B. Larson - Conquest

“Here it goes,” I said, and applied thrust. It took a bit more than I thought it would, but after a moment of trembling, I was airborne. I rose up over the base, slowly applying more thrust.

Again, I caught the attention of the laser turrets. They snapped their projectors around to sight on me like a flock of suspicious cranes. They slowly turned away, however, as I hovered there in the middle of the base. I was only using the two bottom propulsion units, the ones on my feet. I could feel them vibrate there, tickling my toes slightly.

“Wow!” Sandra called, clapping her hands. “I didn’t expect that. Go higher. How high can you go? Can you reach space?”

“No,” I radioed down. “In zero-gee, I doubt I could reach escape velocity, but I could maneuver freely in orbit. In an atmosphere with Earth-level gravity, I suppose I could fly around above treetop level indefinitely.”

“You should come down here and carry me. Like Superman.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe later, after a bit more testing.”

“We’ll be dead by then,” she said, pouting.

“Maybe.”

I landed then, and tried running in the suit. Oddly, that was harder to manage than flying. Getting the rhythm right, pumping my legs up and down in the correct pattern at the correct time was difficult. I headed out to the forest and immediately ran into a tree. Bark chipped off showing the orange-white flesh of the tree. Soon after I stepped into holes and went tumbling. The test was a general failure. I could see the suit was going to take some getting used to. The problem was my natural body movements weren’t quite in tune with the weight and mass I was trying to move now. I had the strength, but it was as if I’d gained a thousand pounds and a lot of muscle. It was all about the timing.

Another major issue was the isolation and lack of tactile feedback. When running, the human body gives the brain input from our feet and limbs as to where they are in relationship to the ground. With this suit on-well, it was like trying to cut your toenails with oven mitts on. There were lots of accidents.

Sandra glided after me as I trotted around among the trees. When I fell, she helped me back up. After an hour or so, I was doing better. At least I wasn’t falling on my face and bumping into things all the time.

Sandra banged her fist on my metal-coated shoulder blade. I didn’t really feel it, but I heard it.

I turned smoothly to face her. “What?”

“Let’s shoot something,” she said. “I know you would never build a monstrosity like this if it couldn’t kill a Macro.”

“Have you got autoshades?” I asked.

She smiled and I watched as her eyes darkened. I’d forgotten about that. She’d had them built in. A nice trick. Maybe I could train my nanites to do that.

I turned back and aimed forward. I extended a gloved fist. Inside the arms, I’d build laser projectors. I burned down a tall palm with a single blazing emission and a slashing motion. The palm toppled over, the fronds at the top fluttering wildly as it fell. Birds screamed protests at us.

“You have two lasers?” she asked. “One in each arm?”

“Right.”

“You’re twice the man I thought you were.”

“So are you.”

Sandra gave me an odd look, not sure if she had been insulted or not. Fortunately, she couldn’t see my grin due to the glare on my faceplate.

A few days later I had all thirty one of my factories producing improved models of my new battle suit. The suits took about three hours to produce, but they didn’t take much in the way of specialized materials. After two steady days of production, I had about five hundred of these specialized suits. I’d already taken volunteer marines and set up specialized crash-training courses.

Crow came to watch me lead a company out on the beach a mile or so south of Fort Pierre. He stood on the beach with his arms crossed as we flew over the waves, shot hot lasers into the ocean and practiced diving through the resulting plumes of steam.

Finally, Crow signaled me impatiently. I ordered Kwon, who was assisting me in the training, to continue to lead the troops through maneuver and fire exercises. After that, they were to run ten miles through hip deep water and back again through the forest.

I landed near Crow with a spray of sand. He wore black-out goggles that clashed with his sunburned skin.

“What’s up, Jack?” I asked him. “News from Venus?”

“Nothing, I’m glad to report. But I’m here to find out what the hell you are up to.”

I waved back with one clanking arm toward the company flying over the ocean. As I did so, two of my men slammed together and went into spins. One shot down into the ocean, causing a fountain of steaming water to shoot upward. The second caught himself and managed to keep flying.

“Good work, marine!” I roared the winner over the com-link. “Now, pull your buddy out of the surf. Tell him he owes you a beer.”

I turned back to Crow. “I’m training these men to use their new suits. They are tricky to control, especially while in flight, as you can see. The key is to get a feel for the suit as an extension of your own body. To be the suit, so to speak. It’s rather like learning exactly where the bumper of your car is even when you can’t see it.”

“Are you expecting to go up there and parallel park with the Macros?”

“No, sir. I’m expecting to destroy the enemy.”

“With this lot? With a pack of marines in medieval armor? Have you gone mad, Kyle? I expected you to use our destroyer design to manufacture a dozen new destroyers for me.”

I removed my helmet and shook my head. Sweat flew in a spiraling spray. The heat-dissipation units inside these things needed a little work. I hadn’t turned on my air-conditioners yet, I didn’t think I should have to given that we were only working in the tropics. Space-especially any region of space closer to the sun than Earth-was going to be a lot hotter than this beach. But I’d thought wrong. The exoskeletons created excess heat as they moved, probably due to unforeseen friction and the use of servos.

“I forget you weren’t out there on our campaign,” I told Crow.

He stiffened his expression immediately. I knew he took any reference to his absence on my last big mission as some kind of suggestion of cowardice on his part. That didn’t bother me, so I kept on making the references.

“Just tell me why this isn’t a gross waste of time and resources.”

“Don’t think about them as marines, Jack,” I said. “Think of them as one-man fighters. And think of your destroyers as carriers for these fighters.”

He tilted his head, looking at me. “You plan to attack the Macros with infantry?”

“You saw me do it when that diamond of four Macros hit Earth a few weeks ago.”

“I’d thought that was a wild act of desperation.”

“No…it was a tactic. And a damned effective one, too. These Macro cruisers aren’t well designed to stop boarders. They have only one single large cannon and a number of missile ports with a limited supply of missile salvoes. They can’t easily deal with large numbers of small attackers.”

Crow nodded. I could tell I had him thinking, but he still doubted me. “Still sounds to me like an excuse to build up your marine forces when it’s obvious we need every ship I can get.”

“Every one of these suits is a ship. A very small one, but I already have five hundred of them. I’m training the pilots right now, as you can see.”

I gestured with a sweeping arm out to the frolicking marines. They were doing stabilization maneuvers now. These consisted of one marine flying laterally, then being struck or spun around by other marines. He was to steady himself and get to his goal point as quickly as possible without touching the waves. The mission of the rest of each squad was to dunk the man running the gauntlet. There was surge of hooting and roaring laughter each time a man spun out of control and slammed into the ocean.