Contact Imminent (10 page)

“Why did they wait so long?” Micah tore open the tough plastic envelope and removed a small white foldover the size of his palm. Opened the flap and removed an ummarked wafer. He held it by the edge, tipping it from side to side, watching the light reflect off the surface in pale curved rainbows and wondering who else had touched it. Had it been a leader of their Group? Someone like the Old Man, who monitored their scattered numbers from some all-seeing vantage point and chose or discarded for the good of humanity? Or had it been a trusted second-in-command, someone like Scarface Pierce, whose job was to take the raw material his master gave him and mold it into a defender worthy of his race?

Micah opened the bottom drawer of the cabinet and removed a headset, along with a pair of earbugs and linked gloves and socks. The usual virtual training gear, used by pilots, surgeons, mechanics, anyone who needed to learn a highly specialized skill.

“If I planned to watch
Space Vixens
, I'd need another linking connection.” He frowned. He'd need to get it tomorrow
when he stopped at the shop to buy his decoy holo. That way, in case his flat was ever searched, there would be no question in anyone's mind that the only thing Micah Faber was guilty of was an unfortunate predilection for interactive pornography.

“That means I should get more than one holo.” If you're going to build a cover, may as well make it shooter-proof. “This is getting expensive.” He walked over to his couch and sat, then bunched a couple of cushions against the armrest and lay back. Pulled on the socks. Stuck in the earbugs and donned the headset.

Micah listened to his breathing, magnified to a slow gale within the confines of the face-covering headset. Ambient sound had been blocked. Incident light. He slipped the wafer into a slot in the headset, then dragged on the gloves. Waited.

First came a series of tones. Like chimes, they sounded, first louder, then softer. Repeating. Repeating. The preparative hypnosis, designed to lower the barrier between his conscious mind and the scenario that would soon play before it like a—

—classroom. Chairs in two concentric circles, arranged around a woman dressed in a steel-grey T-shirt and baggy fatigue pants. Razored Service burr, accentuating a face too broad and bony to be feminine. Chrivet. Sergeant. Micah's god-on-earth for the duration of his training. He'd sat before her three times so far, and liked her within certain tight limits. She knew her job—therefore, she was worth listening to. Beyond that…he tried not to think of her beyond that.

“The V-790 exoskeletal array is the most advanced exo yet developed by the Service.” Chrivet stalked the center of the circle, the focus of all attention and savoring it. “When you wear it, you will be able to run farther and faster, jump higher, and shoot better than any human being who ever lived. You will be damned nigh invincible.”

Micah snatched glimpses of his classmates around Chrivet's stalking form, twenty-eight young, fresh faces
each evidencing varying degrees of attention. Bevan, narrow and dark, who thought he already knew it all but deigned to listen anyway. Foley, shorter and lighter, who followed Bevan like a starved pup. Manda, pale-skinned and black-haired, who glanced back at Micah across the gulf of Chrivet's circle and smiled.

Micah smiled back. Felt the heat creep up his neck. Down. Knew that Chrivet still spoke, and couldn't have repeated a word she said if his life depended on it.

Don't do this to yourself, man—that isn't even her face
. He and Wode had talked about the scenario setup many times after they stumbled upon the fact that they were both members of the Group. How the odds were that since their names had been changed, their faces most likely had as well. That only the downloaded personalities remained the same. Voices, maybe. Enough to train. Enough to bond. Enough to befriend. Not enough to identify.

Those eyes
.
So blue
. It would have been unspeakably cruel of the scenario brain to render Manda's eyes a fiction.
So what does she see when she looks at me?
Micah saw his own face in every reflective surface, but that was because that's what he expected to see.
How different are we?
And would it matter come the day they all finally met?

Without warning, an expanse of darker blue obliterated his view of Manda. He blinked, realized he stared at Chrivet's crotch, and lifted his head as though she'd jerked him under the chin.

“Can't you hear me, Mister Tiebold!” She glared down at him, cheeks reddening. “I asked you a question.”

