought. Let it flood his system now, when there was nothing to fight, rather than dumping on him in the middle of things. “Yes, First Lord.”
As promised, when the door at the far end opened, a pair of gigas lumbered out. They pushed and shoved at one another, momentarily unaware of his presence. Without directions of their own, the gigas tended to default back to whatever their base instincts were. Typically, that meant fighting whatever was nearby, even one another.
Nikos read about their behavior, but never had a chance to see it up close like this. He watched them push one another around for a moment, filing everything he saw away in his mind for later use.
Aloud, he muttered. �
�Without a sophont, gigas get stupid. Noted.”
Nikos rushed the gigas, trying to get as many blows in as he could before they noticed him. He succeeded in that goal, slamming his shoulder into the nearer mastigas and driving it back against the wall.
It bellowed and beat on his armored head, but Nikos barely felt the impacts. Whatever reinforcements the techs did to the suit seemed to be working. He still felt knocked around by the punches—the gigas hit hard enough to knock his entire armored weight into the air after all—but it no longer felt like his head was being snapped back and forth.
He punched the gigas once, twice, thrice in the ribs. Each impact registered steadily more damage on his suit's HUD. The first strike barely registered, but the second and third showed on the target indicator as strongly yellow impacts, medium strength.
Despite all of its upgrades and enhancements, the powered armor still operated under certain fundamental laws of human structure. Among those laws was that strikes landed using the power of the legs and hips hit much harder than those delivered by the arms alone. Nikos twisted his hips, intending to deliver a rib-crushing punch, but his fist never hit its target.
Instead, the second gigas slammed its own fist into his armored ribs from the side, sending Nikos sprawling.
While the first gigas recovered its breath, the second bounded after him on its deceptively long legs. It roared, swiping at the air as Nikos rolled backward and to his feet. He sidestepped slightly, catching the gigas with his shoulder in what would have been the solar plexus in a human. It had a similar effect, and the giant's wheeze was accompanied by a spray of spit and blood.
Nikos delivered a long punch backed by his, and thus the armor's, entire body structure. It struck the gigas full in the face, snapping its head back and sending it to the ground in a sprawl. Nikos followed, prepared to pin it so that he could snap its neck, when the first gigas appeared suddenly at his side.
The first gigas, recovered from the pummeling Nikos gave its ribs, did not strike out at his armored form. Instead, it wrapped both of its impossibly strong arms around him and hoisted his entire power-armored weight off the floor.
Nikos flailed against the gigas's crushing grip, catching it in the leg with his feet. The gigas grunted in pain, but did not drop him. Instead, it pivoted and body slammed him into the floor with enough force to knock the wind from Nikos's lungs, power armor or no.
An alarm blared inside the armored helmet as his vision swam. Some part of the chest armor had cracked. Nikos did not have the time at the moment to determine which part. He only hoped he could finish the fight without taking another hit to that same spot.
Fortunately, the power armor did not suffer from the organic limitation of muscle shock. Nikos got control of his breathing back in under a second, and the armor translated his twitches of movements into something much more powerful. He bucked the gigas off before it could strike at him again.
The first gigas sprawled and Nikos stepped away from it, turning his attention to the second gigas. Its face streamed blood from where he punched it and from its mouth where it seemed to be coughing up blood from Nikos's strike to its gut.
Nikos launched himself at the second gigas, dropping at the last moment to pass under its arms. His shoulder caught the giant just above its hip bones, more or less where the kidneys would be in a human, and Nikos wrapped both armored arms around the gigas's legs. The giant toppled to the floor as Nikos scrambled into an automatic mount.
He landed another punch to the gigas's face, which his HUD indicated with a flare of red damage. It swiped at him with both hands and Nikos realized his pin had been too hasty. The gigas's arms were still free.
He realized this in the exact same instant that the gigas slammed the side of its fist into Nikos's armored head. The armor still did its job, preventing his head itself from being knocked sideways. It did very little to stop the sheer energy from the strike, however, and he fell to the side, stunned and sprawling.
He must have bit his tongue or cheek when he fell, because Nikos spat blood as his vision cleared. He twisted, starting to come to his feet again. The gigas that struck him bounded forward, arms raised to strike. Nikos put up both of his own arms, blocked the blow, rose to his feet, and immediately slammed back into the ground as the other gigas slammed a shoulder into his midsection.
“Are they learning,” he muttered, “from what I do?”
He rose, thankful the gigas hit him as hard as it did. The blow sent him some three or four meters through the air, out of reach of both mastigas for the moment. That gave him time to properly get to his feet and to resume an anchored fighting stance.
