B. Larson - Rebellion

Gorski and I eyed one another. I saw the guilt in his eyes. I felt it too.

“These are death-traps,” he said quietly.

“I know, Captain,” I said.

He blinked at me. “Captain? I was a sergeant two days ago, Colonel. And I believe you might have skipped over first lieutenant.”

“Yeah,” I said, running my hands over the interior of the capsule, looking for rough edges to smooth out. “But anyone who effectively helps me with design gets rank in my outfit. Besides, remember what I said? You’ve survived a day or two and now you’ve got your promotion.”

Gorski chuckled. “Do you remember what I said? These assault ships and even these capsules could work very effectively against the two Macro ships we’re now sitting in the middle of.”

“You’re right,” I said, “but so was what I said before. If it was just us, I would go for it today. But this isn’t about just us. I’ve made mistakes before. Remember China? I didn’t even attack the Macros that time. I just nosed around and pissed them off. I’m not keen to get millions more innocents killed.”

Gorski nodded. “I understand, sir. We are expendable. We will do or die.”

“We will do both,” I said, correcting him.

Quietly, we smoothed and shaped our tiny, flying dishes. I hesitated, and then I ordered our factories to churn out sixteen hundred of them.

I’d been working hard for hours, at that point. One annoying thing about a helmet was the fact that it kept you from touching your face. Abominable itching was something all my men had to endure for hours from time to time. As soon as I got through the airlock, I removed my helmet. The interior of every brick was pressurized. I breathed deeply of slightly fresher air and gave my head a good scratching.

I got to thinking about a suit redesign. We had vacc suits, and they had done fairly well on Helios. But they were far from ideal. They weren’t really made for combat in pure vacuum, nor for weightless maneuvering. I envisioned many problems and deaths with our current designs. We’d come up with suit improvements before the Helios campaign, but I’d put our efforts into preparation for that world’s heavy gravity, such as the lighter combat kits I’d issued. I’d never really gotten around to improving each marine’s basic survival suit.

The problem with combat in space was that any hit tended to be fatal to the victim. Even if you had a suit-puncture over a limb, it was hard to isolate that portion of the marine’s body without the injured man freezing and suffocating. The nanites helped a lot, as they were able to act like a smart metal, automatically sealing up the breach. But the first thing that happened was depressurization. So, even before the nanites could act, the marine had no air in his suit and none in his lungs. The freezing void would suck it all out. We’d taught our people to release all the air from their lungs in such a case-you could last a little longer that way. If you held your breath, you were asking for a rupture.

I found these conditions unacceptable. A small puncture could take out one of my men effectively. Even if it didn’t kill him, it would at least incapacitate him. I soon found myself working on a new suit, a battle suit. There were a lot less of my people left now, and I knew the environment we would be facing. I figured the least I could do was give them the best equipment possible for the job.

Hours went by. I came up with an armored design. A battle suit that was heavy, and required some exoskeletal help from the nanites to move under normal gravity. Naturally, as my marines were anything but average men, they could perform even without this power-assist, but I gave them everything I could. The helmet was hard polymers, as was the chest and limb covering pieces. These harder, thicker surfaces made the suit heavy, but that didn’t matter much in space with nanotized troops. Light hits from shrapnel and the like couldn’t penetrate the new battle suit.

I decided to have each man be responsible for transferring the existing HUD unit inside his current headpiece into the new suits. That way, I didn’t have to duplicate all that delicate electronics. The power packs and weapons systems remained similarly untouched. I was focused on the skin of the suit and how it reacted to damage.

I built the suit in regions, with separate compartments for your limbs, torso and head. There were seals that felt like pinching elastic at each of the critical junctures. With some fast acting sensors, I was able to build the suit so it would clamp down on any region that was compromised. For example, if a marine was hit in the leg, in a split-second the suit would close that section off so the rest of the suit didn’t lose pressure. When the nanites managed to repair the breach, the region could be repressurized.

When it was done, I tested it myself first. The inside of the suit was stiff and somewhat uncomfortable. It smelled harshly of plastic and artificial materials. I was certain that in all history, no fighter had ever enjoyed donning his armor. Still, if it saved your life, you learned to love it.

My first test consisted of detonating a grenade while my chest piece rested on it. This was not as easy to do as it sounds. I lay there, on top of the grenade, for sometime before finally lighting it off. I was reminded of being a kid on the high dive for the first time, looking down at cold blue water. Theoretically, I should survive this-but I wasn’t completely sure. I finally took the plunge and the world bucked beneath me, throwing me against the ceiling. I bounced from there and drifted back down.

Afterward, I check the suit carefully. There was an impressive blast mark and some pitted spots in the chest region, but it had worked. I couldn’t think of a way to test the regional cut-off clamps without doing myself significant harm, so I figured real combat would prove or disprove my theories in that direction. I ordered several factories to churn these out. We should have a good number of them before we went into battle again.

I took out another grenade from the ammo box and rolled it around in my gauntleted fingers, testing my manual dexterity. The suit made my hands move stiffly, there was no question of that. But I thought that a bridge officer could still work a screen with these gauntlets on. Again, it wasn’t preferable, but it was workable.

I headed back to my quarters, exhausted. Sandra appeared to be asleep, so I slipped quietly into bed with her. I sighed and stretched out happily, more than ready for the last sleep I expected to get before things got crazy.

Sandra surprised me, however. She woke up and came after me with sudden determination. Maybe it was the nearness of combat. The love-making was intense, desperate and almost painful. The ending for both of us was more of a tension-release than a blissful pleasure.

Still, like most guys, I was happy to take what I could get.

I was asleep when the Macros decided they’d waited long enough. What had it been? Less than three days, I figured. A little over sixty hours. Perhaps on their calendar a full day or a full week had passed. Who knew what equated to a day/night cycle for the Macros? I had no idea how they measured time, or if they measured it in consistent units at all.

Major Sarin’s voice woke me up and a moment later the sirens sounded and yellow flashers started whirling. I couldn’t make out Sarin’s words, but I caught the tone: she was scared.

I bounced out of bed, literally. Having a nanite-enhanced body and minimal gravity I touched the ceiling before I touched the floor.

I knew why the klaxons were sounding, we were underway. I could have used more time, several weeks in fact. But for unknown reasons, Macro Command figured they had given us long enough to reconfigure our forces. They had never asked me how long I wanted. They had never asked anyone anything ever, as far as I could tell. They didn’t like questions from us either, they only responded to demands.