Diamonds to Rust

[7734]

Ambushes, I decided, were hard work. According to Ye Olde Manual I'd studied back when I'd actually been training for commando actions like this, what you wanted was ideally an L-shaped ambush: a short end to stop 'em, and a long end to provide enfilade fire. If you were short a load of dudes, you could put an explosive at one end to make a mess of things and get by with a bar ambush. If you were short a lot of weapons, you could create a two-dot ambush, which would pin the enemy down for what heavy weapons you did have to scythe down with impunity.

I, meanwhile, had no dudes, no heavy weapons, and no explosives. Conventional logic told me I didn't have a chance. Good thing I stopped listening to conventional logic a long time ago. Hiking out to the forest, I got one of the bodies I'd put there for disposal, shot a hog that was trying to eat said body, and drug it out to the roadside. I then found an old two-liter bottle, and proceeded to use it, some dirt, and my bayonet to make an improvised silencer for the M16. It would work better if I used an American bayonet, but you know beggars can't be choosers and duct tape solves most equipment issues. After putting the body by the roadside, I got down to the sitting and waiting part of today's entertainment in an improvised hide about a hundred feet from the road.

The convoy wasn't too terribly long in coming, but more than long enough for the hogs to find my bait and start gnawing on him like a Christmas ham. It got the job done, though, as three technicals came up to a dead stop, and about fourteen good dudes rolled out. Interestingly enough, most of them were in what looked like standard Peacekeeper coveralls, although the body armor was still shrapnel-only gear. Good. My first shots would be on the gunners for the technicals, then, and my second would be for the NCO. Rolling my mechanical shoulders, I tilted my jaw left into one of the three buttons in my helmet, to lock tension on my left arm. Boom- instant still rest. With my right, I lined up all the shots. I had to move quick.

One thing most people didn't recognize is that suppressed weapons didn't tend to be much quieter than unsuppressed weapons- only fifteen or twenty decibels, if you didn't swap ammo, and maybe thirty or thirty five if you did. That went from a jet taking off to "only" an asshat revving his engine without a muffler. It didn't magically make you some stealthy devil. What it did do, though, was it massively changed the sound of a shot. They knew roughly what vector I was on once I pulled the trigger, putting two rounds into each machine-gunner, but distance, that was the question. The squad leader got three rounds- he had a rifle caliber helmet and I had bullets to spare- but after that it was all picking off the targets as they came up. To their credit, most of them figured out how to duck, but spraying and praying wasn't going to get the job done. When I stopped shooting to reload, it got them to stand up. Was I gone?

Hell no. I'd barely stopped shooting for half a minute, of course I was going to open back up once I got this cheap-ass mag to sit right in the feed well! It must have been from Chuckles Senior back there, since it had some janky, dirty ammo in it that kept stovepiping in the gun. Half the problem was that I was probably shooting .223 Remmington out of a gun set up to shoot 5.56, but I could afford to rack the bolt a few extra times now and save the good bullets for later.

By the time I was done, I had finished cursing out the hijos de puta who made the mag, the underloaded bullets, and the issue of having to wait for absolutely everyone to be dead. Getting out of the blind, I popped the magazine and sighed. Still had six bullets left to go through. Walking over to the trucks, I popped the door open on one, and started digging around in the backseat. Now, if these were good ol' boys wont to make the usual good ol' boy fuckups, they thought their trucks needed rope, and then bought cheapass cotton cord for the job. About the time I found it, I heard one of the trucks start back up. Fuck.

Jumping away from the car with all the energy I could muster, I saw one of the technical tear the open door off as I barely cleared the side of it. The driver then did a pretty good skid turn, and I hissed. Bleeding from one shoulder, a maniacal grin, and a morphine and adrenaline instant syringe sticking out of his arm where it was stuck to his shirt. Bringing my gun up one-handed, I pulled the trigger as I ran for the ditch and my engine tried to spool back up to full power. If I could clear the ditch, I would be safe from getting turned into a hood ornament!

That was the question though- if. If I fell in the ditch, then I'd short out, and need to get up on straight torsion power. I still made the jump, though, and as I leapt I heard the revving. As I hit the edge and started scrabbling, trying to dig into the soft earth with the butt of my rifle, I heard a screaming engine as the truck crashed into the embankment behind me. With broken glass licking my bootheels, I got clear and stood up, heaving. He'd turfed in right behind me, and as his wheels spun angrily I glared. This was almost personal. As the unknown driver struggled for a pistol, I lowered my gun and started dumping bullets. When it clicked on empty, I sighed, and chucked the shitty mag in the ditch.

Now, if I remembered right, I was at burning these fucking trucks like the pigpens they were. Policing the guns, I squinted. Were these… Owen guns? What the fuck? Hollow wire stock, top feeding, charging handle in the back… it was an Owen gun. This left two possibilities; one being that the Institute had dug up a small island off the coast of Australia full of hundred-and-twenty year old submachine guns, or two, they'd started making them. If so, why?

Meh. I could figure it out later, for now I had evidence to destroy. After picking the most intact truck for my ride, I scrounged up a lighter and that cotton cord. If I fed it down into the gas tanks, it would serve as a fuse to turn the whole damn thing into a fireball perfect for destroying corpses and ruining guns. I'd keep one of them for myself, of course, along with all the nine mil ammo, but the rest of this was going to turn into an inferno.

Once I got that fire good and started, I knocked down my truck's machine gun post and set off. Akron was about fifteen miles south of me, and I needed to get the hell out of dodge before "sneaking" in. Tearing out of the ambush site, I sighed sadly at the lack of automatic transmission, before futzing with the commo set. Once I got it online, I frowned. There wasn't a response to my ambush, which meant either I was still covert, or they had decided not to commit anything to the airwaves. Judging by the patrol chatter coming through sporadically, though, I figured it was probably the former. Powering my suit into standby, I sighed as my arms got heavy. Running on battery always was a drag, since the suit really hated responding to internal input without the increased sensitivity the torsion load absorbers could give it.

I had to stop for a second to chuckle. Here I was, a brain in a meat suit, driving a mechanical skeleton to support my regular skeleton, wrapped in another motor vehicle. Laughing out loud, I heard my suit's motor kick in to charge the battery back up, so I rolled down the driver's side window. Didn't want to worry about carbon monoxide fumes making the joke too funny.

It wasn't too long before I was cruising through the suburbs of Akron, and I sighed slightly. The rot was settling in, bad, with at least one drug van getting passed as I moved on through. The tire plant was still a going concern, thank heavens, but everything else just felt like it was starting to waste away into the heroin haze of the Rust Belt. I couldn't blame people for feeling like the world had been falling out from under them, though- the last forty years had been one long slide into the pit after the Great Electoral Compromise. You either lived in one of the megahubs, or everything you did didn't matter. People voted together, and things had come to bring together the worst of both worlds. Places like this on the periphery were rotting away as they looked for hope. Still, it looked and felt like somewhere on the mend, which meant something had given them a light at the end of the tunnel.

When I found that light, I had to whistle. A factory. A newly built arms and munitions factory, wrapped up in a Peacekeeper compound, with a cell tower the size of God's own back scratcher sticking out of the top. I had found my command post to take out, and a hell of a lot of other important targets to boot. I couldn't afford to be slapdash about this, though- they probably had enough ordy there that if something cut loose it could blow the central magazines. If those blew, it would wipe Akron off the map.

That was bad. After all, I was on the map right now too, and I didn't appreciate getting blown up at all.​

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Huh. Owens guns huh? Well, wonder why they decided to bring those back... That said, I think they're basically either the best, or one of the best, WW2-era submachine gun designs...

Also, what's the whole Great Electoral Compromise? Other than something that killed the United part of United States of America.

 

[7734]

Also, what's the whole Great Electoral Compromise? Other than something that killed the United part of United States of America.

Click to shrink...

Exact details are spoilers and or irrelevant, but think of the last dying gasp of the Boomers, an eternal well of spite, and reformation of the Electoral College and only the Electoral College. That'll get you close enough to figure out the rest of what happened, I think.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Exact details are spoilers and or irrelevant, but think of the last dying gasp of the Boomers, an eternal well of spite, and reformation of the Electoral College and only the Electoral College. That'll get you close enough to figure out the rest of what happened, I think.

Click to shrink...

Considering I'm not American and can only stare at your entire political system and go "How the hell has it functioned so far?"... No, not really I'm afraid...

Also, you might want to fix the chapter. There's a few errors at the start I think.

 

[7734]

Driving through Akron with a bullet hole in the back windshield of my stolen truck and several boxes of bullets in the back didn't attract any attention. I was cruising down the main drag, radio blasting an old rock opera, and people were still selling vegetables out of handcarts and cruising in and out of sidewalk sales and department stores while a few fluffy clouds blotted the early summer sun. Looking like a war-torn refugee, I blended in to the city crowd as the city beat away at the day.

That scared me.

If I was in Detroit in the old post-blight restoration, people would be bucking for cover- I was dangerous, and wasn't trying to hide it. In Chicago the police dogpile would be visible from orbit. Around a rust-belt scrapyard of a town, they'd have drawn on me and looking at my ride like a dumpster truck coming through the town. Here, though, they were used to it. It took time and exposure to get used to something, too, which meant that beat-up war rigs like this were common. If I followed the steps, it lead to some damning conclusions. Beat up vehicles meant fighting, and fighting required two sides. Pennsylvania was fairly close and prickly, and with Pittsburg mouldering away in the west of the state there was a pretty good rock for the Peacekeepers to smash their hands against. Kentucky was a bit too far south for reliable engagments from an Akron detachment, but it was possible. West Virginia was therefore the most likely cannidate, and my briefing did mention West Virginia had declared war on Ohio. Preclusive excursions would make sense, since it sounded like a formalization of war instead of a declaration proper, so that would need to be my running theory. Either way it raised the stakes, since a West Virginia strike force could gun for the central arms and ammo works. If someone was gunning for you, then, you'd take precautions against it- and most general precautions would stop me dead.

I was, by choice and by training, a commando. That meant I specialized in conserving resources while engaging in long ranged engagments with light and heavy weapons to use the distance as a defensive factor if I was working in daylight, and by using stealth and distraction if I needed to close in obscuring conditions. The playbook had been named from the Boer War by the Kommandos: militia that used hit and run tactics and superior long range rifle fire to harass the British, although the American Revolutionary War had more of what we would consider "modern" commando operations with sabotage, targeting of infrastructure, and use of hostile terrain.

The issue was, none of this was very good against a hardened target. Presuming I could somehow miraculously get in past the listening posts, I'd then have to fight my way up and over a wall, through a killing field of unknown geometry, up another wall for the first internal berm, and then complete my objective while an effectively infinite wave of assholes tries to climb down my throat and kill me. If I was still in the Navy with the SEALs, we'd have drones dropping smoke and DIMEs all over the joint to soften it up and rattle their cans while we went in hard and fast, but I didn't have drones…

… or did I? Pulling out my wallet, I thumbed through it while grinning. I still had a Visa burner card with a two grand limit on it, and I had a password to an account at Deutschbank that was still valid and crammed full of cryptocurrencies that still meant something. Okay no that was a lie, most of it was probably in VolcanoCoin with a few Dogecoins lying around, but close enough.

Step one was buying a computer, which was quickly and easily done by finding a Wal-Mart. The giant exoskeleton-wielding man with more guns than common sense didn't make anyone blink twice, although considering everyone from the registers up was packing heat it made some logic. Things were getting dangerous. What really piqued my interest was the number of the Owen guns floating around, most with handmade wooden stocks instead of the sheet steel frames. These had been around a while, which raised the question of when they'd hit the market.

Fuck. Everywhere I went, I had more questions than answers. Taking my new computer out to the truck, I jacked it off the nine-volt in the truck and got to work making some orders. Specifically, orders to a FedEx in Dayton, and then to a chop shop I knew in Cleveland that had a laser CnC machine. Assembly would be done by the chop shop, and so would armament, which post-negotiations would come out to somewhere around fourteen hundred VolcanoCoin, six thousand USD, ninety Bitcoin, and three of my Dogecoins. That last one was the kicker, though, so I had to spend the last of the Deutschbank account on getting a blackhat hacker circle in Berlin to baby the mission home.

My plan, as it was coming together now, was pretty simple. Back when Yousif and I had been in the hospital together the first time, we'd talked to a lot of other wounded soldiers, including a unit of Green Berets. Since the Green Beanies spent a lot of time teaching people how to, quote, "resist unjust regimes", unquote, they had a lot of special kinds of Improvised Weapons Systems, including one I'd practically traded my soul away for: the People's Air War Bomber. An old Huawei phone, some garden variety servos, a cell signal, one free (and add-free!) app, and a payload made the only expensive portions of the system, while the rest was just high-test cardboard and packaging tape. Power came from an overjuiced impact driver hooked up to a car battery, and even the prop was cardboard (although a real one worked better). Ten of 'em armed with mustard gas and smoke bombs would certainly make a hell of a ruckus, although not enough for me to get in. Those were the party favors to keep everyone running around mad- I still needed a gatecrasher.

Time to hit up Craigslist then. I needed a car, something cheap, sold by someone who'd take digital currency. I got lucky fairly quickly though, with some kid who wanted to sell his '38 Tesla coup that couldn't keep up with modern standardizations. It wasn't just the automaker, though, since everyone agreed the standardization and compliance acts of '46 were over the top. Go figure the Feds only got their heads out of their asses when it inconvenienced everyone. This car was legally grandfathered in, but the battery pack was about shot. Perfect. I put in an order out of my stash of PeteroBytes, which were probably going to go through a price crash next week, and got ready to go pick it up.

While I was on the way there, I started putting in orders to the local Farm and Fleets, asking for amounts of controlled substances that were under the federal watch list limits by a few kilos, all to be delivered to a blighted old lot I'd found trolling around BuyTaxForcloseurs dot com.

Once I got there, I grinned. I had a Tesla, enough agricultural substances to start a large pot farm, and my copy of the Improvied Weapons Manual had finished downloading to the burner phone. Time to get to work.

///

It was about two days later that everything finished up. I'd had to go out and buy more diesel for my suit, put a down payment on the property I'd gotten ahold of, and I was trying to figure out how the fuck I wasn't swimming in Peacekeepers. I had to be setting off alarm bells all over the place, and people should be calling that in. If the Institute's flunkies were anything other than an occupying army, they should be getting a lot of tips about my activities, since I now had one working VBIED and gotten a circle of hackers in… Bulgaria? Somewhere where my Bitcoin spent well, at least, so that I didn't have to worry about driving the damn thing with a remote control.

Either way, it was about time to get rolling. I had everyone called up on a conference call through burner cell number six and a Skype account I'd made, and I was going over everything one last time. Unfortunately, it seemed like the main contact for black hats in Berlin was growing a conscious on me.

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Hertz asked, carefully. It wasn't his real name, but y'know, close enough for commando work.

"Relax." Sophija muttered into her mic, the contact over in Bulgaria. In the background, vague sounds that were kissing cousins to Russian drifted through the air. "All you need to do is drop gas generators and make sure you don't crash. Very simple!"

"Smoke generators." I replied carefully. "Large practical difference."

"Meh, not what we're paid for." She said, smirking. "All we need to do is try some Tsarist tactics, not too hard."

Hertz audiably emmited his confusion. "There hasn't been a Tsar in Bulgaria for… a century?"

"The Russian Tsar." Sophija explained, and I sighed.

"Putin. She's talking about Putin."

"You take all the fun out of it, Yankee."

I just groaned. "Doing my job. Either way, everyone needs to focus please. Hertz, how's the bomber fleet looking?"