It also afforded the gigas the same luxury. They approached him together now, neither moving very far from the other.
Nikos faked to one side, then lunged to the other. Both gigas fell for the feint and he struck out at the nearer one with his fist. The blow caught the creature in the back of the head and it stumbled.
The other gigas shoved past the one he punched, sank slightly, and sprang forward in the exact same wrestler's tackle he used moments before. He hopped backwards, hoping the armor was capable of such a nimble movement, then dropped elbow first onto the gigas. He connected with the exact center of the monster's spine, and his HUD flashed a dark red damage indicator.
Before he could rise, the other gigas was on him. It grabbed his arm, held him tightly, and tackled him to the floor. Despite the armor, Nikos was still a human underneath the layers of alloy and polymer. The gigas jerked his shoulder at an unnatural angle that his armor did nothing to protect him from, and he screamed.
Nikos started to right himself, but the gigas planted a foot onto his shoulder, continuing to twist his arm. He felt the joint dislocate, then a sickening tearing sensation as the muscle and ligaments suddenly sheared and separated.
Nikos thought he was screaming. His throat burned and his lungs emptied, but he heard no sound come out.
The pressure lessened for a blissful moment before redoubling to new heights. Absolute agony blossomed in his elbow as the gigas's foot snapped Nikos's arm in half. He continued trying to scream as his vision faded.
Dimly, somewhere a million kilometers away, he heard a man's voice. “Kill them! By the Ten Thousand, kill them now!”
Noises erupted overhead, but the only thing Nikos knew was the pain in his arm and shoulder. They were his world right up until he felt his head move. There was a clang, and a shock, followed by another.
Then another clang, another shock.
Another.
The last thing Titan-Candidate Nikos felt was a sudden blissful warmth. Nothing could hurt him anymore.
***
The door to First Lord Enyalios's office buzzed. He took a long drink from the amber liquid in his glass, ignoring who- or whatever it was that demanded his attention.
When the door buzzed again, he snarled. “What?”
The door slid open soundlessly, admitting a lone Second Lord in a dark blue robe stained with blood. Enyalios could not tell if the red streaks in the man's beard were a deliberate choice or if they were more blood. He certainly had not gotten all of it off his face.
Enyalios's eyes narrowed. “Second Lord Daniel, is it?”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, sir, I...”
“What the hell do you want, Daniel?”
The man paled slightly. “Sir, it's about the Project.”
Enyalios straightened, but continued staring death and hate in Daniel's general direction. Some part of his mind told him that was not fair, that what happened had not been Daniel's fault, but he was the only person the Hexarch had at the moment to blame.
“Don't you think it's a little soon to be talking about the Project's future?”
“Sir, with respect...”
“Stop that,” Enyalios ordered. He tapped a button on his desk and the door to his office slid shut again. “If you're here to say something, Daniel, say it. Otherwise, get out.”
Daniel waited a moment
, rocking back and forth on his heels while Enyalios continued to fix him with an angry stare. Finally, the Hexarch chose to break the tension by looking away and taking another drink from his glass.
Let the man have some peace, he ordered himself.
“Sir...”
Again, the Hexarch fixed Daniel with that same angry glare.
He took a deep breath. “Enyalios. My team is prepared to begin work on version eight of the armor immediately.”
Enyalios could not even muster enough rage to shout. “Nikos is dead.”
Daniel nodded. “I am aware of that, sir.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Sir, I,” he started, then stopped. Daniel looked around the office for a moment, then seated himself in one of Enyalios's chairs without being invited to do so. His face took on a hard set, which carried over into his voice. “Look. Nikos was my friend. I'd known him for seventeen years.”
“What's your poi—”
“My point,” Daniel snapped, then stopped. He took a breath, then continued with a small measure of calm. “My point is that I worked with him through his entire candidacy. I was the one who convinced him to apply after Chryssa was killed.”
Enyalios continued watching Daniel with anger and suspicion, but allowed his subordinate to continue. In truth, he admired the man's tenacity and the nerve he displayed by walking into the Hexarch's office and talking like he was. For the moment, Enyalios would hear him out.
“I propose that I take Nikos's place.”
Enyalios's eyes widened. “You?”
Daniel nodded solemnly. “No one else knows the machi-machi like I do.”
Enyalios quirked an eyebrow at the nickname the techs had given the armor. He heard it before, but never in a formal conversation. Of course, he reminded himself, this conversation never was a formal one, he saw to that as soon as Daniel came into the room.
“You're doing this because you feel like you owe it to Nikos.”
“No,” Daniel replied, then, “yes.”
“Are you intoxicated or otherwise impaired at this moment?”
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