Outriders (11 page)

“Chief Guiterrez,” the chief said. He shook Lincoln’s hand and left little doubt that he could crush it like an egg if he wanted to. “Normally I’d tell you to get in line, but if you gotta be in charge of this joker, your day’s already a lot worse than mine.”

“I appreciate it, chief,” Lincoln said.

“Yeah, well come on back, and we’ll see what we’ve got laying around,” Guiterrez answered, and pushed his way past Mike and headed further down the hall. “I can’t release anything to you until that req comes through, but I can probably get a jumpstart on it. Not promising anything, though.”

Mike nudged Lincoln and leaned close. “Chief’s an under-promise, over-deliver kind of guy.”

Guiterrez led the two deeper into the structure. Exiting the hall, they walked into what looked like an aircraft hangar; expansive floor, no wall, high ceiling. A number of workstations spread throughout the space, and, at every station, someone was working on some piece of gear.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much hardware in one place before,” Lincoln said.

“All this is just the standard stuff,” Mike said. “All the cool toys are in the back.”

The trio continued through the open space to another door, where Guiterrez paused to let the system verify his clearance. The door clicked and slid open, revealing a smaller workshop. It was bright and clean, with well-organized steel racks throughout. If it hadn’t been for all the tools and instruments neatly lining the walls, Lincoln would have been more likely to guess it was a sterile lab than a machinist’s shop. A man and a woman were huddled over their own workbenches. The woman looked up when the three entered, got a nod from the chief and went back to her work. The man was too intent on the rifle on his bench to take any notice of the visitors.

The back of the room was dominated by a massive black container of some heavy metal, like a giant vault. Large double doors stood guard in the center.

Guiterrez motioned to a low steel platform in the back corner of the room while he headed towards the vault.

“Take off your jacket and go on and hop up there,” he said to Lincoln. Lincoln did as he was told, and stepped up onto the round stand. Guiterrez swung open one of the vault doors and disappeared inside. After a couple of minutes, Lincoln started to wonder if the chief was planning on coming out again. Mike, who was leaning back on a nearby table, seemed to read his mind and held up a hand in a reassuring gesture. When Guiterrez did return, he was carrying an armful of… well, they looked like prosthetic arms. Forearms, really, complete with hands, as if he’d just lopped a few off at the elbow. They were all a dull, gunmetal grey. The chief dumped them unceremoniously in a pile on a table near Lincoln and then moved to a console by the platform.

“Hold your arms out to the side, feet shoulder-width apart,” Guiterrez directed. “Like you’re gettin’ a pat down.”

Lincoln complied.

“Right, hold still,” the chief said. He fiddled with something on the console, which chirped once, then again a second or two later. “’Kay you can hop down.”

“That’s it?” Lincoln asked.

“That’s it,” Guiterrez said, already moving back to the table where he’d piled the arms. He spread them out, evaluated a couple, set three aside, and then walked over and held a pair of them out to Lincoln. He lifted one up, a right-handed one. “I think this here is about right, but try ’em both.”

Lincoln didn’t see what the chief did exactly, but the metallic arm whirred quietly and folded open lengthwise, down the center of the underside of the forearm while the hand portion remained intact, like a glove. A moment before it had looked like a single solid piece, and for the first time Lincoln realized he was looking not at a prosthetic arm, but at a component of armor. He’d never seen anything like it before, so sleek and natural it easily could have passed for flesh with the right paint job. The interior was smooth and padded with some kind of material Lincoln didn’t recognize. The chief held the gauntlet steady while Lincoln slipped his arm into it. Once his hand was secure in the glove, Chief Guiterrez reactivated it and the forearm section closed around Lincoln’s arm with the same quiet whir and click. As before, once the gauntlet was closed, it looked to Lincoln’s eyes like a single, unbroken piece of armor, with no crack or seam.

“How’s that feel?” Guiterrez asked. He was busy poking and prodding, checking the fit at Lincoln’s elbow, tweaking values at the console, like some combination of tailor and mechanic. “Any play around the arm?”

Lincoln rotated his arm, rolled his wrist, wiggled and flexed his fingers. Every motion felt natural, unrestrained.

“It feels good, chief,” he said.