A few rattling keys came through the headset. "All flights report they're on heading, and signal strength is strong, with latency under one hundred fifty ping. Current ETA to drop zone is sixteen minutes; there's a bit of a tailwind."

"Right, car team?"

"Making the lineup on the gate as we speak. Traffic is fairly light, and we've got less than one eighty ping with proxies up."

I breathed out softly, and slipped into my coat. Every gun was loaded, and it was time to go. Getting out to the truck, I breathed in and out. "Right, standard burn protocols will be in place from here on out. Everyone's proxied up?"

"Already behind seven proxies" Hertz replied.

"As far as anyone who isn't the NSA is concerned, we're perfectly normal Japanese crypto salesmen on call." Sophija said lazily. "We have lineup on the gate, and car team is in position."

Jockeying through traffic, I sighed. "Flight team, report."

"Three minutes."

Two and change passed as I got onto the main boulevard. Straight shot into the parking structure, then I would be out on foot.

"Everyone ready?" I asked, breathing in before I pulled on the faceplate of my helmet. I got affermitives back. "Car team, go!"

The Tesla I'd turned into a self driving bomb sped off, weaving through traffic relentlessly as I stayed in the back. Moments later, it slammed into the facility gates, blowing the hell out of the guardpost and mobile barriers. As battery acid and napalm rained down, I gunned my own engine, speeding through the burning wreckage as I dove for the garage. Coming in, I hissed- they had dragon's teeth over the entrance that came up when the gate went down. Shit!

Ramming up into the teeth, I felt the truck's undercarriage scream in pain as I came up in the frame-wrecking obstacle. I didn't even notice the airbag going off in my face in the crash, I was so desperate to get out.

"Move, move you idiot!" I heard over the radio. It was Hertz on the very illegal 5G bandwidth I was hogging to punch through the massive structure. "They're gathering by the security garages!"

"Then drop smoke and give me a minute!" I yelled back. Scrambling to get my kit unfucked, I eventually got the M16 into a decent ready sling and started moving towards the elevators. The sooner I was out of this garage and into the rat's nest of the arms factory, the better. As I got closer, though, a whiz of bullets flying wide told me I wouldn't get that chance. Turning around and diving, all I saw was a faint red haze, before movement behind a car cued me in. Dumping a solid half a magazine in, I huffed. Cars were shitty cover, so that was a probable kill. Turning back to the elevator, I heard it ding open happily; that was not supposed to happen. I hadn't called it, wasn't even going to use it.

Whoever decided it was a good way to mail a satchel charge at me though thought otherwise as I sprung sideways to get the side of the concrete and therefore excellent cover between me and the shrapnel alley. A for Effort, but E for Execution, kids. Moving up, I emptied the clip into the shaftway over the elevator, before hearing a chuckle that forced me to turn, half-remembered instincts barely letting me get my gun up to block a sword-stroke of all things. It was someone who had to be younger than me, a bare five and a quarter foot of body-hiding exoskeleton glaring at me with hate in it's grease-pencil helmet eyes. The sword was a short black bushwhack sword, reminding me nothing more of an overgown straight razor with a tanto tip and a crackling field of magnetic energy.

Clicking over to my speakers, I let a chuckle into my voice. "You ever consider a gun, niño?"

"Won't work on you, so why bother?" he replied, and I gulped. Something sounded wrong about that voice, like it was being filtered.

"You present a compelling point." I replied, before leaping back while hucking my now-ruined rifle at him. The sword deflected it easily, but it let me get out an Uzi and spray him down. Nine mil, even a hot load nine mil, was something I could shoot full auto on one power-armored hand. Most of the bullets even hit him, but whatever his armor was made of was damn good as he rocked back in the onslaught.

"You really thought that would kill me?" he asked, laughing.

"It's worked before."

"Not against us." he replied, before I dropped the Uzi to roll my shoulders and pop off the heavy over-gauntlets on my exoskeleton. They were nimble and easy to love, but there was a reason my last exo had been mostly skeleton. Rippling off two meter-long strands of carbon fiber, I felt my dialectric cells start firing up for a judicious shocking.

"Fine then. Guess this might just have to get personal."
​

 

[7734]

Staring down the power-armored midget in front of me, I cracked my knuckles as my whips curled in my hands. I had no idea of how his sword worked, and I didn't want to tangle with it either if he knew how to use it. Bringing my left leg forward and right arm up into a lateral fighting stance, I watched him carefully. He was coming up in a low guard, and carefully started trying to circle me. The odds were in my favor, theoretically, but I knew what his boss was trying to do. It didn't matter if the kid in front of me could kill me- all he had to do was slow me down. I might be mostly bulletproof, but armor degraded quickly, doubly so if they brought in a Dushka or Denali to speed it up. I needed to win this, and decisively.

As the circle continued, I mentally tallied my resources. Carbon fiber whips aside, I didn't think a jolt would transfer him well. Trying to electrify the strands wouldn't work, either- they were more insulator than conductor, so whatever they hit needed a strong existing charge. Catching the side of the Renaissance Center was planned carefully, and could have gone very wrong if the static buildup had been too much or too little. Beating him senseless wouldn't work either- he was effectively impact-proof after shrugging off a mag full of super-hot nine mil. The patience game was starting to get on my opponent's nerves, though, and he came forward with a bog-standard cut. Moving backwards, I countered with a whip-strike, only for it to start vibrating heavily in my hand before he twisted the sword, cutting my strands off with a chuckle.

"Like it?" he asked, cocking his head. "Only the best for those of us who don't run away."

Rolling my eyes, I snipped the string off with a practiced motion, and threw the remains at him. His sword tracked upward, and that was enough to whip in on his leg, the carbon strands wrapping tight. A quick jerk set it, and then I hauled on it even as his sword was coming down. If I could get him off balance, then the only question was what I used to kill him with- the ground meant death. It wasn't enough, though, and he managed to catch himself on a car as I pulled out my purloined Owens gun. Ripping the clip off to keep him disorientated, I chucked it at him too as I ran in while drawing a knife. It looked like iron, cold iron, would be the master of us all.

My opponent still had the ability to raise an objection, of course. Bringing his sword up, he lunged in a classic fleche, and I tried to parry. As our blades crossed, though, I could feel his smirk as he turned his to be edge-on to mine and it started to cut. It was too little too late, though, as I let go of the carbon-fiber whip in my left hand to power it up. As I hit him with nearly ten thousand volts, my vision went white for a second.

When it cleared, I heard screaming. Some of it was mine, as I realized my hand was covered in melted and charred plastic, while a massive crater decorated the side of my opponent's armor. Swearing virulently, I dived into my coat again for the Contender with my right, when I finally figured saw my opponent rip of his helmet. A young, flush face was twisted in pain, gray hair going everywhere in his screams of pain. Either way, he was making too much damn noise for me to think as I slowed down getting the gun, and instead went to my first-aid kit. I'd need a local ansthetic for my hand, and more importantly getting the plastic sheathe cooled so I could get it off without taking all the skin with it. Pulling out one of my canteens, I stared pouring, my eyes clouding over from the pain. God, this was going to scar so bad. Once that was done, a few quick cuts let me start peeling, showing me the wonderfully horrible second degree burn all over that was my just reward for being fucking retarded.

I still had a job to do, though, which meant a little battlefield medicine. Spraying everything down with a general-purpose painless sanitizer, I started putting on gauze pads and taped it all down as fast as I could, before wincing as I set a dose of local anesthetic against my left wrist and activated the combat injector. On one hand, so much easier than a syringe, on the other the damn things looked like knockoff epipens. The last step was to get my hand back in the gauntlet, and power it up into a static mode. My accuracy would go to shit, but if I turned off the haptics in that glove then it would serve as a decent enough cradle. Hissing in a final admission of pain, I looked over at my victim. The screaming had mostly stopped, and shock seemed to be setting in. I could kill him. It wouldn't be that hard- a knife in the neck, or a bullet. Looking down on that face, though, something pricked at my mind. He looked familiar. Too familiar.

Against my better judgement, I took out a Glock and set it in my nonfunctional left hand, and knelt down to look the kid I'd fought in the eye. His eyes were like his hair, devoid of color or formula, and under his left eye was tattooed a string of dots with a diamond to tie down each end. Curiosity gnawed at me, guiding a hand to reach down to his armor's gorget, popping it loose with a practiced hand. Two more connections depressed opened the curiass, and with it I wrinkled my nose and had to pull back my gorge.

Somehow, the mad bastards had gotten liquid crystal armor, the stuff that made their titantic urban warfare powered armor so damn tough, down to a man-portable scale, and when I'd electrocuted it I cooked off a cell. My hand had been coated in plastic- he was drenched in burning fluid, the basic nature eating away skin. Shuddering, he looked up at me as I pulled away what was left of his shirt. There, on his chest, was another tattoo: twenty numbers, and mess of stripes over it.

A barcode. A fucking barcode. A god-damn fucking barcode like the kid was some piece of merchandise! I saw red, for a moment, before walking away. This had gone from business to pleasure real damn fast, and collateral damage was going out the window. Opening up the call from earlier, I re-opened my mic channel and grinned.

"Hertz." I said, words over-clear to fight the pain in my hand. "How many smoke generators do you have left?"

"Most of them," he replied, confused.

"Good. Start dropping them on the exits."

"Won't that make it harder for people to get out?" he asked.

I chuckled. "Yes."

"Isn't that a bad thing?"

The wave of red tried to cross my vision, but I beat it back. "Hertz, there are… degrees of involvement in what I'm willing to do. I used to be relatively uninvolved with this."

Sophijia laughed on her line, still connected. "And now?"

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius."

Hertz was just floundering on his end of the line as I put the pistol back, and got my Uzi back out for what was quite possibly the most awkward one-handed reload I'd ever performed. Old stick out, new stick in, turn the gun over, rack the bolt, then pick it up to finally be ready to go. Moving forward, finally, I started looking for the tunnel to the rest of the complex. When I found it, I was beaming. No windows, no security, just one half-assed bulletproof glass checkpoint with the gate down. Moving up to it, I rolled my neck dramatically. Holstering my gun, I got into position, and started to lift. The gate was, oh, maybe a ton- chump change, for me. Once it was safely embedded in the ceiling where it belonged, I kept moving. The guns were probably manufactured in cottage shops offsite, since they were easy enough to build. No, I was looking for the danger zones, the powder stores and the ammunition presses. I was going to burn this place to the fucking ground, and that meant breaking every single damn thing here.

Fortunately, there were maps on the walls. YOU ARE HERE were never more welcome words to Man- it let me head quickly for the munitions filling rooms. I didn't need to go for shell and bullet forging; the secondaries would handle that well enough. The danger zone itself was mostly evacuated, and was entirely empty after a few shots of mine into the air. If I remembered my reloading lessons right, there were four machines I needed to break: the primer setter, the packer, the crimper, and the bullet setter in reverse order of safety.

The bullet setter was easy enough, since all it was was an aligner that put the bullet over the filled casing. A few judicious smacks got it to stop working, as well as me shoving some random crap in it. The crimper was likewise easy to break, by simple expident of just ripping off the wheels that spun the bullet under pressure. The filler, though, and primer setter were where I was going to do some dumb shit with explosives. Specifically, as I pulled out that cotton rope from earlier in the week, this was where I was going to use their explosives supplies against them. Grabbing a pile of empty casings from the front of the line, I pried off the lid of the explosives container and dumped them in. That would be my baseplate; the rope would smoulder as the fuze. A few judicious holes banged through to ensure airflow later, and I lit the rope and started running. It would take a while to get the rope to burn up, but when it did the powder would go off like a bomb, and take the primers with it. I didn't feel safe, though, until I was past a zig-zag tunnel through a berm, and in a warehouse.

A warehouse, it must be noted, covered in big red symbols. Fuck, this must be the powder store. Moving in carefully, I looked for a forklift carefully. A battery would work for this, but a can of light gas or methane would be better. By the time I found one, though, it had been two solid minutes of searching, and I think I heard the bullet packing room exploding. No matter- I had my primary explosive as a light gas tank. The detonator to said primary would be one of my disposable guns: a little cradle made of carbon-fiber cord would get it to shoot it's load into the base of the tank, punching through and igniting the gas. If the gas wouldn't like to ignite, well, more burning rope. To trigger the mess, though, I needed a timer… like a forklift driving off with a rope on it. Getting back to the forklift park, I now grabbed an electric one, put it in first, and spooled out about two hundred meters of cord- my absolute limit.

Then I threw a brick on the accelerator, and sprinted like a madman for the berm tunnel. I had a minute, maybe a minute and a half, and as I got past the berm I dived out a door to the courtyard for extra space, running clean over some poor shmuck in my haste to leave. Then I felt a slight shove.

Looks like Shmuckateli there had a gun, and thought he could take me on. Two rounds center of mass dissuaded him of that notion, and as I acquisitioned his Owen gun I realized reloading it one-handed would be dead easy. Good- I'd put it on the outside of my rig with my Kalash. Until then, I had to run before the magazine went up. If they'd properly dug it in, then-

-blinking, I tried to find my feet. Something had happened; something big. Right, bomb in the magazine. I wasn't dead, so the 'run and pray' plan had worked, even if I had forgotten some of the praying. On the downside, as I rolled my jaw in the helmet, I'd been hit with a reflection of the shockwave and thrown into a building's wreckage. I'd blown out about half my suit's hydraulics, the main actuator pump was dead, and the motor was seizing. Right, I'd walked off worse. Pulling myself up, I hissed. The Kalash was wrecked, as well as more than half my guns. Dumping them, I started moving forward, before a familiar THUMP of an armored suit outside made me freeze. The blast had knocked me out long enough for them to call in backup from Chicago- and now I'd have to run the gauntlet from Hell to get free.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Okay, caught up on the chapter I missed early and then the latest one...

That barcode... So uh. What's the latest on human cloning capabilities in-universe?

 

[7734]

That barcode... So uh. What's the latest on human cloning capabilities in-universe?

Click to shrink...

Still suffers genetic deterioration due to telomere age. Kid's not a clone, I can say that much.

 

[SpiritualSlacker]

Maybe a designer-baby, then? Those are technically even possible today.

 

[7734]

Maybe a designer-baby, then? Those are technically even possible today.

Click to shrink...

Getting warmer, but doesn't fit the time scales. It's somewhat foreshadowed, but when I compile the finished draft I'll need to pad out the Chicago segment more to make it look more significant.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Getting warmer, but doesn't fit the time scales. It's somewhat foreshadowed, but when I compile the finished draft I'll need to pad out the Chicago segment more to make it look more significant.

Click to shrink...

Possibility that the Peacekeepers harvested reproductive material from anyone who proved to be able to take high level augmentations, and then started mixing and matching it to breed up an army (or at least unit) of people devoted to them who could possibly take high level augmentations?

 

[7734]

A trap was a psychological device, more than a physical one. At their core, a good trap had a deceptive choice, and a non-deceptive choice that was less appealing than the lie. Everything after that was gubbins. Right now, I was trapped three times over, first by the risk loop of leaving my current position. Staying was safe, leaving was not- except that if I stayed, they'd find me anyway. The second trap was analysis paralysis. If I analyzed every vector, motion, and option I had, I could theoretically find a perfect solution. That theory, though, was based on unlimited time that I didn't have, and I'd be right here analyzing when the super-heavy war suit kicked the rubble down and turned me into a dead partisian. The last trap was the massive force outside working on establishing a herd perimeter. I could break out, and they'd let me get just far enough to pocket me and bring in the heavies. No two ways about it, this was a tight scrape.