Tiebold
. He still hadn't gotten the hang of his scenario name. No one else seemed to have a problem with theirs—why did he with his?

“I didn't…” He took the deepest, longest breath in the world. It ended too soon. “I didn't hear you, ma'am.”

Chrivet's eyes narrowed. Small, close-set, piggy eyes, dull clay without a glimmer of beauty.

Not like Manda's
—Micah gave himself a mental slap. No
more Manda. Not now. Not if he wanted to remain with the Group. Learn about the V-790. Avenge Wode, and drive the idomeni from every corner of the Commonwealth.

“You didn't hear me, Mister Tiebold?” Chrivet smiled. Her teeth were square and white with no spaces between, as though they'd been carved from a single block of poly. “You're bored. Nothing here of sufficient interest to hold your attention. You know it all.” Her voice, which normally skirted the edges of agitation, emerged dangerously calm. “Well, since you know everything—” She stepped to one side and pointed to a place outside the circle, beyond the double ring of chairs. “—perhaps you'd like to show us all how to suit up.”

At first glance it seemed that someone had beaten Micah to it. A helmeted figure stood outside the circle, taller than he and broad-shouldered, tricked out in a tight black coverall with articulated joints. Dull-finish body armor plated across the chest, abdomen, and thighs, while metal framing ran along the outsides of the legs and undersides of the arms.

Micah took one step toward the still, silent figure, then another, conscious as ever of Bevan's sneer, Chrivet's eagerness to pounce on his anticipated screw-up.
It's just an exo, stupid—no one's inside
. He studied the smooth front of the suit, looking for fasteners, clasps, groping for some hint as to how to get into the damned thing.
Shit
. He stopped in front of it—it was taller than he by half a head.
I sat through a presentation once
. His job had been to set up and monitor the imager, but he'd stuck around at the speaker's request and got to listen to the whole thing.
There's a release near the top of the left shoulder
—He reached up, his fingers brushing what felt like a raised seam. He pressed down, and the shoulder sagged open with the sound of cracking ice.

Keep peeling down
. He sensed Chrivet move in beside him, and glanced over to find her regarding him with thin-lipped disgruntlement.
Yanked away one chance for you to humiliate me
. He turned back to the exo.
Sadistic bitch
. He opened up the side seam down to the ankle. The metal frame
supported the coverall as he worked his way inside, felt the slip of the material over his hands. Rubbery yet silky, nubby in places from inset connections and sensors.

“Unlike previous exos, the V-790 is designed to allow the wearer to suit-in themselves. But in the interest of time—” Chrivet started at the ankle and worked up, yanking the seams together and sealing them tight. “The suit contains a constrictor array so the wearer can tighten or loosen as needed—”

Micah drowned her out again as he adjusted his helmet, then started fiddling with the controls. The air inside the exo smelled metallic, burnt, as though the suit was brand new and still outgassing.

“A damned manual would be nice,” he muttered under his breath. He heard a
ping
in his left ear, followed by a flash of light. Then, as nicely indented and numbered as you please, a series of headers scrolled across the inner surface of the faceplate. “Voice activation—good to know.” He scanned the words that flowed before his eyes. Bodily Functions. Weapons. Defensive Equipment. “How about walking?” He looked past the words, through the display, and saw Chrivet and the others eyeing him expectantly.
Oh boy
. He bunched his muscles as though he prepared to leap off a ledge, and legged forward—

“Shit!”
Micah went airborne, hitting the inner ring of chairs, scattering wireframe in all directions. Shouts filled his ears. A woman's scream. Another stride and he hit the opposite side of the circle, blowing chairs aside like bits of foam. Heard Chrivet yell,
“Stop!”
One more immense stride. Another. The wall came to meet him like a fist in the face—he dropped his weight on his back heel like a ped-wheel kick brake, and stopped a hairbreadth in front of the painted brick.

Four strides
. His heart pounded, columns of red bobbed on the display. Five meters a stride—had to be. “I ran—” Across a huge cavern of a room in the time it took to shout one word. “Shit.” He said it again, softer this time. He felt
like the animal he rode had taken off beneath him and run down the face of a cliff, carrying him along for the ride.
But I stopped it
. Could he have gone through the wall?
I'd rather not find out
.

