Mozari Arrival Page 17

  “Daniel here won’t see sense and accept the offer to get his life back,” Nathan said angrily. “I can get where he’s coming from. All boys want to play soldier at some point.”

  “All of them?” Maria asked, but Daniel could see that his father wasn’t even hearing her; he never did when his mind was fixed on something. Daniel wasn’t sure if it was particularly a thing that Nathan West alone did, or every man of a certain age. There was a cliché phrase about attitudes hardening with age or experience, and he wouldn’t be entirely surprised if this was the psychological equivalent of arteries hardening. He shuddered at the thought that he might become that way.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be developing a new GI Joe collection anytime soon,” Daniel snapped.

  “Good. Now, think about that girl of yours, as well; I mean, she’s very focused. Now, if she focused on a legal career, imagine the prosecutor she’d make.” Nathan rose, and paced slightly. “You know, Dan, if it helps, I’m sure the offer can be extended to her, as well.”

  “I don’t think a New York senator has that much influence over the Chinese Air Force,” Daniel said acidly, leaning right into his father’s face. Nathan stood, bullishly, slamming his beer down at an angle so that it toppled and fell. “I mean...” He spread his hands, fighting the urge to turn them into fists and throw a punch. “I mean...” He turned brusquely, going to the door and throwing it wide. “Probably better if I just left. If we just left.” Better for Nathan’s safety, he didn’t say aloud.

  Maria clutched at his arm. “No, Danny, please. We only just saw you today—”

  Daniel didn’t look back at his father, but he wished he could look anywhere else but at his mother right now. He could feel the sting of tears in his eyes that he could see in hers. “I don’t want to not see you, Mom, but... I can’t be around Dad. Not if I’m going to be responsible for my actions.” He looked past her to where Hope was watching with concern at the kitchen door, and he saw his pain reflected in her face. His gut ached, his neck ached, and the whole house suddenly seemed to too bright and too closed.

  “Perhaps,” Hope said, “it would help calm things if we visited some of the sights of the area. From a hotel.”

  Daniel took a deep breath; how would running away calm things down? Then he saw his father’s face, red with rage, and felt the burning heat in his own expression, and knew that one flame fed the other. Sooner or later, one would probably drive the other into a stroke, he thought.

  “I’ll call you, Mom.” And then Daniel slammed the door hard enough to make the pictures on the wall rattle as he left.

  Hope sighed. Arguments were not the relief she had been looking for after losing one of her soldiers, but here she was. This wasn’t her culture; it was going to be different. Perhaps this was the Western way of releasing the pressure? She doubted it, though. Nathan had had the grace to look slightly embarrassed upon Daniel’s exiting, but Maria was clearly shocked into silence. “I will talk to Daniel,” Hope promised Maria quietly. “And I will call you also, if I may.”

  “Please do,” Maria whispered, forcing a smile.

  Hope nodded and looked pointedly at Nathan. “Your son is a good man. And I am sorry we’ve brought you such a difficult moment.”

  Seventeen

  Camp Peary, VA.

  Daniel shook his arms and shoulders to loosen out any lactic acid that might have built up in the muscles while he had been bench-pressing some iron, and then he got some hydration. The Farm’s gym was world-class, and better-equipped than most any gym Daniel had ever seen, which probably wasn’t that surprising—not considering the type of people it had been intended to help train. He fancied some easy cardio work next, and he set up one of the treadmills for a pace that would suit him.

  He could, of course, have gone out for a run on the grounds, but solo runs were discouraged since, if a lone person got injured, or was simply missing when something happened that needed their attention, it could be problematic for the unit in unexpected ways. Chief Hammond had made it clear to all of them that the treadmills were there for a reason, because the soldiers could be paged there if needed.

  There were a couple of other people in the gym now, too—one of the cooks was on a rowing machine, while a couple of the motor pool mechanics were pumping iron, and there was even a DARPA scientist on another treadmill—but Daniel was the only one of Hammond’s unit present. Generic rock music played over the speakers, unrecognizable to Daniel, but it had a beat that matched a nice steady heartrate. The background sound made it easy to slide smoothly into a good run, as well, and get into the groove with it.