Good thing I was a professional. Even with only submachine guns and pistols, I could still dig my way out of this mess as long as I was careful. The devil of it was going to be taking out the heavier exos and stealing their giant anti-vehicle rifles. I'd kill for a dushka or a PTRD right now, but the only engine sounds I heard through my titnus and the occasional fire of my engine were the whines of exoskeletons. Working on torsion and actuators, I gingerly moved through what seemed to have been a barracks, before coming up on my first opposition- a pair of what looked like the redneck militia. Pulling out a Glock, I double-tapped both of them de rigour, before a loud echoing sound went out.

"Sonics indicate he's in Sector Ruth- light him up!"

Ducking as low as I could, a spray of heavy bullets went out through the ruins of the plasterboard on the walls. They were shooting through the whole damn building to get to me! Scuttling forward, I rounded a corner and started shooting into a mess of four soldiers before diving into a closet. The damn Glock was jammed, prompting a hiss and fling as I got another out to spray some bullets down the hall. I needed to charge in, get up close and personal for my guns to go through body armor right now. A leap out of the closet got me started, engine wheezing as I moved in with my pistol still blazing away. Blasting buckshot, one of them managed to tag my coat, hitting me hard enough to drop my ass. Shit!

Get up, Tomas. I heard my old instructor yell. Get up!

Heaving, I felt the hydraulic elbow in my right arm give up the ghost. Fine, my wrist was locked on the left- I could use it, and keep shooting-

-if I wasn't on my side now, from a shot that creased my helmet. God damn, did I hate how much that hurt. Fine. I could fight laying down, starting by returning the favor to mister headshot with some facial acupuncture. His buddy with the shotgun was next, and then I could get back up, bleeding hydraulic fluid in black spurts. Fine. Oil temps spiking? Tough. Battery considering a short? I could deal. Just get these fuckers to stop shooting at me, and I could handle it. Another two ran around the way I'd come, earing the last of my mag and a fuck as I just grabbed another gun. I was down to spit, grit, and hope- good thing I'd come prepared. As much as I loved this exoskeleton, I couldn't afford it's broken corpse slowing me down for the escape- so I pulled the d-ring that kept my coat together. In theory, you could get out of one of these hydraulic coffins in under a minute.

Moving forward another few feet and turning so I could keep my face- and gun hand- into the alley of lemmings, I reached back with the cup of my left hand. Pull up, pull out, and just let the escape lever fall. Faceplanting into the floor, I groaned. Right, tension system was the main motive right now, which I'd just disabled. This is what a battle buddy was for, but oh well. It only took a second to unlock the wrists and snake one arm out, then undo the gorget brace to separate the front and back. After that, I just needed to crawl out, and I was free.

Free, and also effectively naked. I did not like this whole "no body armor" feeling, but grabbing the as-yet unused Owens gun off my coat and a spare MOLE strap and pouch, I had a rough and ready bandolier. There was a stairway nearby, so I did the only sensible solution- go up.

Super heavy infantry exoskeletons had first been designed for the rigors of the modern, urban warfare environment. For about three years, they were excellent in this respect, until a Ukrainian (and NATO funded) unit using them in the reclamation of Berdyansk took them into a nine story building and got the floor mined out from under them. After the mines failed, the suits overloaded the structure of the building, crashing it into the third level of sub-basements, and leaving about twenty million dollars' worth of hardware embedded in the top of a hundred year old Soviet boiler. Lighter suits came to dominate urban building fighting, while the heavies stayed on the ground as mobile support. Considering the love of the superheavy infantry exo shown by the Peacekeepers, I figured they'd still have the monsters- and not the doctrine or discipline to send them in after me.

As the building started dancing, I grinned. Looked like I was right. I was on the fourth floor, and it didn't take much work to find an outside communications wire for a closed communication system. Good- that'd be my escape route. I still had to deal with Chuckles the Giant, though, as he and his over-armored buddies squaredanced through the stairwell. Good thing this joint had an elevator shaft, though. Moving over, I started prying the door open with the butstock of the Owens, and pretty soon could see through it to the ladder. Time to dive. Climbing out and down, I started crabclawing my way as fast as I could, before repeating the pry-open to get to the third floor. After that, it was all a matter of finding the right spot as they searched the fourth floor, and praying.

"Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bowed the restless wave…" I muttered, waiting as they settled right above me. They were holding almost stock still, probably on the radio. It was the perfect time for me to point my gun to the ceiling, bracing it with my left arm, and hosing out the whole magazine. The return fire down started immidiantly, chewing through the floor and kicking paint chips and dust everywhere. It seemed to go on for eternity, bullets screaming, and I grinned through the caphacony as the ceiling groaned. They were cutting through the framing with those massive anti-armor bullets, and the second those monsterously long belts ran out I was running- and then they started moving and the floor gave out. A creak, a groan, and suddenly it was Ukraine all over again. Running back to the stairwell, I got up a flight, and grabbed the MOLE strap. Out a window, clipped into the line, all I had to do was hold myself up with an elbow and heave my way along with the rest of my limbs. A good smack with the Owen's magazine broke the next window in my way, and I slowly heaved myself up into it, before flopping on to the floor. Success!

'CRICK-CRACK'

Looking up into the barrels of six shotguns, I swore blindly. Fucking redneck militia. This could be the end, no? Not quite my dreams of standing down the Bolivian Army, but close enough. There were still sounds of people milling around outside, the occasional raging gunshot, and the sun deemed it right to shine. There was no such thing as a good day to die, but this would do.

"Who the hell is he?" one of the militiamen asked, grousing. "And what's some fence-jumper doing here?"

"Hell if I know." Another one of them asked, grimacing. "Hey, parle-tu anglaise"

I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be French or Spanish, and either way my tranquility had just been murdered more effectively than if the ghost of the McCains had come down from heaven and told me I was getting assigned as the ghost on a frigate for the next eternity in lieu of a berth in Heaven. Forcing my face to stay neutral, I looked at him and nodded.

"Si, a little."

"Well, good. You were probably one of them bullet-packers or something, right?"

Shit, time to lie like a cheap rug. "No, yo uso un… exo? Robotic Helper? Nearly me shift, you know?'

Several eye rolls, but that didn't matter as a set of armor walked in the door. I recognized this armor- the kid from earlier had been wearing it, and he had the wonky sword-sheathe on hip too.

"I got it, boys." The synthetic voice said, coming over and quite gently grabbing my arm. As he started hauling me off, I thought I heard a pin drop.

Then everything was screaming noise, my eyes didn't work, and I blacked out.

 

[7734]

Groaning as I came to, I stared at the sky. Since my last memory that didn't have a combat fog coating it in a faint red haze was running into a Peacekeeper parking garage, I'd obviously put some entirely too old music on before conducting a murderous rampage, full of trauma-inducing explosions and numerous knocks to the head. Lifting a hand carefully, I felt around my jaw. No helmet- and no power exo at all, for that matter. Swearing, I patted myself down quickly, finding not even an old boot knife to help defend myself with. Sweating, I took a moment to re-analyze my environment, before seeing something move near my feet. It was… a girl?

Shaking my head to try and get myself back out of combat mode, I tried to analyze the area again. My ears were ringing faintly with the slight background hiss that meant my eardrums were getting repaired after a near-blowout, and I was in the back of a truck with a giant wooden crate next to me. The girl, who looked to be about fourteen if she was a day and the sort of death-pale that happened when a pair of basement-dwellers consolidated their underground domains, had been carefully shaking my foot with a stick. Smart- if I was still in my exo, a backhand smack or attempt to automatically strangle her would have ended with her pasted. I'd seen a person get decked, before, when one of my training platoon had been found coked out of his mind while in the suit. He'd killed four MPs by accident before the chief petty officer had put him down with two into his chest and one between the eyes. It was an excellent object lesson- when you were in your exoskeleton, you struck with the force of a god. Forget your armor, though, and you'd die like a bitch.

"Hey, are you awake?" the girl asked, and I tried to focus on her again. The neon fuckin' blue hair helped a good bit, as well as the too-large MCR t-shirt and the hint of a gray gym bra poking out from one shoulder. Not like she needed it, but I wasn't gonna say shit when there were more holes in my memory than cancer in a range officer.

"Yeah." I muttered, pulling myself upright as my vision swam. Fighting nausea and a concussion long enough to look her in her matte-gray eyes, I saw a knowing in them before I turned aside to hurl my last meal or two over the side of the truck.

Looking out the side, I chuckled darkly before leaning back in. Looks like I could still do it and miss the paint then. Sighing, the girl moved up to the cab, and idled the truck forward about a dozen feet before stopping it. Wincing, I groaned. I hadn't even noticed the truck was running! Fuck me!

Still, she came back to stand on the wheel, and look me over. "Do you remember what happened?" she asked, careful.

"Not really." I replied, still trying to sort out the dozens of conflicting signals my body was giving me. "I take it you found me?"

"Right outside my house!" she said, glaring. "I couldn't just leave you there, so I put you in the back once I got my baby in the truck and lit out of there. The Institute and Peacekeepers are all over the place, and if we don't get the hell out of Dodge we're in the shitter!"

That didn't jive with my memory at all. Struggling to hide my emotions, I nodded. "If you can get us out of here, I can get a boat out here."

The girl laughed. "Good, 'cause we're about in Vermillion."

I looked at her. "What."

"Ghost town on the coast. I've got a cell phone in the front, so you can call your dude."

I nodded, and pretty soon we were off again. Even as used to bouncing between crazy shit as I was, something smelled extraordinarily fishy about all of this. My feelings weren't improved as we rolled through abandoned suburbs and foggy streets as the sun started sinking. This place had been hit hard in the Depression, sure, but there was no obvious signs that something had doomed it- and more importantly, there were other signs that disturbed me. The houses were too clean, and the streets didn't have the detrious that tended to stick around either. A bottle of beer in a plastic bag would last until the end of time, since polyurethane didn't degrade and glass was basically a rock we'd seduced into a shape we liked. There was none of that, though. Hell, most ghost towns weren't true ghost towns- they were blight.

The difference might have been small on the surface, but under the hood the difference was terrifying. Blight tended to house transients and shifting populations, no matter how small. There was always something to salvage, even if it was copper wiring in the houses or fiber optic cable. Hell, I'd heard rumors of people's tin roofs getting scrapped for metal. An old car out on the driveway up on blocks, rust stains in the streets, nothing. This town was dead, all right, but not from natural causes. Something had killed it.

Not much could kill a town, though, as we went down the too-smooth street towards the waterfront. Eminent domain was right out, the lake was their main source of employment, and-

-I saw the lake. Around the shore, heaping mats of trash were gathered, small robotic chain tugs pulling away, scooping it up into mats. Near the beachfront, a pile of waste mats were stacked forty feet tall, the stench of rotting lakeweed emanating off them with a sour reek. Probably a Third New Deal project gone wrong or something, hell if I knew. In the front, the girl started messing with a cell phone, before looking over at me carefully.

"It'll take a few minutes for me to backdate it to a clean version." She said carefully. "Until then, want to talk?"

Rolling an arm and feeling my nanomachines tell me I was running on fumes, I nodded. "Sure. Let's start with names, hmm?"

The girl looked at me, and I looked at her. It took a moment before she sighed, pulling her electric blue hair back. "Naomi Logos." She finally said, staring at me in the stereotypical teenager look. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

"Tomas Archangeles." I replied, looking out over the lake carefully. Speaking was still hard. "Thanks for saving me back in Akron."

Naomi looked at me, smiling sadly. "C'mon. We can go to the beach or something while you call for the ride.

"E-mail, actually, but yeah same thing." I said, taking the proffered phone and making a burner e-mail. Moments later, the opening lyrics to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" were whistling away to a no-response complaint server for the Michigan DMV, where it would get shifted up the food chain, which had a bot to figure out what I was referencing. Meatloaf meant I got the factory destroyed, so by that logic…

[SUBJECT: Your previous E-Mail] [You called, we answered. What's the problem, chief? Things are a little harry, but there's a lot of loose cannons we can nudge your way.]

I rolled my eyes. Some smart-ass was manning the console, of course. Thumbs flying, I set up my reply.

[I need an evacuation from Vermillion, OH, with medical facilities and room for a passenger. Things seem cold, but I'm gonna have to ditch this phone anyway.]

It took a minute, but the return e-mail was cryptic as ever.

[Right then, thank you for the location. We've got a right legend coming to pick you up, with a side of carnage if you need it. They're happy to help.]

Rolling my eyes, I grumbled under my breath. "Well, that was cryptic as shit you asshats."

"Oh?" Naomi asked.

"Buncha' tomfoolerys wouldn't tell us what our ride was." I replied. "You know we gotta pitch this phone, right?"

"Yeah." Naomi said, taking it carefully, before chucking it into the mats of trash that were getting scooped off the beach. "You want to see the lake?"

I shrugged. "Sure."

It didn't take long to secure the truck and head down to the now-public beach where the river met Lake Erie. The spray and wind made the entire world seem a little more surreal, while the faint starlight and the glow of Detroit and Windsor in the distance brought how close to home we were- and more importantly, how we were still so far away. A few twinkling lights popped up intermittently, holding out for minutes at a time, before fading down to earth with a sad shower.

"Are those fireworks?" Naomi asked, curious as she dug her toes in the now-cleaned sand.

I shook my head, feeling my hair wave in the wind. "No."

"Just star shells, then." She said, sighing. "Damn."

Settling down on a rock, I sighed. I was hungry, my mind still ringing faintly, and everything in the world still seemed off. Leaning back, I tried to think about the day, but slowly gave it up as futile. My mistakes were locked away in an explosion-filled memory. The beach was comfortable, though, since it wasn't a mechanized suit rocking and rolling it's way through chaos and pain. Everything was better than that, though.

Staring out over black water, it was a moment before Naomi sat down next to me. She didn't lean in, but it was obvious I was her windbreak.

"Do you know the old saw about not talking religion or politics with your friends?" she asked, so quiet I could barely hear it over the wind.

"Normally that's to keep yourself from finding out you have different views." I said. "Considering how we met, though, I'm not worried about that."

A small chuckle came from next to me. "And what about religion, though? If I said God was dead?"

"Well, since you're probably not Jewish, I'd say you'd read too much Nietzsche."

This completely threw her for a loop, eliciting a short "what"

"You know, Nietzsche, where that quote's from?"

"What does that have to do with anything?!" Naomi shouted. I sighed.

"You're trying to hide something." I replied. "Too much makeup is the oldest way to hide a bruise, and hair dye covers up most hair damage with it's own. That, plus overdramatic quotes? Classic signs of a kid trying to hide a bad home life with philosophy."

Naomi stared at me, before breaking out into a laughing jag. "I mean- It's not- Oh you're close but- ohhhhhh ahahhahaha!"

I rolled my eyes and patted her on the shoulder. "I'd try and dig in that, but I'm your ride and you can't kill me."

"I hate you so much right now," Naomi said between giggles, "but you're right."

I took a moment to laugh, some old bruise only hitching a little. "Of course I'm right- I've been doing this for years!"

"Because you're an adult?"

"No, because being wrong hasn't killed me yet!"

Picking up an old glass coaster, Noami smiled and laughed one last time. "Reminds me of what Liam always said: computers are just very stupid very quickly."

"Liam knew what he was talking about, then." I said, smiling back.

A few more minutes passed, the night not so lonely. As I braced my hands on the rock, though, my left hand screamed in pain, resulting in me hitting the sand.

"Fuck." I muttered, pulling myself out of the sand. "Forgot I hurt that."

