Into the Black: Odyssey One (65 page)

Authors: Evan Currie

BOOK: Into the Black: Odyssey One

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She smiled at his formality, given that they’d stopped using titles a long time ago in a star system fairly far away. Instead she 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, than shrugged. “I got leave.”

*****

NAC Odyssey
Geo Sync Orbit, Earth

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Staff Sergeant Max Greene yelled, waving his arms at the trundling loader that was hauling a massive crate into his hold. “Hold it right there!”

The automated loader immediately rumbled to a halt, it’s lights still flashing as Green looked up at the massive packing crate, than 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!”

“What’s going on, Sergeant?”

Greene glanced over, and stiffened as he saw Major Brinks approaching. “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 it’s supposed to be in here.”

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

“I already checked that, Sir. It just says…”

“Powered Armor, EXO-12.” 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 Green both turned to see a man with Lieutenant’s bars clomping over in their direction, looking distinctly uncomfortable in his mag-boots.

“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, than repeated his question, “what do you know about this?”

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

“Bullshit.” Greene snorted.

Brinks spared the Sergeant a glare, than turned back to Crowley. “Lieutenant, that crate could pack twelve powersuits.”

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, than 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, than took a step back and pivoted it’s 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 it’s way, and let it attach itself to the floor on it’s own clamps.

Greene and Brink stepped forward to look inside.

“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 than 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, thought 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 it’s 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, the nodded. “Yes Sir… Nicks 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.

“But, damn!, Major!”

“That’s enough.” Brinks told him, than 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, than RIFFED his dogtags 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, than 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 there ass off at this.”

*****

Liberty Station
Lagrange Four, Earth Orbit

Eric Weston keyed open the door to the conference room where he knew Commander Jason Alvarez Roberts had been sitting in on an informal discussion concerning Military Nomenclature in the modern era. The room itself was huge, it’s centerpiece a single piece table that stretched over twenty feet from end to end. At the far end Eric saw, sitting alone, was the Commander.

“Commander.”

Roberts looked up, nodding curtly. “Captain. Thanks for coming.”

“Something wrong?”

The normally stern man shrugged and actually smiled a little ruefully. “Not really, Sir. I just needed to talk with someone who wasn’t clinically insane.”

Eric chuckled softly, pulling a chair out, and sat down across from the well built black man. “What’s the problem?”

“You ever been cooped up in a room with thirty five representatives of different military branches, all of them arguing that their branch should be the one who’s name and traditions form the foundation of the new Service Branch?” Roberts asked disgustedly.

“Can’t say that I have,” Eric grinned. “And, if I do say so myself, better you than me.”

“Har har.” Roberts said sourly. “You know, it’s insane. It’s not supposed to be this complicated to just pick a damned NAME for a Service Branch.”

“Can’t be that bad…”

“Captain, The Marines are arguing tradition, they want the shipboard troops to be named Marines, of course…”

“Of course.” Eric Weston, Former Marine, smiled slightly.

“Well, the main army representative is arguing that space ships have nothing to do with anything ‘marine’ and the tradition is null and void.” Roberts replied, “His committee, however, is currently stymied by a two way tie between ‘Soldiers’ and ‘Troopers’. To be honest, that’s probably the sanest of them too.”

“Oh?” Eric asked, still smiling as he leaned back.

“Yeah, there was one Colonel in their group that wanted ship board contingents named ‘Rangers’.” Roberts replied with a hint of disgust.

Eric raised an eyebrow. He happened to know that Roberts was a former United States Ranger, so he found that reaction somewhat curious. “You disagree?”

“Me and whoever doctored that idiot’s food.” Roberts replied testily, than smiled grimly. “He came down with a mild case of food poisoning on the day he was to present his argument.”

Eric blinked, frowning in confusion. “And you think someone did it on purpose? Why?”

“Why? Because no self respecting soldier who wears a Tan Beret wants to be known as a freaking Space Ranger, thank you very much.” Roberts growled.

Eric couldn’t help it.

It started with a snicker, but quickly grew into full, powerful, laughs.

Commander Roberts waited, more or less patiently, as his commanding officer laughed at his expense, fingers tapping on the hard composite surface of the desk. When Eric got himself back under control, he just gave his Captain a cool look. “Are you done yet?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Eric replied, snickering a couple more times. “But I have to say that I see your point.”

“Thanks ever so much.” Roberts told him dryly. “I don’t suppose that the rest of the service is having these problems?”

Eric shrugged, “To some degree or another, of course. The Navy and the Air Force went head to head on a lot of things when they were ironing out the command structure of the Odyssey. For the most part, though, the Navy took the arguments on the simple fact that their procedures were easier to adapt.”

Roberts nodded, he’d heard some of that but had generally missed out on the details at the time.

“So what we got was a bit of a hash, but not so much of what you seem to be dealing with,” Eric admitted.

“Thankfully. Or we’d never have survived our first mission.” Roberts replied dryly.

Eric shrugged, “Maybe. But don’t sweat the details is my advice, Commander. Things that don’t work out, we’ll hammer into place as we go along. We’ve got time to work out our traditions ourselves.”

Roberts nodded, “I suppose. It’s just rather frustrating that we can’t even seem to get passed the name.”

Eric half chuckled again, than shrugged. “That’ll be the worst of it. Once you get passed that, it’ll just be the minor details of who obeys who to deal with.”

Roberts glared mildly at the smirk on his Captain’s face, but declined to comment. Instead he just sighed and nodded, “I hope that’s all I have to deal with than. Thanks for coming by, Captain.”

Eric smiled, this time a little less in amusement and more in tolerance. “Not a problem, Commander. I’m sure that you’ll get it all figured out sooner or later.”

Jason Roberts nodded, standing up as Eric did likewise. “I know. It’s just going to drive me to drinking in the meanwhile.”

“Buck up,” Weston hid a laugh, “Space Ranger. You’ll do fine.”

“Good Day, Sir.” Roberts replied through gritted teeth.