“How’s contact with your fingertips?” the Chief asked, and then said, “Do this.” He held up his hand and touched each fingertip to his thumb in succession, pointer to pinky and back again. Lincoln mimicked the gesture and felt each touch with surprising sensitivity. The sensations were muted by the armor, certainly, but he didn’t feel nearly as clumsy as he would have imagined. With a little practice, Lincoln thought he might actually be able to play his violin in these things.

“That’s incredible,” he said. The chief grunted and opened the other gauntlet he was holding. He helped Lincoln put it on his left arm.

“It’ll feel a little numb until we get it synced up,” Guiterrez said. “How about that one?”

The second gauntlet closed around Lincoln’s left arm, and he tested that one with a similar series of movements. He opened and clenched both fists a few times, pressed the fingertips of both hands together.

“Yeah, it’s good,” Lincoln said. “They both feel great.” Guiterrez shook his head, like Lincoln had given the wrong answer.

“No, no, no,” the chief said, waving a hand. “They shouldn’t
both
feel great. One’s a better fit. Tell me which.”

Pence chimed in, “‘Good enough’ ain’t good enough for chief. The man’s an artist.”

Guiterrez ignored the comment, just stood there watching Lincoln intently. Lincoln gave it another shot, trying to focus intently on the sensations in his hands and wrist. Sure enough, when he really paid attention he could feel just a tiny bit of play around his left wrist, a slight delay in response when he rotated his hand back and forth slowly. He mirrored the motion with his right arm, but couldn’t recreate the same sensation.

“The right one’s better,” he said. “Feels like a little gap around my left wrist, maybe.”

“I figured,” Guiterrez said, nodding as he reached out and removed the gauntlets. “You got skinny wrists.”

He took the gauntlets back to the table with the other and then returned to the console. After a couple of minutes of tapping, a deep droning sound came from within the vault.

“Here comes the fun part,” Mike said, flashing a smile at Lincoln.

A moment later, a large metal crate emerged from the vault and automatically navigated over to the chief on its multiwheeled base. The crate was about eight feet tall and maybe four feet wide and deep. It trundled to a halt in front of Guiterrez.

“That’s not one of mine, is it?” Mike asked as the chief went to open the crate.

“Nah, I’d have to chop one of yours up and stitch it all back together,” Guiterrez said. “This is one of Colonel Almeida’s old ones.”

Mike whistled and looked over at Lincoln. “Talk about filling big shoes. You’re jumping right in, my man.”

Lincoln was about to comment, but his words stopped short when the front of the crate swung open and revealed its contents. A full suit of powered armor. But like none he’d ever seen before. Typically, armor was bulky and ponderous, all angles and thick plating like heavy construction machinery. Even the scout configurations he’d trained in before seemed to have been patterned after light armored vehicles. The one that hung before him now was more like a racing motorcycle. Sleek, elegant. But powerful, like a lion at rest.

“In case you were wondering why our quarters are so ugly,” Mike said, “it’s because that right there is where we spend all our budget.”

“What is it?” Lincoln asked, lamely. For the first time, Guiterrez smiled.

“That’s fifth-gen recon armor,” the chief said. Army Special Forces had a few suits of third-gen, which is what Lincoln had gotten most of his training with. He hadn’t even known there was a fourth generation. The Marines were still mostly running first-generation assault suits.

“
Recon
, you understand,” Guiterrez added. “You try assaulting any hills or storming any buildings in one of my babies, and I won’t patch a single hole until you’re out of the unit.”

“Come on, chief,” Mike said. “Who would ever be dumb or desperate enough to deploy a bunch of technicians into something like that?”

Guiterrez gave Pence a look that said he knew precisely who would be that dumb or desperate. Mike just smiled. The chief pressed a button inside the crate, and the rack that the armor was on extended. He waved Lincoln over.

“This one’s gonna need a lot of work,” he said, “but lemme check the fit and make sure it’s at least a place to start.”