"Well, you can't blame me for it." Naomi laughed. "I just found you."

"Oh hardy har har." I grumbled, sitting upright. "You got any triple antibiotic? This is still mostly raw."

"How did you hurt that, anyway?"

"Probably overjuiced something and it's a flash burn." I said carefully. "Institute, no freaking quality control on their stuff whatsoever."

"Amen to that." Naomi griped. "It killed my brother."

I started. "What?"

"He got electrocuted. He… stepped too close to a live wire."

I smelled a half-truth there, but didn't want to press. Instead, I nodded stoicly, looking around at the bright lights across the lake. Despite the beginings of a civil war, there was still traffic puttering about happily, red and green lights in the distance of people unconcerned with the realities that were steadily unfolding. For a moment, I relaxed. Right now, I was one of them, not caught up in this terrible war. That would change soon, but as the lake traffic puttered around, I had enough heart to smile at least.

It was almost an hour before either of us spoke again, the silence and darkness serving as our boon companion. Naomi didn't break the peace between us when she pointed out the fast boat approaching our beach, and I didn't say a thing when it grounded itself happily in the sand. Three men, armed, jumped out in the odd life preserver and plate carrier combination that screamed they were native to fighting in the water in a way I never could be.

"Are you Archangeles?" one of them asked me. I nodded, and the man grinned before sticking out a hand. "Petty Officer Martel, at your service. We're the ferry to your ride, courtesy of the Coast Guard."

I grinned. "Great. Can that thing get to Detroit with a passenger and some cargo?"

Martel sent me a wolf-grin. "I don't think you understand. Your ride proper is out in the lake still."

Looking out, it took a moment before I saw the outline. It was a warship, running dark in the water.

"Your ride proper is the USS Waesche, Archangeles." Martel said. "For better or worse, someone on your end called in a favor on ours, and Homeland wants to play ball."

My jaw dropped. So far, the Federal government had avoided tipping their hand one way or another about the civil unrest that was leading to this clusterfuck of a civil war, using plausible deniability and covert actions to sweep things under the rug so that this wouldn't show up as the hideous mess it was going to become. Sending a fucking Legends-class cutter out, a ship that could still go toe to toe with older European frigates if it had it's missile packs installed, was a pretty well-tipped hand. More importantly, it said the Department of Homeland Security, the nominal parent organization of the Coast Guard, was also backing us up, and with it a whole passel of angry Americans from Boarder Control, Immigration, and the aforementioned Coasties backing us to the hilt.

"So we've got room for my stuff, then?" Naomi asked.

"Probably." Martel said. "That said, who's this?"

I shrugged amnicably. "Kid I found. She saved my bacon and got me a phone, so I figure it won't kill us to take her back to Detroit."

"Her odds are better out here." Martel said, frowning. "Things are getting damn spicy back home, Archangeles. We're here with RONONE, and this is the first time they've busted out that unit designation since 'Nam."

"I need to get out of here." Naomi said, pressing close to me. "I'm in danger."

I looked at Martel carefully. Coasties were hard bastards by my standards, and I had been training to become a SEAL. The skills were different, but I had expected to do a handful of missions against the best of the worst in the world. In contrast, Martel had been fighting in the most dangerous war in the world for at least eight years: the war against god-damn numbskull morons. Maybe throw in some chulos from down south for spice, sure, but I would put money on him spending three quarters of his time telling people to not be a fucking idiot while throwing life preservers at them. Her pouting wouldn't do a damn lick of good.

"I owe her this." I said carefully. "She's not going to try any funny business, on my word."

Martel sighed, and bit back a curse. "We're tearing down her cargo on the ship the minute we get there."

"Done." I said. Naomi shot me a look before giving a proper teenaged sigh, and I patted her on the head as we walked up to get to her truck with some of the Coasties. The crate with her stuff in it was murderously heavy, and it took a lot of work to get it into the little boat we'd be taking out. Naomi was incredibly possessive of it, going so far as to sit on it with a scowl once it was tied down.

"You know, if we hit a bad swell you're going to fall off." I said as I buckled myself into my own seat. "These things are rough rides."

"I can swim. It can't."

I shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Sadly, Naomi didn't fall in the drink on the ride back to the cutter, and it wasn't long before we came up the back ramp like thieves in the night. Once the doors were sealed and we were out of the boat, though, I took a look around. The entire back deck had been heavily modernized in the sort of slapdash form that suggested this ship had been collecting mothballs somewhere, and I could see in the dim lighting of chem-lamps and shaded LEDs the massive two-inch bolts holding down additional weapons mounted over the helicopter deck. More importantly, the ship started lighting itself up, and I twitched warily. Naomi's obvious dye job was bleeding down her back, and she sensed the hostility.

Turning to me, she faked a smile as I started to see the pale face under her china-fine makeup. "Is something wrong?"

"That depends." I asked, voice tight. "On where you got that tattoo you were hiding."

A tear tracked across a dot string, diamonds resting against Naomi's nose and even with the edge of her eye. "Where else?"

My fist clenched, and the few Coasties around started bringing their guns up to the ready, inch by inch. Raising her hands over her head, Naomi looked me dead in the eye.

"I would like to surrender peacefully." She said clearly. "I will not resist."

Martel glared at me, his hand already on the butt of his pistol. "Archangeles, the hell is she on about?"

"Get that crate out here, and you'll see." I said darkly. It didn't take long to scare up a crowbar, and under the lid of the box sat an excellently-packaged exoskeleton and arms case, along with a conspicuously large sword set. Glaring at Naomi, I turned to face her fully.

"Like I said; I want to surrender." Naomi said, trying to keep herself composed. "My name is Naomi Logos. My serial code is eighty-one, seventy-nine, six lima one, thirty two. Don't bother asking for my soc, it doesn't exist. I was made under the Genetic Modification Program, and trained under the Light Assault Reconnaissance Patrol guidelines, first graduating class."

We were all in shock. Moments later, it caught up to Naomi as well, her feet failing her as she slammed into the deck sobbing.

"And I want this war over before it kills the rest of my family, too."

 

[Zenbeast]

trained under the Light Assault Reconnaissance Patrol guidelines

Click to shrink...

Those damn LARPers.

 

[7734]

Those damn LARPers.

Click to shrink...

Man, if I didn't sneak one or two jokes in, I'd go mad.

 

[7734]

After the revelation of Naomi's loyalties, Martell bustled me into the infirmary. The ship's doctor was a salty old bastard, and it didn't take more than ten minutes to diagnose me with a concussion due to explosive trauma and proscribe me a bottle of water and some Dramamine tabs in case I had trouble with the ship's seakeeping. From there, I nominally had liberty of the ship as long as I stayed off the weapons deck and bridge spaces. More importantly, I also got a nice old set of fatigues to put on over my undersuit that were only two sizes too big. My lowest layer was nice, but it didn't do much against the brisk lake wind as we started cruising back to Detroit.

Honestly, at this point I just wanted to sleep, but the realities of my rather severe concusion dictated I remained somewhat awake. The solution to this question of life was therefore to head down to the mess, and try and get a cup of coffee. It took a fair amount of looking to find it, but once I did I planted myself on a bench around one of the most foul, thick cups of navy-grade caffine-laced spackle I'd ever had the displeasure of trying to drink black. This cup of coffee, if so inclined, could be poured onto a plate and retain it's shape, plug holes in the hull, seal gaskets, and probably overpower a Starbucks by it's mere scent alone. After the first sniff of this death incarnate, I decided that, for sake of my health, it might be best to try and soften the blow by adding creamer and sugar. With the full-fat cream pooling on top languidly and the sugar bouncing off the top to scatter to the table on the first packet, I finally growled and pulled out my jackknife to stir and cut the clump of presumed liquid into something finally drinkable.

"I see you've yet to master the fine art of drinking good coffee." Martel said, before sitting down across from me and taking a pull on his own mug. Naturally, he had his black, and barely needed any time to chew the morass before swallowing.

"The only thing this would be fine for is stripping paint and terrorizing Greenpeace." I shot back, finally diluting the sludge down to the point where I could consume it. While I was surprised to get all my knife back from the caustic death concoction, I had to wipe it on my pants as a just-in-case.

"Speaking of terrorizing Greenpeace, do you believe little miss jailbait?" Martel asked seriously. I just took another slug of the coffee, and shrugged.

"I'd have to get a better look at her shit, but I tentatively want to say yes. Nobody fakes a barcode tattoo, and there was some stuff that was off about our first conversation." I said calmly, swirling my mug. "I don't want to say that the Institute has gone full clone child soldier, but considering most of them get their rocks off playing evil empire, I can't rule it out."

"You don't think it was the Peacekeepers?"

"Gray eyes and gray hair says genetic tampering to me. I don't keep up with that sort of shit more than I have to, but I do know that there was at least one lunatic trying to do 'maximized human potential' expiriments while I was in their gentle clutches."

Shooting me a stern glare, Martel coughed. "So you're saying you worked with them?"

"I washed out of BUD/S on a medical- both knees gone, back wretched, and severe tendonitis. They were hawking a medical thing to pull guys like me back from permanent desk duty, and I was younger and stupider back then."

"And now?"

I shrugged. "Got discharged, went hunting. The Department of the Navy is mad as hell at 'em, and the Chairs are up in arms because they got cheated too many times. Only thing to get the Army mad was to say they were holding out on 'em, and boom."

"One way to spend time, I guess." Martel said. "Chicago sure was pissed when we moved out, though."

"Gee, I wonder why. Not like you're suddenly yanking out a hundred year old facility and probably stripping it down to the studs when you left!"

We both laughed at that, before I sighed. I was damn tired. Finishing my coffee and taking the mug over to the dish-bin, I just groaned softly. I would pass out whether I wanted to or not at this rate.

"You look about halfway to dead, Tomas." Martel said, raising an eyebrow at me. "We can scrounge you up a hammock and some rescue blankets if you need it."

"Corpsman's orders says I gotta stay up for another two hours." I grumbled.

"Well, it'll be another four before we get to Detroit, so you're kinda screwed."

"Story of my life." I grumbled. "Think I could talk to Naomi?"

I got a flinty stare from that. "Legally, yes."

"I'll pass then." I replied. "I know what a warning sounds like."

"That's a good little murderhobo." Martel laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, heard that joke before." I grumbled. "I'm gonna go use the head."

///

It was, as promised, about four hours later that I got rousted awake from a table in the mess to get to the back deck. We were getting offloaded at the Army Corps of Engineers depot to maintain plausible deniability (since we hadn't needed to shoot our way out) and it wasn't long later I was in an office-building-turned command center in the RenCen, overlooking the city and to some extent the fighting on the boarder. I was still tired, still overworked, and still due for a doctor to tell me to cut this shit out.

Was this war worth it? The State and National Guard had been turned out, every kook with a gun pushed into the woods, and the highways demolished to server the connection with the south as hundreds of people found themselves thrust into jobs to push the war fever. Bonds were written, banks were founded and tapped, federal loans taken and grants written to spin up ancient war-tools and spill blood again, American against American. The men of Ohio needed this war to kickstart the ruins of the rust belt and revive the dead and dying life; while Pennsylvania and Pitsburg found a home in reaction as their neighbors force of arms. A little war on someone else's soil was a beautiful thing, but when your home was in the smoking ruins it was another story.

As I watched the star shells and explosions in the distance, a hawk flew by the window, the corpse of a gull clenched in it's claws, while the gull itself was tangled in some brown cardboard fast food bag. Chuckling softly to myself, I turned to head to bed. I understood the message, loud and clear.

The next morning dawned quietly, and I worked out a silent yawn before padding over to the other side of the floor. I'd thankfully had a chance to change out of my skin-tight exoskeleton underlayer and Coast Guard cammies, which now smelled like death warmed over, into a Red Wings hoody and some Tiger's sweatpants. Team loyalty aside, I also still had my knife in the hoody pocket, along with my ID card. The doctor was a pleasant man, and in short order it was determined that I'd never be going to get an MRI in my life considering the amount of metallic shit in me. I told him a handheld magnetic scanner was a bad idea, but noooo…

Either way, I'd caught a non-insignificant amount of damage to my body. My left hand didn't exactly need a skin graft, but I did need to keep it in a gauzy mitten full of silvicane to promote healing and numb the pain. Worse was the amount of shrapnel I had picked up, with the doctor finding several recently-clotted wounds I'd never noticed getting full to the brim with this and that. A few shots of laughing gas and some disassociates later, I was pleasantly remotely viewing the doctor pull out a three-inch metal splinter out of my back that had pierced two of my Jacob's cells and buttressed itself on a secondary subdivision of my abdominal cavity just before it went through my right kidney, right before he fished out the strands of Kevlar that came along for the ride. How the hell I didn't feel that one, I'll never know. Once most of the significant debris was out, the wounds were disinfected, crammed full of bio-gel, and sewn shut. I'd be out of commission for at least three days, then light duty for the rest of the week.

That meant the devil of all devils- paperwork. As I went back to my small apartment, I took the rooms in carefully, preparing for my stay. I had a decent dining room and living area, kitchen with- and I winced as I bent over to check- good enough fixings, and a TV and entertainment system. More importantly, there was also a desk, with in and out bins. Once I fixed a fried egg and avocado sandwich, I got to looking at it. Suit replacement form, weapons requisition form, 'we'd like to give you a commission so people don't look at you funny' form, housing form, and most importantly, the tax form.

That last one went right in the wastebin. Fuck taxes.

The rest of it, though, was important. After becoming a Warrant Officer 1st​ class via the powers of paperwork and nominal Time in Grade (reserve time still counted no JAG would prove me wrong) I got to work on my next suit, and more importantly my next software suite. The problem was, powered exoskeletons needed to be tailored to the wearer. Sure, parts like articulators and hydraulics were the same, but the lengths of hose and skeleton between them were different. My personal software suite, which contained my kinematic behavior, had been lost with my last suite in the sabotage of the munitions factory, but since I wasn't a moron I had a regular backup. Getting it would be tricky, though, since it was a terabyte of data on an external hard drive that I kept disconnected for security reasons. Some poor cop would need to get into my house to grab it and ferry it to Michigan State (where they'd repurposed a shop into an exoskeleton lab) for them to get the data in a new suit for me.

Without that software, my thousands of hours of suit time would be useless as I had to re-teach the computer and develop the sympathetic relationship that made a good exoskeleton-equiped soldier so deadly. I'd already had to 'loose' a few hundred hours of suit-time when I transitioned over from the old Amaterasu systems to the Institute's very proprietary Inaba-maru system. Properly speaking, the Amaterasu was sort of like a computer's OS, except that it learned and adapted with you by recording your inherent movement biases, and working with the suit to correct those biases to keep you in a functional movement state without falling down or locking up a motor, along with having master overrides to help correct bad habits. Inaba-maru was quite different, since it used a synthetic growth pattern to adapt to you, and organically shaped the overrides and movement patterns to work problems out.

The big example I had was kind of dumb, but every problem in a suit was kind of dumb. I walk with a forefoot strike, and with a lot of hip motion since it helped when I was a kid who did a lot of walking barefoot in the abandoned sections of the blight. When I started training with PRETZLE units, this wasn't a problem, since PRETZLE didn't have any sway in the hip articulation. When I got up to Amaterasu, though, I'd constantly be banging the inside of my thighs together because my gait had trouble adjusting to the extra centimeter and a half of suit on the inside of my thighs. Amaterasu solved the issue with a quarter-degree of extra hip articulation to help change the angles of extension, and by requesting a slightly oversized groin spacing to make extra room. This then got an override to adjust my hip angles to help the clearance issue so my suit's pelvis wouldn't need modifications, along with me having to practice walking. Inaba-maru solved the problem quickly by actually working to adjust my leg angle in-stride to buy the extra clearance that way, along with adding a small amount of lean to the whole suit to get extra room for things to clear.