  He wasn’t sure how long he was on the treadmill before he came to immediate alertness when the music stopped and Chief Hammond’s voice came over the speakers. “Daniel West, report to Admin.” Daniel slowed, switched off the treadmill, grabbed a towel, and headed out.

  When he got to the Admin center, he was greeted by a number of familiar faces: Hammond, General Carver, Doctors Gibson and Martino, and the techs who had brought the Exo-suit shipment that had killed Althaus. There was also a pair of Army physicians, supervising a lot of medical equipment that had been set up in the briefing room.

  Hammond met Daniel’s eyes and said, “They’ve brought a new Exo-suit.” Daniel felt his gut tighten. Part of him wanted to just calmly get on with it, but after what had happened to Althaus a couple of weeks ago, he felt not just fear, but anger at the thought of being made to try one on. Even if it worked perfectly, it was an insult to Althaus. “The General—” Hammond began, and Daniel couldn’t help noticing the terse emphasis he put on the rank, compared to when he had previously addressed her more casually by name, “…wants you to try it on.”

  “Why me?” Bailey had been next in line, as Daniel recalled, though he balked at the idea of naming anyone to follow Althaus.

  “Because yours was the latest of the first batch; they went alphabetically, and apparently it had a few tweaks they’d figured out to employ while making the earlier ones, so it was effectively a slightly improved version.” Hammond sighed. “Or so they say.”

  “Is this optional?”

  “I won’t order you to do it. Carver will. Whether it’s a legal order, given the experimental nature of the Exo-suits... that’s open to question. And nobody has to follow an order that isn’t legal. I’ll back you up to the hilt on that one.”

  Daniel understood what Hammond was telling him well enough. “Has anyone at the labs tried it on first this time?” he asked.

  “They say yes, with no functionality active. I don’t believe them,” Hammond added bluntly.

  General Carver came over. “When you’re ready, Lieutenant West, the government would like you to put on this new Exo-suit. Regardless of the chief’s opinion.”

  Daniel started to form the query as to the legality of the order with his tongue, before even opening his mouth. He was one breath away from questioning it. “Has anyone tried it out?” he asked Carver directly, meeting her eyes and searching them for any sign of deceit.

  “I’m told they have.” Daniel believed her, but that only meant DARPA could have lied to her.

  Martino cleared his throat. “We’ve also ironed out a fault in the manufacturing process, which we believe is what cost Unteroffizier Althaus his life, so it should work this time.”

  “It should have worked last time, according to you,” Hammond reminded them.

  “Yes, it should have. That’s why we’ve brought medical experts who have also been studying the suits. If anything happens, they will anesthetize you and induce a coma so that the suit can be removed safely. We do know that procedure works when a suit has to be removed. You can probably guess how we know,” he admitted. Daniel believed that part, too.

  “I know it’s scary,” Carver said, “and I’d be as reluctant as you to try it right now if I had the antibody protein, but believe me, they are taking all due precautions. Nobody can guarantee the suit will work with the full functionality of the Mo
zari-made suits, but we can guarantee that we can get you out of it safely if need be.”

  Daniel stood for a moment, mentally screaming at himself to just question the legality and refuse—at least for now. But… “OK,” he heard himself say.

  Hammond looked away with a sigh.

  “Then there’s no time like the present,” Carver said. Already, the technicians were getting the suit out of its transport hanger. Daniel began to undress, then paused with his shirt half-off. “Cotton skivvies are still OK, right? I mean, there’s a lady present...”

  “Cotton’s fine, nobody needs to see your junk,” Martino replied. Carver merely chuckled. With that, Daniel continued removing clothes until he was standing in only cotton jockey-shorts. Several months in a dorm with little privacy had gotten him used to stripping down in front of others, at least. The physicians started attaching sticky pads to Daniel as soon as he took his shirt off. One of them even fitted a cannula to his body before letting him touch the suit.

