The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (3 page)

▸THE MAN KNOWN as Elder Corusc to the humans of Earth was both elated and frustrated as he looked out over the provincial city he and his people had been housed in.

This Washington place is interesting. Both so much simpler than a Priminae housing, but there is an age here, a feeling of history that I’ve only experienced in Mons Systema itself.

Comparing a city as seemingly small as this one to Mons Systema seemed downright absurd at first glance, but there was something about the atmosphere that spoke to him. For a place with only a few centuries’ history, he found himself admiring the character.

Though, if they didn’t fix the traffic issues, he wouldn’t wonder if the whole place simply exploded one day. It was utterly inexcusable for a place of such limited population to be so crammed full with people only during certain times of the day.

He had been utterly unable to believe how few people actually lived in the city when it had been told to him during his first week on this world. Mons Systema held more than fifty times the number in a space not much more than twice the footprint, and one could quite easily go one’s entire life
without seeing another soul, if you were so antisocial as to desire it.

Washington was a curious mix of a planned environment, with a rather impressive artistic flair, and the organic growth one normally only saw in truly ancient ruins among the colonies. As if someone planned for only so many people and never took into account what might happen if more chose to move in.

Corusc sighed, setting down his drink as he considered the situation beyond the skies of this one small world.

They now had an agreement of sorts with the people here, one that would provide them with weapons and defensive technologies to help defend Ranquil and the other worlds that still existed within the colonies. Or concepts, if not actual technologies, he supposed. There was a bizarre nature to the technology of this “Earth,” he had learned since arriving.

They’d tread a disparate path than the Priminae, developed technology and tricks that had never been conceived within the colonies, yet most of it was absurdly antiquated. They still split and fused the atom to generate power, a marginal source of power at best when applied to human-scale endeavors. Certainly, fusing atomic bonds was tremendously impressive at a stellar scale, but you simply couldn’t pack much value into something that fit safely on a planet, to say nothing of a ship.

Still, they did more with what they had than he would have dreamed possible, and Corusc was well aware that his people needed precisely that.

He looked up to the skies, knowing that soon it would be time to return home.

The Priminae elder just hoped beyond hope that there was still a home left to return to.

As Comdr. Stephen Michaels waited for Ithan Milla Chans in the office supplied for the elder and his two aides, he acknowledged it was nice enough. But it didn’t fit how he had come to view Milla’s people. Of course, a lot of his knowledge of them was largely secondhand, so he probably was at least as inaccurate as the office. He did know, though, that Milla, and to a lesser extent, the elder, had expressed surprise at how unplanned Washington, DC, seemed; their cities were planned down to the last detail. They had to be.

He wondered if the rumors were true, that they were shipping out again shortly. He hoped so, though he knew that if they were, then they’d probably be back in the fire before long. Milla’s people were in a bad way, but Stephen had found that he liked the ones he’d met, and he didn’t enjoy seeing people he liked get hurt.

The way he saw it, the only way they’d be shipping out was if the brass and the politicians had come to an agreement with the elder. He hoped that was the case.

“Stephen?”

Stephen shook his head clear of the random thoughts and smiled when Milla appeared from the doors that led to the back offices, and the living areas within. “Good afternoon, Ithan Chans.”

She smiled, probably at his formality, given that they’d stopped using titles a long time ago in a star system fairly far away. But she also looked a little puzzled. “Why are you here?”

“Well, I told you that when I got leave I’d show you the city if you wanted,” he replied, then shrugged. “I got leave.”

NACS ODYSSEY
Geosync Orbit, Earth

▸“WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!” S.Sgt. Max Greene yelled, waving his arms at the trundling loader that was hauling a massive crate into the maw of the
Odyssey
’s hold. “Hold it right there!”

The automated loader immediately rumbled to a halt, its lights still flashing as Greene looked up at the massive packing crate, then glared at the door the loader had been about to attempt to move it through.

“Awright, who screwed the pooch on the packing dimensions!” he demanded after eyeballing the offending material. “This ain’t gonna fit in the fucking armory room!”

Same old Greene
, Major Brinks thought, watching the scene play out.
Energetic and observant, and just slightly salty
. He walked over and said, “What’s going on, Sergeant?”

Greene glanced over and stiffened. “Sir, some jackass must have slapped the wrong sticker on this sucker. The loader just tried to put it in the armory…And no way is it supposed to be in here.”

Brinks eyed the crate curiously, then plucked a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader from the sergeant’s hand and queried the crate.

“I already checked that, sir. It just says—”

“Powered Armor, EXO-Twelve.” Brinks frowned.

“Yeah, that,” Greene replied. “But look at the number of units.”

Brinks glanced down, and his eyebrow went up. “One unit? In
that
?”

“Like I said, Major, someone screwed the pooch when they riffed this puppy.” Greene shook his head. “We’ll have to recheck the entire shipment now.”