After I was done reminiscing and filing paperwork, I moved on over to the couch to take the time to have a proper sprawl and appreciate the fine work of my apartment. About ten minutes into my appreciation of the IKEA furniture and the thought of taking a nap, though, someone was knocking on the door. Prying myself off the couch, I made sure I was decently dressed, before going to check on my visitors. Two nerds, and a guy in jeans, t-shirt with the kind of old Army blouse that screamed 'reserve of reserves' considering it wasn't even in a post-digicam color scheme. Opening the door, I made a vauge 'come in' gesture, and sat down across from my couch.

"Hello." One of the nerds said, smiling. "I'm Doctor Charles Townsend, and this my assistant, Charles DuSonne. The young man with us is Lance Corporal Lincoln. We're here to talk to you about the young woman who defected with you."

I raised an eyebrow. "Well, what do you need to know?"

"We'd like you to take a ground-eye view of the young woman's suit." Townsend said, smiling gently. "We've hit a lot of snags on the computerization end, and we need to figure out what someone more familiar with the nuts and bolts are before the Spartans team gets here."

I groaned. "You're with Wayne State aren't you."

DuSonne chuckled a little. "You think? We're providing on-site technical support for operations as of this point in time, and we want to keep on that instead of going to Project SALTIER.

"I don't even want to know what that is."

"Good." Grunted the grunt in the corner. A closer inspection revealed a glock in a shoulder rig, and I almost sneered at him before I remembered that I was basically unarmed and unarmored.

"I'll need a quid pro quo." I replied.

"Done." Townsend said.

"Good. I need to talk to Naomi after my initial look at the suit."

Both the nerds looked at me, blanking.

"The girl who defected." I explained bluntly.

"We can… we can talk to our superiors." DuSonne said, before I slapped the table hard enough to make an empty mug dance.

"Not good enough. I need to get her in it, or all you'll get is me going 'ga-ga shiny' at stuff."

"We might be able to arrange a meeting when we get done with some things…" DuSonne muttered, looking at Townsend and then back to me. Groaning, I sighed and went to the archaic-looking landline set on the wall. God, it even still had a cord- what's next, a rotary dial wheel?

"What's your bosses phone number?" I asked bluntly.

"You're not going to call him? Right?" Townsend asked frantically, standing up and beckoning towards me.

"No shit I'm going to call him. You want me to give you information, you have to give me the tools to get that information." I said flatly.

"But what if she goes on a rampage?"

"Then I blast her to smithereens." I replied, letting a trace of voltage jump over my hands.

Townsend and DuSonne tried to argue some after that, but it didn't take long to get down to business and get their handler's phone number. Since Naomi was in the 500 tower and I was in 400 tower, we'd meet up in the concourse and proceed to the workshop where her stuff was being kept. Naturally, I'd be dragging along the nerds, and she'd have her dogpile of keepers all over her like white on rice.

When we met in the concourse, it was like looking at a totally different girl. Most of her blue hair dye had bled out, and without makeup her identification tattoo was clear as day. Walking up to her, I nodded and stuck out my hand to shake with her.

"Let's try introducing ourselves again." I suggested. "Tomas Archangeles, professional exoskeleton operator and mercenary, currently on contract to the State of Michigan Government."

"Naomi Logos, Light Assault Team, Standard Operations." Naomi said, shaking my hand, letting go slowly. "Currently unemployed."

I grinned. "We'll see about that. C'mon- the nerds want to play with your suit."

"Dude." Naomi said, putting her head in her hands. "I'm fourteen. Just stop."

I stopped moving. "Wait, really?"

"Yeah. They wanted to get us acclimated early, and apparently twelve was when the pediatricians said we'd be stable enough to get started. Took a year for training, and here I am!"

"Right, well child soldier aside, we still work in the same profession and as such due courtesy applies." I said, trying to pull myself back on track.

"Bet I've got more suit time clocked than you."

"You only have two years of experience."

"I have two years of experience being taught by people who thought it was totally and completely responsible to lock a twelve year old child in a powered exoskeleton without an adequate way to take a shit that didn't involve wiping your ass without using the suit at full power to get the correct extension of the arm due to shoulder joint geometries."

I raised, and then lowered, one finger.

"Right, training aside, what are we looking at for tech?" I asked.

"Thinking about breaking the rest of the fam out of Institute Juvvie?"

"Maybe." I said, shrugging. "Still, tech. C'mon."

"God, you sound just like my brothers in Heavy Assault branch. I'm not gonna let you slap on another ballistic shield, you idiot!"

We both chuckled at that, before Naomi started talking.

"What suit are you most familiar with?"

"I trained in the Navy for an Amaterasu, but moved over to a Nadir when I started re-training on an Institute gear set. Kept one going for a few years, and then I got bundled into an MSU-knockoff that could keep my data on. Townsend, you know if they named that thing yet?"

"Current going name is Bellerophon, but they're not dead set on anything in particular." Townsend said carefully. "Your next unit will be here by about noon tomorrow, ready to roll."

I grinned. Naomi grinned. Neither of the nerds looked happy.

"Good work, Townsend." I said, grinning. Moments later, we were in the workshop, and Naomi started tittering at the standing exoskeleton in the middle of the room on a work pedestal. As she moved up, any thought she was lying disappeared when her first instinctual response was to throw open an overcoat, dig around, and start banging around to bring out a set of hex key wrenches. Looking at it closer, a flicker of memory teased me. Had I fought one of these before? Probably.

Working with Naomi and one of the techs, we got the large coat off her exoskeleton, and laid it over a table. Grinning, she patted the quilted interior. "Type twenty-five liquid crystal reactive armor coat. Good against most rifle rounds, shrapnel, and lighter than Kevlar. This was most of my operational armor, since the suit didn't have room for great hard plates. I also have the adaptive inserts in since I wasn't likely to go on a long patrol."

"Adaptive inserts?"

"Backer plates to help keep the seams from rattling themselves apart." Naomi muttered, checking over her coat's quilted in pockets one by one to make sure they were still integrally sound. "Speaking of which, grab my helmet?"

Tossing Naomi her helmet, I watched as she stuck her head in it just like I did when I had to check for something- holding it up with both hands. Most exo helmets were designed to rest on the gorget and be very bulletproof, so they actually weighed ten or fifteen pounds- more than enough to wreck your neck! If anyone implied Naomi didn't have a more solid practical background in combat exoskeleton use than me, I'd slap them for being an idiot.

"So the skeleton itself?" I asked, moving up to take a look. At first blush, it was like mine in a lot of respects, except sized for someone forty centimeters smaller- but first blush wasn't all. Looking around it carefully, I noted that a lot of the guts I had, she didn't: less hydraulics in the back, no arm hydraulics, no spare cylinder in the leg hydraulics, nearly twice as many battery packs, and a bilateral arm and leg structure to my trilateral systems.

That last bit was important. The Nadir was designed as a heavy weapons carrier; so it had to be able to carry itself, plus a hundred kilograms of equipment. With my improvements and some liberal advances in materials science, I'd bumped that up to about one-thirty, which is how I could carry more guns than a platoon of rednecks and ammo to match. Unlike my ability to theoretically lug Ma Deuce and a non-insignificant ammo pile, though, this exo seemed to be made of glass. With only bilateral limb structures, suit weight would be a premium, and any damage to the monocoque limb structure would probably be enough to cause a mobility kill.

Unlike me, Naomi wasn't covered in tank armor either. It didn't take much math for me to do to figure out what this would look like.

"What's your coat rated for?" I asked, rapping on the organic-looking shin guards and plates.

"BR3, BR4 with inserts and whatnot. I think it was designed to meet PM8, but who uses Euro standards with this when we get all our shit from Russians?" Naomi asked sarcastically.

"And they sent you out with something that shit?"

"Well, it's about what our softies shipped with."

"Yeah, and they're crunchies!" I yelled, waving my arms around angrily. "That's pansy-ass plate, and you know and I know everyone and their brother's been looking at six-point-eight to handle that sort of thing!"

"Yeah, well we've got subdivision and trauma-hardened cells, so fuck you our multi-hit resistance is amazing." Naomi griped. "Besides, I never noticed getting shot until I got home and they bitched about my coat."

"Then they couldn't shoot for shit." I grumped, before ruffling her hair automatically.

"Hey, hey!" she yelled, backing up. "Cut that out! You don't get to do that yet!"

I stopped, blushing for a minute. Over the line, Tomas. Over the damn-

"At least take me out to dinner first, geez!"

-never mind, she's fucking with you. Bravo, kid. Bravo.

"You weren't kidding about being 'light' when you said Light Action, didn't you?" I asked, rapping at the back of the engine compartment. "Can we get a look at the engine?"

"Sure." Naomi said, going in nice and quick. "It's basically an old-ass Volkswagon flat-four with nine hundred cubic centimeters displacement, but it's enough engine to get the job done."

I facepalmed. "Seriously?"

"Well except for the extra titanium and a fucking mess of an exhaust system, yeah."

"No rotary nightmares that eat apex seals for breakfast?"

"They got rid of those after… the Nadir… oh no." Naomi said, before coming over and wrapping her arms around me. "It's ok, Tomas. The Wankel Contract can't hurt you anymore. We strictly use flats now."

Patting her back, I grinned bitterly. "Tell that to the boys at Michigan State."

"Well, if you let me, I will." She said, chuckling.

The almost tender moment was interrupted by everyone around us stiffening up. As I separated from little-me, we both noticed a tall man in service dress moving towards us. My eye twitched, and instinct prompted me to snap into a salute.

"Colonel." I said respectfully.

"At ease." He said carefully. "I take you signed on for the duration of the conflict?"

"Legally, it's a secondment from the US Navy Reserve, but yes." I said. "Warrant Officer Archangeles, reporting."

"Very good. I would be Colonel Waver. The young woman would be?"

"Miss Naomi Logos, formally of the Peacekeeper's militant arm. She defected with me after my last mission."

"I can speak for myself, Warrant Officer." Naomi said stiffly, before nodding deeply at Waver. "I was assigned to the Light Assault group, and was part of the reserves in Akron before I defected in the wake of the commando mission Archangeles performed."

"Would you be willing to provide intelligence information?" Waver asked. "I understand the current conflict is a bit… unusual."

"I've made my condition known." Naomi said stiffly. "The facility I mentioned with my current family and former company is exactly where I detailed it to be, and is in possession of the materials I detailed it to have. Any further information you need will be available there."

"And Captain Jackson's response is still my response- not until we conduct sufficient recon to prove your data out." Waver replied. "Until such time as that happens, I would like to remind you that a member of the State Guard would be a much more credible source than a defector with a chit on her shoulder and a weapons system we have no need to do more than scrap."

Watching Naomi bristle, I finally decided to step in. "Colonel, may I make a suggestion?"

I got the mother of all evil eyes for it, but Waver didn't loose his temper. "Go ahead."

"The State Guard probably has a single-digit number of combat exo rated soldiers; double digits if we include US Army members seconded to them." I said. "Put them in a unit with me, and I'll make sure they're more than unicorns in the wilderness. If you've seen my resume, you know I served as a Navy SEAL, with years contracting after medically induced placement in the Reserves. I won't promise I can make them a Special Forces unit, but a platoon of stormtroopers can make a hell of a difference if we can hit them where it hurts."

Colonel Waver looked me over, squinting. "You want the girl in there don't you."

"I want her to know where she stands." I said flatly. "Nobody wants to stay in limbo, especially when there's a war on."

"She's a child."

My gaze flashed onto her helmet, sitting on a table, and a memory of a swinging sword and a desperate parry came back to me through the haze of yesterday's concussion. A face screaming in pain, my hand covered in molten plastic.

"She's a soldier."

Waver shot a look to Naomi, who was firm at my side, posture like carved granite. She knew what I was doing, and she knew I knew she knew what I was doing. I respected her too much not to try, before she was lost dangling in the wind. For a fourteen-year old, there was too much to loose if she was alone in a war. I couldn't let go of a mirror of my own past so easily, now could I?

The silence stretched on until I got a firm nod, to which I responded with the same. Waver didn't understand- he had a firm foundation beneath him. For myself, though, years as a condottieri had sharpened my nerves as to who and what deserved loyalty. I was a failed experiment twice over, only fit for tending boat graveyards now in the eyes of my first real employer; and with every reason my second thought me a traitor of highest order. I had to help Naomi, because I knew where she was- even without the threat of neutered Child Protective Services or something trying to kidnap her and 'civilize' her, saying everything she did was wrong.

To someone like her, to someone who would turn into me? Death would be better, and courting it like a steadfast woman would be our recompense until she finally turned a skeletal cheek to kiss us and bring us home.

When Colonel Waver left, things slowly resumed their normal pace of life. Things started moving again, thank heavens, and I sighed as the tension left the room.

"Hey." Naomi asked, smirking. "You hungry?"

Checking a wall clock, I groaned. It was somehow nearly four. "Yeah. Tacos sound good?"

"Sure. Just, uh, small favor?"

I blinked, and nodded. "Yeah?"

A trick of her hands, and a pack of Camels came out. "Ask me if you're planning on lighting up, alright? I generally keep a pack on me for luck."

Chuckling, I pulled one of the cigarettes out and grinned. "Alright, then. I promise I won't run off to the store for a pack of smokes." Lighting it with a pulse of current through my fingers, I walked off with Naomi to where I knew the roach coaches gathered, the harsh bite of the camels mixing well with the brisk Detroit air. We'd get thrown into the shitter again soon, but for now? Peace in motion.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

The Institute one day looked at a list of all the ethics guidelines, and decided to see how many they could break with a single project, didn't they? And then they decided to keep trying to do better. Have they actually managed to not commit a major war crime yet? And I'm purposefully excluding 'using child soldiers' for that, because they didn't use child soldiers, they freaking made them.

Also? Really wanting to learn more and more about the backstory of this universe. Because the US here seems like it stumbled somewhere along the lines and lost the 'united' part of the name.

 

[7734]

Healing up was hard. Sitting around in pain was anathema to me, and the fact most of the things I could do that wouldn't cause more pain were relatively few didn't help. Nanomachine enhanced healing only did so much, so I tried to spend some of the time relaxing. I really did. I saw the Detroit Symphony Orchestra before they were evacuated, talked to some of my old friends down in Mexicantown, and even played some cards with off-duty Coasties who were trying to blow off steam. I only had a few good hours each day, though, before I inevitably hacked up some blood or started pissing a painful green mess and I had to go back to the RenCen and crash on my couch. Today had been my last trip to the Henry Ford museum, and I was thoroughly spent as I flopped down on the couch in my loaner apartment. As funny as it had been watching them fire up the museum's train exhibit to pull cars full of everything else away, my constitution was still too damaged to do too much.

As I fumbled through the television control app on my new standard issue phone, someone knocked on my door. Cane in hand, I grumbled to myself and pried myself up to go answer it. Opening the door to see Naomi, I waved her in as I stumped back to the couch.

"Hey, old-timer." She gently teased, setting down a backpack and cracking her fingers. "How ya feeling?"

"Sloshed shit." I grumbled. "Most of the wound channels have closed, but I've still got more blocks of nanobiotic platelets sticking out of my muscles than I'd like."

