David Weber - The Apocalypse Troll

It was odd, he thought, regarding her across the table. Despite her revelations, he hadn't really expected her to invite him into her bunk last night. Nor had he been prepared for the skill and passion she'd exhibited. No doubt he should have; anyone who looked like that and had enjoyed eighty years of practice must have had ample opportunity to get the basics down. Yet there'd been a curious vulnerability to her, as well. Almost a shyness-a sense that she was deliberately lowering some inner, secret barrier.

She was, he reflected, an incredibly complex individual. Her openness and readiness to cope with her bizarre situation masked it, but the complexity was there, hidden behind a multilayered defense, and he wondered if all "Methuselahs" were like that. Did dealing with shorter-lived "Normals" for decade after decade-watching friends age and fade while they themselves stayed endlessly young-create that sense of a guarded, utterly private core in all of them? And could a "Normal" truly be a "Thuselah's" friend? Even if she opened up with them, allowed them past her guard, could they accept the true depth of the differences between her and them? Intellectually, he could believe she truly was the age she claimed, but his emotions were still catching up with the information. It was an extraordinary sensation to realize that the superb young body sitting across his table from him belonged to a woman-no, he told himself, a lady-even older than he.

"Ummm." Another thought came to him, and he opened a locker and pulled out a rolled bundle. "I guess I better give this stuff back to you," he said, and extended her blood-stained flight suit.

"Messy," she said dispassionately, regarding the gory smears of her own dried blood, and her calm expression reminded him anew that this was a warrior. Then she unrolled the bundle, and the iron-nerved professional vanished in a gasp of anguish.

"Oh ... my ... God! What did you use?! A cleaver?"

This was his own first good look at it since he'd bundled the slashed garment into the locker on The Night, and he had to admit his surgery had been radical. It gaped raggedly open from neck to crotch, and she shook her head sadly as she traced the edge of the cut with a finger.

"Well, I had to get it off you some way," he said a bit defensively, "and I certainly didn't see any zippers."

"Zippers?" She flipped the flight suit over and touched a spot on the right shoulder. A razor-sharp seam opened down the back, and she looked up with a chiding expression. "Barbarian!" she snorted, and he felt an edge of relief at the laughter in her voice.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but it really seemed like the only way."

"I know, I know," she sighed. She touched something near the left cuff, and his eyes widened as a narrow section of fabric slid back to reveal a wafer-thin instrument panel reaching from cuff to elbow. It was covered with tiny lights and readouts, and very few of the lights were green. "Lordy," she murmured, bending over it. "You don't believe in fractionals."

"Just what did I do?" he asked curiously, craning his own neck for a better view.

"Oh, I'd say a megacred or so of damage," she replied. She touched a series of tiny switches, and about half the red lights turned amber. "Could be worse, though."

"What are you doing?"

"Running a diagnostic. Hmm... ." She fell silent, absorbed in her task, and he possessed his soul in as much patience as he could while she concentrated. It was several minutes before she straightened with a sigh.

"It may not be too bad, after all," she said. "The com networks're shot to hell, but you missed the sensies."

"I what?" He looked at her in astonishment. "Just what the hell is that thing, anyway?"

"My flight suit," she said in surprise, then grinned slyly at his baffled expression. "Oho! Revenge is in my grasp, I see. Maybe I just shouldn't tell you about it."

"Try it and I'll toss you over the side," he growled.

"You and what army?" she said saucily, then held up a hand in laughing surrender as he started to rise. "Mercy! I'll talk-I'll talk!"

"Then give!"

"Gladly, but I'm not sure where to start." She thought for a moment. "I know more maintenance and field service than design theory, and I doubt your tech base'd be up to the details, even if I had more of them myself, but basically, this is what you'd call my space suit. It's a lot more capable than any suit your space program's come up with yet, though. You can think of it as a computer, and you won't be far wrong."

"A computer?"

"Cert. It's lousy with molycircs-molecular circuitry, that is. It has to be, because every square millimeter of the inner skin is fitted with sensors to monitor internal conditions. The outer skin's set up to reflect harmful radiation and absorb energy to power the internal circuits. The whole suit's designed to absorb and recycle body wastes, too-you can live in the thing for weeks, if you have to. Well, I guess I proved that on the flight here."

"But if it's a space suit, where's the oxygen?" he demanded, his eyes bright with fascination.

"Right here." She touched the fabric. "Oh, the older suits were a lot thicker-as much as a centimeter in places-but the technology's a lot better these days. The middle layer between the two boundary skins is one big mass of micro-vacuoles. You can think of them as millions of tiny little air and water and nutrient tanks, if that works better." She saw his incredulous expression and grinned. "It may not sound like much, but they're under something like twenty thousand atmospheres. As a matter of fact, the consumables ought to be just about full right now, since I didn't use any suit resources on the way in."

"No wonder it was so hard to cut," he said softly.

"Hard?" She snorted. "Dick, if the designer hadn't put some thought into it, you couldn't have cut it. I don't know whether you noticed, but this-" she traced the cut with her finger "-is almost exactly where anyone would cut it, assuming that they had to. They deliberately put most of the consumable storage around back and to the sides. All you cut through was about a quarter of the electronics." She grinned. "You managed to disconnect almost all my com channels, but you missed the sensies."

"Sensies?"

"Active and passive sensors. Visual, sonar, what you might think of as radar-all built in."

"My God. But your helmet went down with your ship, didn't it?"

"A helmet went down, but that was the neural feed to the flight controls. It'll serve as a helmet if you lose cabin pressure in combat, but you don't really need it. Look." She touched another apparently blank spot, and the suit's sleeves obediently extruded thin, tough gloves while a spherical shimmer danced above the shoulders. "One-way force field," she explained casually, sliding a hand through the shimmer. "The sensies run on direct neural feeds, so you don't even need readouts."

"I'm ... impressed," he said finally, and she chuckled again.

"You should be. The damned thing's price tag is about ten percent that of an interceptor."

"I'm sorry I ruined it," he said almost humbly.

"Oh, it's not ruined," she assured him. "The nanotech features are off-line right now, and this level of repair would be a big enough energy hog that I'm not about to bring them up while it's running on stored power. But if I can plug into the right feed for a few hours, the self-repair systems'll take care of most of it."

He gawked at her. Somehow that impressed him even more than all the rest. He was almost glad her attention remained on her ravaged suit while he got his expression under control.

"Does it do any other tricks?" he asked finally.

"That's about it," she said with a shrug, and he shook his head slowly. He shouldn't be so surprised, he reminded himself. One of Christopher Columbus's seamen would be just as amazed by a Nimitz-class carrier or a Seawolf attack sub.