  This Exo-suit was more like the ones Hammond and Hope wore; it was still much like a dry-suit, but this one looked less like rubber, having a strange crystalline sheen. Daniel stepped into the legs, and he was startled when they began to flow up his legs rather than letting him pull them up. The same thing happened with the sleeves, and the torso wrapped itself around him and squeezed. His skin tingled and prickled, the sensation building and buzzing to a painful level as the hood crawled up his scalp. The burning sensation stabbed into his eyeballs next as his vision went black. He felt his throat twitch with a strange little yelp, and his heart leap into overdrive; he was burning, and blind and screaming, and—

  And, the pain was gone, and he simply stood there in darkness, gasping to recover his breath, but with the feeling that the skin over his limbs and torso had become as rigid as steel. There was sound like drumming and bubbling, and it took him a few moments to realize that he was hearing the heartbeats of everyone in the room, and the sound of the blood squeezing through their veins and arteries.

  He could smell the toast on someone’s breath from several feet away, and the scent of primrose from the PX flowerbed on someone’s boots.

  He opened his eyes, and instantly had to temporarily close them again, as the room seemed about ten times as bright as before. He saw Carver blink, and heard the insectile scrape of eyelash against eyelash as she did so. He could see the grain of the plain paintwork on the walls and, as he focused in, the tiny bubbles and pits left on the surface from when it had dried...

  He didn’t remember being a baby, but he thought that if he had, this must be what it had felt like to see and hear the world suddenly, and experience all of the senses for the first time.

  Then he looked around, thinking Hope had just walked into the room—he sensed her voice, and her nervousness, as if she was there with him for her expression to be seen, or fidgeting nearby. Yet, she wasn’t there. Then he felt, not heard, her sigh, and a wash of relief. In the next moment, he felt surprise, but not his own surprise; somehow, it was hers. He looked across the room at Chief Hammond, who was watching him intently, concern visible on his face. But while Daniel could see the concern, he didn’t feel it.

  He opened his mouth to say something to Hope, but before he could, her voice came into his head: ‘Don’t say anything!’

  ‘What?’ he thought instinctively.

  ‘Please, don’t say anything about this to them.’

  “Are you OK?” Hammond was asking. “How do you feel?”

  Finally, Daniel remembered how his mouth worked. “I’m fine. I feel... fine.”

  Hammond let go of a long breath and grinned weakly, while Carver looked on with a satisfied smile and the technicians cheered, slapping each other on the back.

  ‘This can’t be right,’ he thought. How the hell was he hearing Hope’s thoughts? Maybe he was imagining it, his subconscious using her voice to make him feel at ease?

  ‘No,’ her thought came, darkly, ‘this is real. I’m in the Armory and I can hear your thoughts, feel you in the suit.’

  ‘Impossible...’

  ‘Yes, but it’s happening.’ Daniel felt dizzy and swayed on his feet. Could Hammond hear him, too? He didn’t feel anything from the chief; whatever was happening wasn’t just a suit to suit thing. ‘We should report this.’

  ‘Would anyone believe it? If Mister Hammond’s suit doesn’t do this... Maybe it’s something else? And that would definitely make our report less believable.’

  ‘So, what should we do?’

  ‘Think, and observe. First let us see if anyone else wearing the new suits has the same ability. Then we’ll at least have an idea of whether it’s something to do with the suits.’

  Daniel couldn’t imagine what else might be behind it, but he nodded, then realized how stupid he must look, since no one who was actually in the room had heard the conversation. “That’s... all right,” he said aloud.

  “You’re sure?” Carver asked.

  “Pretty sure,” Daniel said. “I’m good for now.”

  Eighteen

  After a battery of medical tests—where the doctors made sure that the telemetry from the pads they’d attached to him were showing perfect results on heart rate, breathing, skin conductivity, and brainwaves—the scientists consulted with General Carver. They didn’t mention anything about his brainwaves, or ask any questions about what he was thinking, which made him doubt that the suit was responsible for his thoughts with Hope. Maybe it was his imagination after all. Or maybe his brainwaves were unremarkable because she wasn’t answering back right now.