“That won’t be necessary, Sergeant.”

Brinks and Greene both turned to see a man with lieutenant’s bars clomping over in their direction, looking distinctly uncomfortable in his Magboots.

“What do you know about this, Lieutenant?” Brinks frowned as he eyed the young man. The kid was wearing the dark-green uniform that identified him as a member of the ship’s assault company, but he didn’t recognize him.

“Crowley, sir,” the lieutenant, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, replied with an eager-puppy look on his face. “Jackson Crowley, Major.”

“Lieutenant Crowley.” Brinks nodded, then repeated his question. “What do you know about this?”

“This is a power suit, just like it says, Major,” Jackson said with a grin.

“Bullshit,” Greene snorted.

Brinks spared the sergeant a glare, then turned back to Crowley. “Lieutenant, that crate could pack twelve power suits.”

The young man grinned with the air of a kid showing off his favorite toy. “Oh, I guess they haven’t sent you the specs yet, sir…You’re gonna love this…”

He walked over to the crate, then addressed the loader. “Lower the crate here, and pop the latches, please.”

Brinks heard Greene snort again and knew that the sergeant found it amusing whenever anyone was polite to a machine, but ignored the man. He was curious to see what the hell was going on here.

The loader set the crate down, the magnetic clamps locking it down to the floor with a solid thump, then took a step back and pivoted its grasping forks to slide them into the latches built into the top of the crate. A simple twist and pull was all it took to open them, and Lieutenant Crowley was there to catch the front of the crate as it floated free. He swung it down, stepping out of its way, and let it attach itself to the floor on its own clamps.

Brinks stepped forward to look inside, Greene beside him.

“Shit on a stick,” Greene muttered.

Inside was about the largest “power suit” Brinks had ever seen, and he’d seen pretty much everything they issued and then some. The “armor” was about twelve feet tall, built like the proverbial brick house, and looked like something out of a bad sci-fi flick.

“Lieutenant, I’m not in the mood for jokes,” Brinks growled in annoyance.

He’d seen lots of similar units, though most were smaller than this, and had even tested a few in the past. They’d all failed miserably to pass minimum battlefield standards because they were too clumsy to be of serious use, which was why the smaller armored suits were used.

“No joke, Major,” Jackson said, looking puzzled.

“Lieutenant, I know a little something about armor. And that will fall flat on its face the first firefight it gets in,” Brinks said with certainty.

“Sir, no, sir,” Jackson insisted, shaking his head. “It’s based on the NICS system. Trust me, Major, it’s battlefield ready.”

“NICS?” Greene muttered. “What the hell is NICS?”

“Sorry, Sergeant,” Crowley said. “That’s still classified—”

“Son, tell us what the hell it is,” Brinks growled in annoyance.

The lieutenant swallowed, then nodded. “Yes, sir. NICS stands for Neural Induction Command System. It’s the same stuff they use in the Archangels and—”

“Bloody hell!” Greene exploded. “You want us to stick fuckin’ needles in our goddamned necks? Are you out of your fucking mind? Do we look like those lunatics up on—”

“Sergeant.” Brinks cut him off. He liked Greene, but the man had to know there were limits.

“But,
damn
, Major!”

“That’s enough,” Brinks told him, then eyed the suit. “We don’t have anyone checked out on that system.”

“You do now, sir.” Crowley patted the crate. “This here is my baby. So the sarge there doesn’t have to worry about needles jammed in his neck.”

Brinks looked at the lieutenant, then RFIDed the man’s dog tags with the reader still in his hand. A short perusal was all he needed to tell what he wanted to know. “Lieutenant, have you seen any action at all?”

“Well…No, sir. I enlisted after the war,” Crowley admitted. “But I’m fully trained and certified…”

“Why didn’t they just give us a couple tanks?” Greene asked. “We don’t need this shit.”

“Tanks are too high maintenance,” Crowley responded instantly.

“And that thing ain’t?”

“No, Sergeant, it isn’t,” Crowley replied evenly. “Most of the base technologies in this baby predate tanks by a couple thousand years. Simple hydraulics. Treat it right, it’ll run a hundred years without fault. And those are the only major moving parts…The computer is top of the line, of course, and heavily shielded…”

“Yeah, right,” Greene muttered, eyeing the brute and shaking his head. “Battlefield don’t treat nothing right, kid.”

Brinks eyed the unit with a weary eye, then shook his head. “It’s your coffin, Crowley. Can you get that thing out of the crate and…Oh, hell, Sarge, find him a place to hide this thing, will ya?”

“Too right,” Greene muttered. “Half the guys around here will laugh their asses off at this.”

They might
, Brinks thought wryly,
but they might laugh at you, too. Not to your face, of course
.

LIBERTY STATION
Lagrange Four, Earth Orbit