"Well, the good news is I got to go to Hamtramck today. The minders have been letting me off the leash more, now that I've demonstrated I'm not going to kill them all in their sleep or something. Also, I brought paczkis."

"Toss me one?" I asked, grinning.

"Sure." Naomi said, pulling out the distinctive red box. "You want the ones that say they're halal, or the ones that are halal anyway?"

"The ones that are halal anyway." I said, grinning. "There haven't been enough Poles around here to realize they're fried in peanut oil for fifty years now instead of bacon grease."

"Harsh, but fair." Naomi said, tossing me the box. We had crème filled, strawberry, plum, lemon… mmm, all the classics. Pulling one out, I started delicately consuming it so as not to look like a savage. My small protégé, in light of her age and glorious Chicago upbringing, decided the best way to eat the donut-like confection was to cram one as far into her mouth as possible and bite it in half. As sugar, plum filling, and half a paczak hit the ground, I started laughing my ass off at the dejected face she made.

"So cruel." She whispered, mourning the fallen pastry like a dear comrade in arms. "Must you mock my one true love?"

"Maybe there's a God above, but all I ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya." I replied, tapping a fingergun on the table. Smiling, Naomi came over to jump on the couch.

"Oh! I know that song!" she said, grinning. "It was… uhh… Buckley? Yeah, that guy sung it! We loved it back home!"

I blinked. "You want me to put it on? We've got a radio in the TV."

"You can do that?"

"I can totally do that."

Fiddling around on my loaner smartphone, I got the flatscreen purring along, and pretty soon a guitar was tapping along to the song. Naomi was entranced, smiling faintly as love, lust, and loss crooned across the screen. As the last chords faded, some of her energy fled, and she just settled back into the couch.

"Didn't have much music growing up?" I asked, curious.

"Not much contact with the outside world at all." Naomi replied. "I first heard music, real music, when I was eight. It sounded so different, I thought it was a different language. The usual doctor wasn't avalible, so we were going to a clinic in town to get our vaccinations updated."

I blinked. "Not gonna lie, kinda expected the Institute to forget to vaccinate you. They're not that smart when you put more than three of 'em in front of a project."

"Yeah, that's how we got them to bring music in after." Naomi grinned. "Nominally it was for language training. But yeah, we've gotten our shots. Less work for the nanites to do, since they're already stressed enough."

"Wait, you've got 'em too?"

"How the hell else are they supposed to keep a genetically modified chimera like me together? The only part of my genetics they didn't screw around with is filler shit." Naomi huffed. "It's why I'm albino- they screwed up some of the pigment typesetting and whoops, hundred and fifty albino babies."

I won't lie, I cringed.

"Made our class pictures amazing." Naomi chuckled. "We'd stand there, staring at the camera, and the photographers would panic. Two hundred red eyes, and someone would hit 'em with a laser pointer and they'd start running."

Some finger math later, I looked at her. "Not three hundred beady red eyes?"

"Eh, not all of us completed training with all our bits." Naomi shrugged. "I actually have a pair of titanium rods screwed into my fibulas because I got hit by a self-driving gun truck because I was in dazzle camo and we were performing an exercise under flares. At least I'm not as bad as Vashti; poor kid's literally just a head on three-fourths of a torso nowadays. She's a good sport about it, but not getting to go into the field really hurts her."

"Well, scientific malpractice on a darkly comedic scale aside, at least you're all here." I said. "Somehow."

"Yeah." Naomi muttered. "You think the raid will get approved?"

"Probably." I said, shrugging. "Let's face it, this won't be a long war. We're not in Syria or Turkey, there's not war materiel under every bush. Someone bombs some train lines, blows a few bridges and pipelines, and suddenly nobody's got food or oil. Then the Federales broker a peace deal, and it's status quo ante bellum except we're all poor as fuck and whoever didn't spend all their money shooting people to pieces is the new king of the pile."

"Well aren't you cheery?" Naomi grumbled. "Make it sound like we all died for naught."

"Then what are we dying for?" I replied. "A bit of tin and a ribbon? God, Glory, and Gold? A tithe of honor? No, we're dying because a load of fucking politicians got uppity and forgot that peace is more profitable than war."

"You make it sound so bleak." Naomi griped. "That's all I know, Tomas."

Fuck. I didn't think about that, did I? Let's tell the literal child special forces that their lives are devoid of meaning except loss and pain, why don't we. Even if it was true, I didn't need to say it out loud!

"Not like at the end of this you're gonna be homeless, though." I said, going to the kitchen to get some grapefruit juice. It might have been sour as hell, but I still liked it. "Just limited in scale. Less overthrowing governments, more fighting the good fight against megacorps and whatever heroin-addled terrorists keep crawling out of the woodwork in Arabia."

"Yeah, just me and my company of family, politely performing forty-point synchronized tactical entries on some shitbird's house so we can whack Sandals Bin Laden the Upteenth. Real pleasant future."

Sighing, I just got back to the couch. "You think we should do something productive today, or just sit here and wonder if the world will stop turning?"

"Can I terrorize your cadets in hand to hand combat?" she asked. "Because I really want to punch something right now."

"If they have to get me a wheelchair because I started playing the Yagi then you're at fault." I grumbled. "They'll look at me and go, 'oh, sr. Archangeles, por que tiene una enfermera bonita? Eres lesionado? Para dos semanas, dios mio! Lo siento!' and I will get no peace until they shove my corpse out to sea and light the boat on fire."

"I solemnly swear you won't need a wheelchair." Naomi said. "Cross my heart."

Naturally, five minutes and two punches in of the three needed for Naomi to win the bout, I started coughing up blood again. Finishing the match with a quick trip, I saw her come over to me, concern obvious in her stride as she held up a hand to get me off the ground. "Tomas?"

"Get a wheelchair." I growled, before hacking up another red spray. Once I'd climbed in with assistance, I glared at Naomi. "Push me out of here."

"I'm in power armor." She said. "Military grade power armor at that."

"Which means you can take me to the doctor and handle any problems that come up." I said flatly. "Mush."

Naturally, the doctor wasn't much help, and we ended up wasting our time. At the end of it all, I was tired, hungry, and sore.

///



I wouldn't say I felt better the next day, but I didn't end up coughing blood when I rolled out of bed so, y'know, goals. Showering off the fleks of blood and dirt I'd picked up since my last shower revealed I was still the same old me, even if I did have a few giant silvery-white patches of scar tissue covering chunks of my torso. Nanobot healing- worked fast, left weird-ass scars. Considering half their job was to reduce scar tissue, it made some sort of sick sense the scars I got after them healed up faster and looked dumb as hell for it.

Making my way to the kitchen and a cup of coffee, I sighed as Naomi rolled off the couch. She wasn't supposed to sleep on my couch, mostly on grounds that half the time I slept on my couch, but she'd been batting fifty-fifty odds on actually staying out of my rooms. On one hand, cute protectiveness. On the other hand, non-zero chance I'd wake up with a knife in my back. If shit went wrong, I had a tomahawk under my pillow, so I'd call this an acceptable risk.

Seriously, never trust anyone with a gun under their pillow. That was an elaborate form of suicide. Likewise, knives? Yeah nah good luck getting through armor, and everyone and their cat had armor these days.

Anyway, coffee, and not the hell-brew meant to raise the dead and patch the hull that the Coast Guard tended to serve up. Light, fluffy, and black, I set it down on the table while I rifled through the fridge into a day-old pizza. Thankfully, Naomi was as much of an obligate carnivore as I was, so meat lover's was perfectly acceptable. Once that was done, a glance at my phone told me what today was going to look like- first new power armor testing, and a review of abilities with the kids I'd trained so long ago. Sipping my coffee ominously, I went over my allotted gear list. The new exosuit had gone through rough fit and it's first shakedowns, but a lot of the assembly had been done here down at Wayne instead of at State. I trusted Wayne, but this was my life on the line.

"Right, just got to get moving." I sighed, finishing the last of my coffee before I started walking down to the labs. Screwing in an earbud, I flicked through the library of music on the system, before I chuckled.

"Mit dem Wunsch nach Frieden in der Hand, greife ich nach dem Licht des Lebens…" I sang along, smiling softly as the guitar was strummed and I walked into the labs. Rolling my shoulders before I walked in the door, I blinked. I felt fine, almost good. Let's see what I had gotten now!

"Ah, Mr. Archangeles!" one of the techs said. "Ready for your armor shakedown?"

I nodded, and five minutes of fitting later had me in the new zoot suit. It was a pretty standard derivative of the last one they'd made, the name of which escaped me as I felt the articulation out in each joint and tried walking around. One of the most basic tests of bodily kinematics was the wall test. Choose a random wall, walk up to it, and stop dead. Raise your arm, either one, and touch the wall with the tip of your middle finger. Do it right, and there should only be enough space between the tip of your finger and the wall to drop a playing card through if you lean back.

The first time I did it today, I ended up putting my knuckles an inch deep into the sheetrock. Pretty solid performance, if I do say so myself. About eight tries later, interspersed with other dexterity tests like picking up items and throwing them, and I could finally get the grasp of the new system's accommodations. She was a little slower to bring the hydraulics up, and the servos felt a hell of a lot stronger, but I didn't need raw strength like I need the ability to lock myself dead solid. I could still do that. Sure, it was an entirely different set of chin codes, but I could do that. The HUD was also a new, hot mess, but I kind of liked it. Lower dead center was the compass, and I had engine temp indicators, hydraulic power meters, and the mandatory fuel-battery gauges.

"You want to take it to the range?" the tech asked.

"There's a range?" I replied.

The tech laughed. "Man, everyone we've mustered so far is coming in here. It's not rated for anything bigger than an M-4, but that'll work for getting your hand in. Right?"

I shrugged, and was happy I could actually shrug and not have the pauldrons of the suit bind up like my old units tended to. "It'll be a start, even if I prefer Kalash platforms."

The tech shook his head at me, and muttered something uncharitable in Arabic. He was a good Hamtramack boy, though, and it's not like ins'allah was going to hurt my feelings anyway. The range itself, when we reached it, was a simple ten-meter affair with nice, tiny target to simulate hundred meter targets. I didn't really care, though, and slotted a lil'bitch ten meter bullseye into the target holder before I wheeled it out.

"Really." The tech muttered as I picked up a rifle and cleared it.

"This isn't a dickwaving contest, it's a calibration." I grumbled. For some reason, the magazine was fighting me tooth and nail about going into the feed, until I finally rolled my eyes and tapped the bottom as gently as I could. I preferred a Kalash exactly because of this bullshit- you didn't need to be nearly as lily-fingered with a simple rock-back magazine. "It doesn't matter much more than just me hitting the target."

"You're gonna have to explain it to me then." The tech grumped.

"When you shoot in powered exoskeletons, the gun has to negotiate with you and the suit." I said, putting two shots downrange, then two more. "When you pull the trigger, you're interfacing with the gun, but when the recoil hits you, your unconscious reactions interface with the suit. It can do some odd stuff."

"Like what?"

Reeling the target in, I unloaded the rifle and set it down. "Like jerking my shots up because of something in the pauldron." I said, feeling over the surface of the shoulder-guard. Holding my right hand out, I used my left to feel the motion of the plate carefully. "If I push with my hand against the recoil, you see how it comes up a bit?"

"Yeah." The tech asked, grinning. "You've got a six-piece setup under there, and a pair of riding pins. I can adjust it so it holds still if you want."

"Please and thank you." I laughed. My good mood lasted until we finished calibrations, which was about the same time the trainees came in. Listening to their grousing, I chuckled. Naomi was in there, already suited up, and her suit was near-silent as she padded up to me.

"You want to earn twenty bucks?" she asked calmly?

"How?"

Naomi grinned. "The big chowderhead has been having footwork issues, and isn't listening to me when I tell him he needs to exaggerate his movements a little. So I might have bet him forty bucks that I could dance a waltz."

"And you need a partner." I said, smiling under my helmet.

"You do know how to waltz, right?"

"Señorita Logos, would a scholar and gentleman like me not know how to waltz?"

"Considering you're neither, yes." She said, with a jaunty cock of her own headgear. "That being said, you seem to be comfortable enough to joke about it, so."

"Truthfully, I learned in rehab." I said quietly, barely audible over the sound of my engine. "Pick something easy to dance to, and I'll send you a handshake for a private line."

As Naomi went over to put on Rosen aus dem Süden on the sound system, I locked my helmet down and sent her a handshake code for a private radio line.

"Okay, how you want to do this?" she asked as my hand drifted down to hers and I found a good waist-equivalent on her exo. Right above the battery paniers seemed to work, and her arm found a slot on my back normally where I'd sling a drop tank of fuel.

"I've danced to this before, so steady at the beginning. When it picks up, we'll try a dip and work from there."

"Right." I said, sighing. "Starting with the box."

As the music started, we moved. A box step, the bare-bones waltz, was simply the fine art of describing a series of 'boxes' as you danced from corner to corner. It took a few runs around before we were comfortable with each other, Naomi taking leaping starts and I barely sliding into good order behind her as we both learned the natural stride of the other. Dancing was a compromise of how to move, but we were both masters of suit movement, and soon enough we were synchronized.

"Try for a dip?" Naomi suggested privately.

I nodded slightly, and at the second step we moved. Nearly two hundred kilos of young woman at full back extension was not what my suit was designed to move, but I could do it, and we pulled it off to the gasps of the crowd. Never mind my chugging motor, we were dancing.

A few boxes and two dips later, the song picked up, and it was my turn for a bad idea. "Think we can do a lift?"

"I'm clocking at one-seventy kilos right now, and it'll all be in your arms." Naomi warned. "I'm willing to try though."

"On three." I said, as we finished the box and I slammed my mouth open to hit the jaw button for Full Military Power. "One, two, three!"

Soaring upwards, I could feel my arms and every cable in the mechanical shell I wore strain, hydraulics pushing, but I did the lift! Coming back down was rougher, but we did it without cracking the floor or redlining the suit.

"Let me dip you too, you dumbass." Naomi said, hearing my engine's wheeze.

"Can your suit do it?"

"What's your curb weight?" she challenged.

"Should be about two-sixty to two-seventy." I replied. The line was silent. It took a whole three rounds before she dignified me with a response.

"You sir, are fat."

"Well screw you too." I shot back. "Lift on three. One, two, three!"

Again, I pushed my suit to it's limits. Again, Naomi soared through the air. This time, though, something somewhere redlined, and my suit started screaming warnings at me.

"Let's wrap this up." I said, sighing. "One more box, and the bows."

"Alright, lardass."

"Listen, we all have different strengths in this world." I said. "Some of us are made of OEM parts. Some of us can strap a shaped charge to a stick and use it as an improvised Javelin. Each of these skills is equally importand."

"Just take your bows." Naomi said, chuckling. As we held hands and dipped for the floor in applause, I grinned. I think I was finally back to normal.

The fact I also got chewed out for redlining six hydraulic secondaries and nearly blowing the bushings in my spinal run? Totally worth it, to see the faces of everyone who thought all we were was murder in a metal can. We could- and would- notch our guns later, but for now we were going to relax. Hell, I'd earned it.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

I just adore Naomi in this. She's great!

 

[7734]

Spoiler: Music

Standing around the exo bay, I locked in my helmet definitively. My light duty time was up, finished, and I was done with the paperwork. Now came proving my skill, and breaking in this new suit. Thanks to the relatively ancient advances in technology called 'birdshot and 'steel plates', the guys had built a shot house to run people through. Six rooms, forty cardboard targets. I'd be going through with a stock Saiga and a combat knife, with four mags of ammo.