  After a moment, Carver looked at Daniel and Chief Hammond, whose features were still clouded with doubts. “What we need to know now is whether this human-made Exo-suit matches up to the performance of the original Mozari suits.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Hammond asked.

  “Then we need to know what the shortfall is. We’re confident that it will improve upon human capabilities, and significantly, but we need to know by how much. The first area of operations should be the rifle range—”

  “Almost,” Hammond corrected her before he turned to Daniel. “The first AO should be the route to the range. I know how fast I can get there. Let’s see how fast your suit can get you there.”

  Daniel started, eyes snapping wide, when Hammond yelled, “Listen up, West!” right in his ear. Suddenly reminded that he wasn’t looking for Hope, or her thoughts, right now, he sputtered, “Uh, Chief, yes, Chief. Should I bring any gear?” His heart had sunk at the thought of not yet being able to find Hope and ask her face to face whether their conversation had been real, but he knew better than to let that show.

  “We’ll bring gear over in Humvees. There are some specific things we want to test out, if you can stop daydreaming long enough.” Daniel nodded. “Come on, West. I’ll race you.”

  Outside, Daniel ran, his legs and arms pumping as he matched Hammond’s pace, and yet he didn’t feel as if he was working all that hard. He felt sure he was running faster than he ever had—either in the field or on the treadmill—but he wasn’t sweating as heavily, nor was his heart rate anywhere near what it would normally have gotten pushed to in the middle of a hard run.

  His thoughts still wandered towards Hope, and he felt a sensual warmth of good food that wasn’t his own feeling. Was she in the Mess now, then? If only he could ask. He wondered what the telemetry from the sensors attached to him could be showing the scientists and physicians, and he hoped they would let him see it so he could see if anything was happening when he mentally thought towards Hope.

  They reached they assault course, and Hammond launched himself straight into it, bouncing from obstacle to obstacle without breaking stride. Daniel did the same, and found himself simply jogging up a scramble net, taking slippery logs in two quick steps, and then, when he reached the rope swing, he was going so fast that he simply forgot—until it was too late—to reach for the rope. Instead, he leapt across the gap, landing with surprise atop the next
platform. He stumbled there in surprise and his kneecap crashed painfully into a tree root on the ground, bringing him down with a curse.

  Recovered, he stood up, testing his weight on his leg and looking down at the knee. The suit was torn there, and so was half the skin on his kneecap, where a piece of bark had dug in and torn it free. It stung, but then he saw that pieces of the suit around the wound were crumbling… and flowing like fine flour on a tilted plate. As the floury substance met his blood, it dried and vanished while the skin began to spread back over the red patch into which the fine powder had sunk. In a moment, his knee was whole and unblemished, and had even stopped stinging. The flour-like particles were spreading over it, and by the time he blinked again, the suit was whole—covering the wound that no longer existed.

  This time, his curse was one of awe as he flexed the affected leg. It was, astonishingly, quite painless, and moved as fluidly as always. Then, with a grin, he set off after the chief, pushing himself fast so that he could catch up.

  He loved the peace of running as it was, but with the suit, he wasn’t getting out of breath, nothing ached, and he felt simply amazing and joyous. It was like being a real life superhero, like the Flash, though he didn’t believe he could run as fast as a car. He could certainly run twice as fast as before he’d put the suit on, though, and that was more than enough to make him feel… well, super. He couldn’t wait to see how Bailey would react to this feeling when he got an Exo-suit that worked with his body.

  Daniel caught up with Hammond half a mile further on, and they reached the rifle range shortly thereafter, only to find Carver and the others emerging from their Humvees and unloading more gear. Daniel saw a weapons crate like the one that had held the XR-01s, a simple and shiny gunmetal-gray cube, and assorted bits of medical telemetry monitors which the doctors were setting up on a table.