Lincoln moved to the crate and spent the next half hour or so suiting up, with the chief’s help. The armor was so well and intuitively designed he felt confident that, under normal circumstances, he could have donned the full suit in under ten minutes. Maybe five, with practice. But under the chief’s watchful eye, everything took three times as long; always there were questions asked, adjustments made, notes taken. In every way, it felt like getting measured for a finely tailored suit. Lincoln learned quickly enough to find
something
that didn’t feel quite right about the most recently added piece, because Guiterrez wouldn’t believe him otherwise. The toes pinched a little, or the waist felt loose, or there was a catch in the shoulder joint.

But in reality, Lincoln was astonished at how natural it all felt. He hadn’t operated extensively in armor, but he remembered well enough the weight of movement in it, the slight resistance it added to every motion, the small but perceptible disconnect between man and machine. But this… even wearing a suit that had been custom tailored for someone else, movement was effortless.

The final component to try was the helmet which, like the other sections, seemed to be all of one piece. Before the chief handed it to Lincoln, he activated something from the console and the grey metal faceplate separated in the middle, its halves sliding into housings hidden on either side, revealing a clear visor underneath. Guiterrez tapped the visor.

“This here’s only rated for small arms, so in the field you keep buttoned up at all times,” he said. “I’m just popping it for you now so you can see, until we get synced up with your net.”

“Understood,” Lincoln said. He slipped the helmet on with ease, and fitted it into the neck piece. The base of the helmet automatically compressed slightly, connecting with the suit and muting the outside world as the hermetic seal completed. For a few seconds, Lincoln could hear nothing but his own breathing. A soothing hum passed through the helmet, and the barrier between Lincoln and the outside world all but vanished. Once again, he was amazed at the suit and the sense of presence he maintained with the environment. Even with all the very expensive components that went into armor, his previous experiences with it had always left him feeling isolated from his surroundings. Many of his former teammates had complained that the helmets interfered too much with situational awareness and some of them had even gone so far as to operate without their helmets whenever the mission environment allowed. But in the fifth-generation gear, Lincoln could even hear subtle clicks and taps of the man working on the rifle at the bench across the room.

Lincoln nodded, then shook his head, and felt the helmet shift and slide with the movement. It was the first piece that felt too big.

“It’s too big,” Lincoln said.

“Looks like it’s too big,” Guiterrez said, a moment later. “Figures. Colonel’s got a melon head.”

“Mine’s on the small side,” Lincoln said. “Goes with the skinny wrists.”

Guiterrez didn’t respond, but Mike gestured at Lincoln.

“He’s talking to you, chief,” Mike said.

Guiterrez glanced at Mike, and then back at Lincoln. He held up a finger, fiddled with something on his console, and then said “Say again?”

“I just said I have a small head,” Lincoln said, and this time he heard his voice both inside the helmet and in the room, with a thinner, processed timbre. He’d forgotten that they wouldn’t be able to hear him through the helmet.

“It’s all right, I got your measurements, I’ll find somethin’ that works,” the chief said. “I’m gonna bring her online so you can check the layout.” He tapped out a series of commands on his console, and a subdued heads-up display appeared on the interior of Lincoln’s visor. “Everything’s gonna feel a little sluggish until we get her set up on your wetwork, eye-tracking included, but take her for a walk around the room and see what you think.”

“All right,” Lincoln said. He took a slow tour of the workshop, putting the suit through a full complement of movements; side-stepping, walking backwards, moving in a crouch. He even got down on his belly and did a few pushups. The other man in the room continued to studiously ignore everything else that was going on, but the woman turned around on her stool and watched with a bemused expression as he put the suit through its paces. Lincoln went to the workshop entrance, then turned back and raised his hands into the position he used when miming a weapon at his shoulder.

“Uh oh,” Mike said. “I think he’s about to kill us all.”

“Not all,” Lincoln said, and he moved through the workshop at half speed, as though clearing it of hostiles in slow motion. This part his body did automatically, years of real-world experience driving the sequence; Mike was the first target, then Guiterrez, then the man with his back to the door. When Lincoln swiveled around to the woman, he swung his hands down in a smooth arc, careful not to point his imaginary weapon at her. He finished scanning the room, and then swept back around the other direction to re-evaluate the scene. As he brought his “weapon” down again to avoid endangering the woman, she smiled at him. And as soon he’d passed her by, she mimed drawing a pistol from under her stool and fired.