"Looking good, Tiger!" Naomi yelled as she stretched her torsioners out. Since she was running right after me, we'd both helped each other suit up, except she was running off batteries right now to save on noise. I didn't care, really, since I had noise dampening in my helmet and was about to blow off a pile of shotgun shells.

Shooting her a thumbs up, I checked my chest rig. Mags on the right of the ammo bandolier, and the knife was duct-taped to the dorsal side of my right forearm. I was starting gun empty, and the tech sent me a radio pulse. Was I ready? Hell yeah.

The horn blared, and I was off. Ripping a mag off the vest, it went in and the bolt was racked by the time my foot came down from kicking in the door, and I was off. First room, four targets; two on my left and two on my right. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Spinning around to clear my back, two targets fell from the ceiling, before I shot them to pieces too as I backed up to a wall. Room one, clear. Slicing the pie down the hall, I saw four more targets come up before I said 'hello' in twelve gauge until the mag clicked empty and I charged. A buttstock slam dealt with one, while a combat knife in the face handled the other and I could stop to reload.

Room two was nine targets, and one blue 'non-combatant' I didn't get to shoot. Naturally, I ended up shooting the non-combatant by mistake anyway and then spun around to see a target in the next room behind me and finishing off the mag on it. Swapping it quickly, I squinted at the room and poked out into the hallway. Two targets that I handled quickly, and then I barreled into room three. One target coming up next to me just got shoulder-checked into oblivion even though I'd never do that in the field, while the rest of 'em just got blapped. Not even really sure how many targets I'd shot at this point, but I still had three rounds left in the mag and there was another door to kick in. Bang went the door, bang went my gun, and once again I was out of bullet and had to resort to ye olde knife. Equally annoyingly, I had three more rooms to go! Come on guys, this was some bullshit. Sighing, I just reloaded, kept my knife in my left hand, and dialed the hydraulics up to full on my right arm.

The next room only had six targets, one of which I knifed as I tried to remember how the hell I used to one-hand a combat shotgun. I'd pulled it off with a Mossberg before, this couldn't be that different. Right? No. The recoil was pulling the muzzle up more, and it was a pain to keep under control since the ejection kept wanting to yank it to the left. I could handle it, but honestly as I finished off another target with knife-meet-face, I decided I didn't want to. Going in guns akimbo was dumb, and I shouldn't do it. With six rounds left in the mag, the next room looked more and more annoying.

Naturally, my opening move was to just charge in again, dumping the mag all over the targets and using my not-inconsiderable mass as a problem remover. Magazine three emptied without ceremony, I just locked in my last one and breathed. One last room. I had the shells for this, so I just threw my knife into a wall. Kick the door in, and three, two one, go.

Twelve targets this time, mixed in with piles of debris. Fifteen shells in the magazine. At this point it wasn't even worth talking about what happened next. Finishing up the riot of gunshots, I stepped out and looked at Naomi before powering down my motor. She just grinned, pulling out a wonder nine and her sword.

"Really." I asked through our personal channel, staring as she flicked it on. "You're taking a sword to a gun range."

"It's not decoration, you know." She said calmly, flicking the weapon on with an audible electric hum and a gentle downward swipe. In the fluorescent light of the workshop-turned-shothouse, it flickered and sparkled as the magnetized tungsten sand whirred in the housing.

"I'm still trying to figure out why it exists." I shrugged. "As far as I can see, a regular weapon would work just as well."

"That's because it's more a tool than a weapon." Naomi said, putting her pistol away to bring the blade up. "We spent a solid six months seeing if we could make this sort of thing a combat knife, and it just wouldn't work. There's not enough room in the assembly."

"Fair enough." I said, leaning up against a pillar in the room. "They'll pipe me a feed to the overhead cameras, so I'll see when you go."

The only response was a dark chuckle. "Watch close, then."

Nodding, I stepped back, and accepted the control booth's handshake signal. Each room was covered by two cameras, and I watched the feeds with one eye as Naomi finally kicked on her engines. Three chin keys, and my line to her helmet was up; two more and I had her status. Engine at idle, batteries full… and then the horn blared, and she was off.

It was almost chilling, watching the precision Naomi put into this. Targets were addressed by sword as often as her pistol, and magazine changes were handled with the expident of slamming the sword into a wall sideways, swapping magazines without pitching the old one (a habit I had seen more than a few SEALs indulge in, since they didn't have the finger dexterity to actually extract the magazine without crushing it into uselessness) and re-drawing the blade. The funniest thing was I couldn't even complain as the storm of death continued. I'd used my knife as much as Naomi had her sword, and with hardly the grace and familiar elegance that belayed the lethality in her every motion.

As the fury ended, I breathed out. Our times were within fifteen seconds, mostly because I could reload faster, but that sword. Damn. I might, actually, be thinking about getting a sword. Somewhere in the distance I'm pretty sure my old master chief petty officer was going to spontaneously develop the ability to teleport to come kick my ass for thinking that, but I didn't care. If I could, I was looting me some blade goodness.

Stepping out with an air of exhaust and cordite, Naomi laughed as I shut down all my extraneous feeds. "God, that felt good!" she said, laughing. "I'm surprised you're not having trouble, though!"

I shrugged. "Maybe the lung damage cleared up?"

"Lung damage doesn't just 'clear up', Tomas." Naomi said, staring at me. "At least, we can't."

"Alright, which one of us has lab rat side effects?" I shot back. "No? Point proven."

"We both have lab rat side effects, mister electric hands."

"That's not a feature?"

"No, mutations are not a feature! Mutations were never a feature!"

"Who thought mutations weren't a feature? They're idiots!" I proclaimed. "Reject humanity, embrace hybridiazation- oww!"

At that point, Naomi kicked me in the shin. Jumping back at the pain, I glared at her and she glared at me.

"I am not putting up with freaking transhumanists trying to run my life again!" she bitched, stamping her feet. "They couldn't be satisfied fixing those of us who didn't make it out whole, no, they had to try and start putting shit in the rest of us too!"

I crossed my hands for a time-out, and started digging. "They did what?!"

Rolling her eyes, Naomi sighed. "Do I get a beer first?"

"You're twelve."

"I am a very mature twelve, with training in guerrilla warfare, and over three hundred confirmed kills, able and willing to access the entire arsenal of the Chicago Institute."

"You forgot the network of spies and unarmed combat, kiddo." I replied calmly. "Good on you for knowing the classics, though. Still no beer."

She was pouting all the way back to the room.



/-/-/-/-



It was after dinner- something from a shish truck that smelled of corn oil and paprika, where my Arabic and the driver's managed to mesh well enough for me to get extra fries- that we got a call. My suggestion for a unit of stormtroopers was approved, and that meant we were getting geared up. As the commanding not-officer of that unit,

My morning exertions hadn't caused any serious troubles with my taped-together body, so I felt it safe to come down to a command deck with only a cane and a revolver. The gun had been… we'll say liberated… from an arms locker with 'practice weapons' in it, and while I only had three cylinders worth of ammunition in moon clips, it was still more than enough for anything I expected to do. Naomi was glued to my side as always, and had tried to smuggle a steak knife as a sidearm, which I quickly corrected to a K-BAR. One needed to have professionalism about this sort of thing.

Strolling in, I looked at the table. Three engineering students, one suit, one officer. Great. On the table were a pair of crates, one small and one large.

"Good evening, Mr. Archangeles!" the suit said, holding out a hand to shake. I took it, noting his limp wrist. "We've got some developments here for you today!"

Naomi, the gremlin that she was, took one look at the suit and turned her nose up. Going over to the smaller of the two crates, she got a nod from an engineering student, and started cracking it open.

"Excuse me, miss?" the suit said, and I decided at this point he was extraneous to operational needs. Or, in plainer words, just a money man.

"So, boys, what's in the boxes?" I asked, stepping past him.

One, a short redhead, grinned. "We heard from some of the boys that they're trying to whack our guys with suicide drones, and there's more than a few Canolas running around that are proving… frustrating."

"Question." Naomi said, pausing in her box-opening. "What's a Canola?"

The second student spoke up, playing with her headscarf. "It's a kind of cooking oil, and the guys are calling the Peacekeeper IFVs a Canola Senior or a Canola Junior, depending on what's in the turret. They're pretty tough, unless you've got a way to deal with their fancy-ass armor."

"There's a joke there, but I can't find it." Naomi muttered.

"It's because they're scared to use lard." I replied, stepping forward. "So what does your delivery have to offer against this sort of shit, then?"

"The Canolas are protected by a reactive armor layer built around an electrically charged liquid-"

"-crystal barrier network that automatically repairs inflicted damage." Naomi finished, laughing. "Those dumb fucks!"

"I wouldn't say that, since it's managed to eat a hell of a lot of our shaped charge weapons for breakfast." The first engineering student said, grumbling.

"That's because it's spaced as all hell, and there's a backer plate to throw off HEAT weapons. They're only half idiots, sadly, but it's easy as hell to crack open if you know how."

Grabbing a sharpie from somewhere, Naomi started scrawling on top of the big crate a cross-section of the armor. "So if something goes through the top layer, it hits the liquid crystal reservoir, which makes it loose energy like a bitch, before it slams into the back plate and not work. Hollow charges blow on the outer layer, shoot the jet through the standoff full of liquid, and then break up on the ceramic ribbing under the backer plate. What's smart about it is it's self-sealing as the liquid crystalizes on the edge of the electrified plate, and the crystal itself is pretty damn bullet resistant."

Engineering student three took several pictures, before hauling off the top of the crate to hoard it like it contained war-winning information; which in his defense it just might. Student one, meanwhile, grinned.

"Then our shit should still work, because our plan was to break up a large mass of the plate, after which all you need to do is get through the backer plate. So, with a little digging, we present you this."

Working together, the engineering students dug through the packing peanuts, and pulled out a work of art. With a camming charging handle and large screw-handle on the barrel, each rivet in the housing looked like an old friend. The fiberglass and steel stock and fore-end bolted to the trunnion were a little odd, but my fingers traced over it all anyway.

"You didn't." I muttered, rolling the gun on her belly to pop the top cover.

"Mad science means never stopping to ask if God meant for this to exist." The third said, grinning madly as he reached in the box. "I didn't come up with the project, though; I made the ammunition. If you're feeding my daughter ball, you're doing it wrong."

"Show me." I said, grinning.

"We had to call the Fermi plant to get our hands on this stuff, but say hello to the Model 2077 and 2078 rounds. Old fashioned saboted rounds are great and all, but we can do better." The kid said, pulling one out. "The 2077 is a depleted uranium subcaliber round in a sabot; it's little brother in the 2078 has a uranium core, but instead is packed with as much explosive as we could jam in. We've got you two straight belts of both, but more importantly you can mix them together for any jobs less than four hundred meters- such as killing APCs."

"So you got Tomas a Ma Deuce that he can shoulder-fire while in armor." Naomi said, looking at it, before sighing. "How heavy is it?"

"Forty kilos with an ammo belt in it." The second one said as she opened the second crate.

"You have destroyed my dreams and I wish now for solace."

"Can we make it up to you with grenades?"

My genetically modified replacement perked up at this, eyes glinting. "Grenades you say?"

"What would you say if we managed to make you a brand new and improved China Lake?"

Naomi squeed, I plugged my ears, and the suit just started edging for the door. Some people, once upon a time, thought that 'pump action grenade launcher' was overkill. Some people thought it was fairly reasonable. Naomi, however, had moved past 'reasonable' and was snuggling hers now much like a teddy bear, complete with cooing.

"We upsized it by about four calibers to bring it up to five rounds in the tube, and added a slide lock." The second student said, smiling. "I had a ton of fun building it, and I hope she gets a lot of good use from it."

"Any reason it's not automatic?" I asked, standing protectively near my own oversized gun.

"Time restraints."

"Say no more. Suit!" I yelled, turning as the paper-pusher was about to flee. "How much were these to make?"

The suit quailed a little, since he'd probably seen the revolver in my belt. "Twenty- twenty thousand for everything on the table."

"Fucking done." I shot back, before looking at the officer. "You got anything to add?"

The officer cracked a wry smile. "I'm just here to get everything checked into the armory after."

"Good man." I replied.

"Wait to tell me that until after I explain what your unit's going to look like." He said, grinning faintly. "Lieutenant Ruiz, and I seem to have drawn the stick with being your boss on it."

I nodded. "Good luck with that, sir. How comfortable are you in your exoskeleton?"

"I fully expect to be able to operate it or lead the unit." He replied, and I nodded deeply. There was a good head on his shoulders to admit that. "Is… I'm sorry," he directed to Naomi. "But your name?"

"Naomi Logos." She said, bowing. "To my knowledge, I'm with the unit."

"Excellent." He replied. "We muster in two days, for a six day run at the front. God willing, it'll be a quiet part."

I just laughed. "Ruiz, sir, please. With us there, the only silence will be when Death rides to collect the fallen."

"Then let him collect none of ours."

"Amen to that." I said, with a pint-sized echo. "Amen to that."

 

[7734]

Spoiler: why this chapter is late/music

There were a lot of ways to get around Southeastern Michigan. Naturally, when you were part of a platoon of elite stormtroopers, armed to the gills with power armor and powerful weapons to put the small arms of infantry to shame, only the best rides could be taken into account. That's why we had been crammed into a school bus with the seats ripped out, metal bars welded in to form bucket seats for our armored asses to plonk down in. A power and data bus ran down the center isle, and the lot of us were trying to pretend we weren't going into combat soon. I'd barely gotten the time to learn any names, and the further we rode the worse of an idea it looked.

Sure, in retrospect, concentration of force was a fine concept, but forming together a scratch unit was not a good plan. With no time to socialize and train together, we were pretty much going to be fighting as a loosely connected bundle of squads, not a proper combat unit.

Stirring with a grunt, one of the guys started mucking with his helmet. I frowned- we should all have in-set unit controls. Finally, he keyed his comms, the signal run through the data lines instead of a radio. We were driving emissions silent: all the harder for a drone to catch us in transit.

"So, who's the kid?" he asked, rolling his shoulders to settle his armor. My frown intensified at the motion, and I watched him grab a pauldron and gently wrench it back out from his collar. That was a fitting issue, plain and simple. I had trifold pauldrons, but this guy's bifolds were obviously flexing wrong or something. That was bad: could screw up aiming.

"I said, Top, who's the kid?" he asked again, before bumping my sabatons.

"You talking to me?" I muttered through the line, continuing to scan over his armor. There were a lot of plates out of line, and for a second I thought I could catch a flash of his underlayer. What model was that armor, anyway? I didn't recognize it, and it didn't have any of the telltales of an Amaterasu set.

"Yeah, Top."

"Then get my name right." I shot back. "Tomas Archangeles, Warrant Officer, First Class."

"Shit, you're a warrant?" the idiot said. "I thought your type was a myth!"

"Yeah, yeah, marvel at the one working warrant officer in the world." I grumbled. "So what's the question?"

"Who's the kid, and where they get the metal threads? I thought we were going to war, not a fashion contest."

I could feel Naomi's ire through the com line, before I cut her and the jackass off. "That's a specialist. She works with me."

"What, you order her from the combini or something?"

Under my helmet, my mouth tightened. "No, no I did not."

"Shame, be nice to pick up some better gear." He said, sighing. As much as the over-familiarity bugged me, it was a good place to segue into what the hell he- and half the troops on the bus- were calling armored exoskeletons.

"If we find any sets of Peacekeeper gear rattling around, I'll see about fitting you in one." I said. "Which raises the question of what the hell are you wearing, anyway."

"Army issue HAVE RED set, why?"