“Turn around, Mister Tiebold,” Chrivet called after him, “and take it a little more slowly this time.”

Micah lifted his left leg, edged it to the side, and felt it swing out.
Little movements go a long way
. He let the momentum take him, moving into the rotation like a dancer. It worked. He felt as though he drifted into position, like a leaf falling from a tree, but in the end he found himself facing Bevan and the rest, standing straight and tall.

“You certainly know how to walk across a room, Mister Tiebold.” Chrivet had moved well out of Micah's direct path, and now stood against the wall to his left. “Now take one step forward. Then peel out and give someone else a turn.” She looked around. “Clear the rest of these chairs out of the way.”

Micah took the lesson from his turnaround, and edged his leg forward. Felt the low glide. A single step—only a meter or so this time. He raised his right hand beside his head and imagined the muzzle of a mid-range at his right shoulder. According to the presentation, the weapon would be bolted to the rear framing, all charged and ready to go.
Just pull it down and fire
.

“Peel out now, Tiebold.”

Micah sighed. Lowered his hand, crossing it over to his other shoulder. Popped the seam. Exited the suit. Took a seat against the wall and watched everyone else. Imagined again and again the thrill of those few strides. Daydreamed of the power inherent in the flick of a finger. The kick of a leg. Lay his head back against the wall and—

—opened his eyes. As always, he felt as though he'd been under for hours. But when he checked his timepiece, he found that only twenty minutes had passed. Not as compressed as a dream, but not real-time, either. In between.

Micah sat up. He removed the wafer from his headset,
then pulled off all the gear piece by piece. Rose shakily, his thigh muscles aching from tension, his gut rumbling. When he walked, he felt the exo about him like a shield.

For a time he felt the urge to crash Cashman's party. He wanted to shoulder his way through a room full of people, shout to make himself heard above the din. Drink and laugh.

“Except…” He knew what he'd hear as soon as he walked in.
Hey Fabe—what happened to the holo? Hey everybody, meet my buddy, the scholar
. “I'll stay in.” Heat up a prepack. Watch the 'Vee. First thing in the morning, he needed to stop by the public comport kiosk at Forrestal Block, two apartment buildings removed from his. Tuck into a booth and punch in the code that had arrived with that very first training wafer, three months before. Then stick his latest wafer into a player, jack the player into the comport, and send the entire transmission on its way to God knew where, this time supplemented by his physical data, his bioemotional scan, his responses to the training scenario. A DI's recruit report, packed into a few seconds of transmission chatter. After that, melt the wafer down in his trashzap. Then wait for the next mailer to arrive.

“How long?” Not three weeks, not if a training regimen had begun. “More often.” A couple of times a week, maybe, for weeks and weeks to come.

He relived sensations. The lightness. The power. Then he shut his training gear away in its drawer and walked to the kitchenette to make his supper.

 

Micah decided later that he hadn't paid sufficient attention to his surroundings. He had risen early, showered and dressed, then transmitted his data in the usual fashion. Caught a shuttle to Far North Lakeside and settled into his cube early enough to catch the tail end of third shift. He took advantage of the downtime to tap into systems and dig up a schematic of the V-790, secure in the knowledge that it would be at least an hour before Cashman peered over the divider and regaled him with details of the party.

He was immersed in the Motion Control section of the manual when he heard a throat-clearing behind him—he spun his chair around, his heart in his throat.

“I didn't mean to alarm you, Lance Corporal.” Pascal stood in the cube entry. He still wore his field coat; a black briefbag hung from one shoulder. “Emergency meeting in Lakeside Junior—we're having trouble with the conference calling system.”

“Yes, sir.” Micah reset his workstation to standby and pushed to his feet, blowing past Pascal more quickly than was mannerly.
Back down—you haven't done anything wrong
.

Pascal quickened his pace and caught him up. “You're interested in exoskeletons, Faber?”