"So the Army finally admitted they issue trash, then?"

At this, one of the other grunts- wearing the same terrible armor- stirred. "It ain't that bad, really. Better than HAVE WHITE at least."

Naomi finally deigned to look them over, and I could feel her sneering from under her helmet. "If that's worse, then I have to wonder who's dumpster they pulled it from."

"Listen, it was designed by Colt-GM after the All American Buyout." The second grunt said, sighing. "The only reason it hasn't actively killed anyone yet is because it's not quite sure how."

"Then I suppose you're going to have to get used to handing me bullets then." Naomi joked. "My favorites are forty mil and nine mil."

"Yeah, but we don't carry nine mil."

I looked at the speaker very carefully. "You what?"

"Don't carry it. Most of us run the .45 Superhot out of 1911s. Haven't found a nine mil yet that can hit as hard."

Ah, yes. This wasn't basic grunt logic: this was advanced, head-trauma reinforced, superstitious ritual before taking a shit in the field grunt logic. "Alright then." I muttered, before jumping on the platoon net. "Are we at least all shooting five-five-six?"

"No." three people replied.

"If you're not the machine gunners I have no words."

"We're automatic riflemen." One of them said proudly.

My stare intensified, until Lieutenant Ruiz finally woke up, and beamed over the platoon's TOE. I should have gotten it sooner than this, but, well, paperwork. Either push the paper or be pushed by surprises, I guess. Their equipment were shop-modified 7.62 NATO rifles, with beefed up barrels and fully automatic actions. Now if only they weren't literally FALs pushing a century on the clock.

Still, if wishes were fishes, no man would starve. For a forty-two man unit, we had a pretty decent setup: three squads of thirteen, with myself, the Lieutenant, and Naomi as the command section. Each squad had a, god this hurt to say out loud, automatic rifleman, plus two grenadiers: one with an actual rocket launcher and the other with a sack of grenades. What did it say about our supplies we could only issue one guy hand grenades? That just pained me.

Still, the bus was awake now, and chatter flowed over the open net freely. Each squad had worked together long enough to have some decent camaraderie, but none of them really knew each other too well yet. I recognized Will, Eon, Tami, and a few of the other kids I'd trained for that week talking to the rest, but that wasn't nearly as important as the single-channel call from Naomi. I was kind of impressed: not many people learned how to use the high-end parts of the comms suite in an Inaba-maru suit.

"Is it always this noisy?" she asked, voice pinched.

"This is pretty quiet." I said calmly. "You should hear the amount of background noise on a battalion net when they're getting ready to ship out."

"I'll never get back to sleep, then. Not like I could with that idiot over there, but."

I rolled my eyes. "He's green, not an idiot. Half these guys were Army on leave here when this shitstorm broke out."

Naomi shifted, and I could see the knife and pistol-butt under her armored coat. We were both wearing our armor overlayers in the bus, because it was more comfortable and neither of us wanted our very expensive kit lost in the trailer behind us.

"So they can't send us anyone who's good? What are we, cannon fodder?"

Right, I might not be the world's best parent, but I could smell a temper tantrum when it was blowing in on the breeze. "No, but you're not used to this yet. If you want a good unit, then you need to look overseas, like the guys in Germany or Japan. They know what they're doing, and we only have a few brigades like that. If they come home, it means the Army's through making up its mind, which means something made up their mind for them."

"If there are whole brigades of them, then this could have been solved a week ago." Naomi grunted. "Go in, kill off the Institute-"

"And then play kingmaker in Washington." I said, cutting her off. "For as nice as that would be, the result is the minute you teach them that they can start cutting out things they don't like, they'll keep cutting. First it's the Institute. Then it's the Peacekeeepers. Pretty soon, the Teamster's Union goes too. Once that happens, well, you need to figure out what to cut; an inverse Commissariat, if you will. Insufficient patriotic fervor needs re-education or a bullet. Then the uprisings start."

"Like this is so much better."

"It is." I said flatly. "The hottest fires burn shortest: if we can let them wear down, they'll explode. What do you think will happen when the Peacekeepers run out of war funds?"

"They have to pull from somewhere else. Probably the Institute."

"Which means budget cuts and infighting."

It wasn't hard to watch Naomi perk up. "And then comes the assassinations, and the sabotage, and ohhhhh…"

"Now you know why we're out here with a bunch of overgrown boots." I said calmly. "Now, as soon as this bus driver can find the rest of our post…"

Naomi nodded, and drew a couple looks from the physical gesture. Cutting our call, she jumped back on the platoon net. "Hey, Lieutenant Ruiz, when are we getting there?"

"Should be about another half hour." He said easily. "The 125th​ built a Third Battalion out of the old C company, and they're centered up around Battle Creek."

"The front line is that far north already?" one of the grunts said, before a sergeant kicked his shin.

"No, but the farmers are giving the Institute hell." Ruiz said, smirking. "Apparently, the Peacemakers enforcing Chicago law on farmers is less than popular. The woods ring out with the sound of rifles and IEDs."

"So we ride in with the Third Battalion and kick ass, got it." A sergeant said.

"Pretty much. We're the heart of Erebus Company, which is otherwise going to be a bunch of technicals and idiots who want to back us up without power armor."

"And how do we know we're there?" some smartass asked. I applied hand to helmet as the bus driver's radio lit up.

"This is Second Michigan, Third Battalion! State your identity!"

"We'll know we're there when they challenge us." I calmly explained, before shooting a look at Ruiz. "Lieutenant, you're up."

"Thanks, Warrant Archangeles." He muttered, before clicking over to the bus's radio. Holding up a finger, I pulled his hardline, and made the clicky-clicky gesture by my collar. Going to speaker, I spoke up.

"Part of your authentication codes are baked into your radio hash, sir." I explained. "Everyone here should be running standard encoding on your radios. If they catch your data on open and public broadband, they'll assume they're compromised and, in my professional opinion, waste this bus with artillery.

Rubbing his neck to set his personal radio up, Ruiz started speaking clearly. "This is Lieutenant Ruiz from Detroit Command with attached platoon of soldiers. Verification code nine, six, golf, lima, hotel, foxtrot, zero, seven."

A tense moment passed, before the radio crackled again. "Verification accepted. Continue to your assigned location."

Breathing a short, private sigh of relief, I watched the bus keep rolling. It was a very quiet half hour until we got to the basing area, at which point the bus unloaded by the numbers. It wasn't hard to grab my seabag from our possessions trailer, and then my Ma Deuce from the armory trailer.

"Warrant Archangeles, can you get the men settled in?" Ruiz asked. "I'll be heading to the offices, and will be back with orders soon."

I nodded, before moving over to where some goons in uniforms were milling about. Half of them barely looked old enough to shave, while the other half had suffered 'uniform shrinkage' on their out-of-date olive drab or desert tan camo. Still, they all had guns and ammo in their vests, even if not all of them had plate carriers. All I could do was hope to hell they weren't going to be my responsibility. Looking after forty-odd green exoskeleton troopers was going to be hard enough; much less this bullshit.

"Anyone here know where Erebus Company is getting bunked?" I called out, waiting until someone nodded. Once the unlucky voulenteer was found, I grinned at him. "Good. Can you lead us there?"

Naturally, 'there' turned out to be an old Red Roof that had seen better days before this half-assed civil war started. Still, the parking lot was full of Fords, Chevys, and Hondas with assorted matte paints applied, more than a few with heavy weapons in the beds. I could see more than a few with Browning guns in the beds, another handful with TOW launchers, and one memorable unit that had a pair of Stingers on sling rails.

"You could have told me we were going to the middle of redneck country." Naomi muttered on a closed line. "How the hell am I supposed to tell this from the enemy?"

"Great question." I replied, before walking down to the door with CAPT. FISCHL written on it in rattle-can yellow. "Warrant officer Tomas Archangeles, with platoon for Erebus Company!" I called out loudly.

When Captain Fischl came out, he was in decent enough shape, even if I internally grimaced at the pistol crammed in the front of his belt. Early thirties, white, and an untrimmed mustache that would get him killed if he needed to put on a gas mask: in short, nothing memorable.

"You're the power armor unit from Detroit?" he asked, looking at my full stature with a weather eye.

"Yes, sir."

"Good." He muttered. "You're third platoon. What's the average wet weight of one of your troops?"

Thank god that had been in the TOE. "Average is six hundred pounds wet, but our gear is pretty variable."

"Works. You're in building four, and we don't have an armory set up. We're the battalion's backhand blow in waiting, so make sure everyone's got plenty of bullets."

I blinked, cocking my helmet to the side. "I see. Is the whole unit motorized yet, sir?"

"Not nearly well enough, but yes." Fischl grumbled. "There's going to be a lot of salvaging and looting along the way, and I'm not going to cut corners on calling it that. We don't have a company ammo truck or baggage train, so your guys are going to be living out of their armor in the field."

At this point I visibly recoiled. "Then what, exactly, is the plan? We're too far north to be a blocking force."

Fischl nodded me into his room, and I entered. A camp table sat folded out, and I looked at the map there carefully.

"Originally we were here as a blocking force to keep them away from the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek airport, but our initial deployment was too slow." Fischl explained, tapping out a number of markers. "The Peacekeepers hold Kalamazoo, but it's a temporary loss. They're overextended badly, and they know it- we're talking about miles per man in terms of frontage. That's how the partisans are wrecking hell on them. State Highway 60 is their main supply flow and avenue of advance for their leading battalions, but they're stringing themselves out badly. They only came in here with three battalions, and they've been thinning down the actual Peacekeepers with redneck militiamen as fast as they can."

"I'm not going to say we have a qualitive advantage, sir." I said as diplomatically as possible.

"Oh, like hell we do." he replied. "I've been leading around a bunch of gearheads by the nose who got told they could play Mad Max on the State's dime. You think they're sane?"

I shrugged at the obscure movie reference. "Doubtful, but I'd like to expend my hope now rather than later."

That, at least, earned a laugh. "Good man. You'll keep that lieutenant alive at any rate if you're smart enough to crack a joke when we're staring at death."

Things quieted down for a minute, so I took the time to pull off my helmet and set it down on the floor, before sitting in seiza to examine the map. "So. If they've got five battalions, there's one here, obviously."

"The others we know about are tied up in the Jackson area, Adrian, and Monroe." Fischl said. "We think there's a fifth battalion, though, being used as logistics and sustainment. Currently, Detroit's holding the line on two of them, and we've got some volunteers from Minesota, but it's a loosing game to try and defend in this sort of fight.

"Then what's the colonel planning?" I asked, squinting at the map.

"The guys in Kalamazoo planned on using the airport for resupply… right until the Coast Guard stepped in and made the Lakes a no-fly zone. They've already lost four transport planes into Kalamazoo International, and they're going to need to pull back soon."

"And then we hit them?"

"Hell no!" Fischl laughed. "That would be suicide! No, what we're gonna do is flank the fuckers. We have a partisan cell in Athens that we've managed to get the data verified for, and reports have it that Highway 60 is wide open right now- until we dash south and lock it down."

That's when it sunk in. "And either they try and beat us out, and walk to their deaths."

"Bingo. We have the engineers and the bombs to crack that highway in half, and then we run back to Athens. If they come north, then they'll get mulched: if they don't, we hit them until they do. They're worn out from holding Kalamazoo down, and they'll get sloppy. Then they die."

It wasn't an amazing plan, and it had its difficulties. But, I could say this: if any part of it failed, we'd still be coming out ahead.

"I'll make sure we're ready."

"Good." Fischl said. "Because we start the day after tomorrow."

 

[Formerly]

I still have only the barest idea what is going on at any point in time, but the sheer spectacle is just so much fun.
Really looking like the world became a dystopian crapsack though. I really can't imagine how wrong things must have went in order for there to simultaneously be a federal government strong enough to crack down on all of this and reluctant enough to not do it. Like if Civil War between the States isn't enough to warrant federal intervention then why the fuck do they still have a federal government? Why are States going to war with each other instead of suing each other? What is going on in the world that has stopped total economic collapse and anarchy but still allowed for this much chaos?

 

[7734]

Really looking like the world became a dystopian crapsack though. I really can't imagine how wrong things must have went in order for there to simultaneously be a federal government strong enough to crack down on all of this and reluctant enough to not do it. Like if Civil War between the States isn't enough to warrant federal intervention then why the fuck do they still have a federal government? Why are States going to war with each other instead of suing each other? What is going on in the world that has stopped total economic collapse and anarchy but still allowed for this much chaos?

Click to shrink...

The main mechanism is that the federal government, in short, isn't confident in their ability to interfere with this. When court shenanigans stop working because of legal shields and non-state actors (literally and figuratively, considering the absolute disaster that is the Act of Urban Union that is what allows the Institute, Peacekeepers, and related to exist), violence becomes more and more palpable, especially as issues within the individual states create growing rifts in society. With the breakdown of Standard American Politics that this fic presumes, marginalized groups don't stop being marginalized, and instead learn to break bread with extremist elements. From there, the only remaining external threat is the federal government, and since the federal government is armed well enough to fight back in any area of combat, then the next, more profitable target becomes other states.

Remember at the begining of this fic, how the plan was just to dumpster the education industry in Chicago by doing the Institute dirty and stealing a researcher? Imagine those small slights, cycling along the path of vengence until it seems like a reasonable idea to burn it all down just to be king of the ashes.

 

[Formerly]

The main mechanism is that the federal government, in short, isn't confident in their ability to interfere with this. When court shenanigans stop working because of legal shields and non-state actors (literally and figuratively, considering the absolute disaster that is the Act of Urban Union that is what allows the Institute, Peacekeepers, and related to exist), violence becomes more and more palpable, especially as issues within the individual states create growing rifts in society. With the breakdown of Standard American Politics that this fic presumes, marginalized groups don't stop being marginalized, and instead learn to break bread with extremist elements. From there, the only remaining external threat is the federal government, and since the federal government is armed well enough to fight back in any area of combat, then the next, more profitable target becomes other states.

Remember at the begining of this fic, how the plan was just to dumpster the education industry in Chicago by doing the Institute dirty and stealing a researcher? Imagine those small slights, cycling along the path of vengence until it seems like a reasonable idea to burn it all down just to be king of the ashes.

Click to shrink...

At that point it would seem to me that the reasonable course would be for the Feds to say "Fuck it, asserting dominance! Don't care if it's lawful or not. Don't care if I win or not. This situation isn't tenable or acceptable, and if I can't win then there's no point in my continuing existence anyway!"

 

[7734]

At that point it would seem to me that the reasonable course would be for the Feds to say "Fuck it, asserting dominance! Don't care if it's lawful or not. Don't care if I win or not. This situation isn't tenable or acceptable, and if I can't win then there's no point in my continuing existence anyway!"

Click to shrink...

You're asking the federal government, an institution so massive it could be considered its own separate state within the greater Union, to throw itself on a nuclear hand grenade, to what end? Of course "the situation isn't sustainable"; that's the entire point of watching this iterated sequence of prisoner's dilemma tests fall down, and note that in-story, the federal government is taking sides. The problem is that effectively bringing the Might of Uncle Sam down is a weighty process, and the most effective tools here are also the slowest. Look who I depicted taking action here first: the Department of the Treasury. The money people, who upon the realization that the money wasn't talking, stepped up to open economic warfare and actual shooting warfare.

Remember: the federal government is three beasts chained together- and right now, one is sick, one is lame, and one is schizophrenic. They're doing the best they can with the understanding that this will take a literal century to fix- and if they drop the ball, make it two. We have enough of an example of that from Reconstruction to know that much, at least.