Indomitable (45 page)

“Permission to speak freely, ma'am.” She offered the tube to Yates without explanation.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Yates brushed the offer aside.

“Battlefield makeover, ma'am.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

The two enjoyed a brief smile, which evaporated when Promise opened her mouth.

“Lieutenant, I don't have time for this.” Yates had pulled on her beegees and a pair of utility shorts, fingered her hair, and holstered her pulser in a drop-down wraparound. Then she reconsidered the tube of gloss. “Fine, hand it over.” She puckered and nodded in the mirror. “Not bad.” Her laughter caught Promise off-guard. “I can't believe I'm saying this. All right, Promise, go ahead. Don't say I didn't tell you so. And watch your tone of voice when you comm the colonel. Here, catch.” Then Yates grabbed her rebreather and headed for the door.

Promise opened a link to the colonel with her mastoid implant and looped the captain in too. The connection went through immediately.

“Why am I not surprised? Request denied. Halvorsen, out.”

Promise commed back. “Sir, I just want to—”

Died again. Opening and closing links so fast could be mildly disorienting, like spinning and spotting in a mirror. Promise focused her eyes dead ahead on the vents on her locker and commed a third time.

“I don't want to
fight,
sir—” She'd blurted that much out and the link was still open, which caused her hopes to rise. “I just want to watch.”

“You have ten seconds to convince me of that because, one, I don't believe you, and two, that's all the time I have to spare. Go.”

“Sir, I may be a PITA—”

“I
know
you are, Lieutenant.”
The colonel's voice was smiling.
“I said convince me, not preach to the choir.”

“I know better than to roll in a trashed can. My armor is slagged, I'm out of whiskers, my scrubbers are clogged, my shield is spent, and there's no time to thaw one of the spares. Let me ride along. I'll stay put. I'll be a good Marine until you secure the area. I've been reading through the captain's library on counterinsurgency. I've spooled up, sir. Maybe I can help you.”

“Time's up.”
Promise kicked her locker, leaving a sizable dent in its too-thin frame. She reared back to kick it again when she realized the link was still open. “Sir?”

“What?”

“Sir, Jupiter is one of mine. I want to be there when we bring her out. Please.”

Halvorsen sighed like the weight of the 'verse was on his shoulders.
“I won't tolerate heroics, Lieutenant. You'll stay put or I'll shoot you myself. You have fifteen mikes to get yourself and your gear aboard my LAC or I leave without you. Understood?”

“Copy that, sir. Lance Corporal Prichart and I will meet you at the LAC. Thank you, sir. You won't—”

“Save it … chrono's ticking … Halvorsen, out.”

Promise twirled on her heels. “Captain?”

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”
Yates's voice sounded muffled and slightly out of breath.

“Don't worry, ma'am. What could go wrong?”

Yates coughed and swore simultaneously.
“Don't make me regret this, Lieutenant.”
After a long pause, Yates said,
“Good luck, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Promise commed Kathy and quickly filled her in on the situation. As she killed the comm link, she kicked open her footlocker and started grabbing her gear. Two tightly rolled bundles of translucent material came out first.

One for me and one for Kathy. She's gonna hate me for this.

She shook out her bundle and quickly put it on over her beegees. The material was a bit stiff, but what did you expect from nanospheroidal body armor? It was a far cry from her mechsuit, and far better than nothing.

I can't believe I'm putting this on,
she thought.
Well, you got a better idea?

The material was smooth to the touch and looked like a glorified rain slick. But it could stop a hypervelocity dart, or at least significantly slow one down. It could blunt light pulser fire in a pinch, too.

The technology behind NBA was already hundreds of years old and “dime-store” quality by current RAW-MC standards.
It was probably nickel-store class by the time the RAW was founded,
Promise thought.
Funny how the saying has far outlived the coin it was named for.
She supposed the description accurately described the truth of it. The armor was, well, cheaper than dirt. In a pinch it might just save her life and that's why Promise always kept a couple of sets on hand. It was a by-product of the twenty-first century's quest to cure Alzheimer's; made bulletproof ceramics obsolete nearly overnight. Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University had stumbled upon a beta-amyloid protein that made up the plaques found in the brains of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The plaques were organic and unbelievably hard. So hard, in fact, that all sorts of interesting applications soon presented themselves. A small Israeli armament manufacturer took notice and developed a building block of beta-amyloid-A. Initial tests showed it to be substantially stronger than two standard defense materials of the day: stainless steel and Kevlar. The result was the nanosphere, which gave rise to better armor and better bulletproof glass, lightweight munitions, riot shields, unbelievably robust reading glasses (before the Terran Federation made corrective surgery a universal right in the twenty-fourth century), and improved prosthetics. Even modern-day armorplaste, the material used in shuttle and LAC cockpits and the visors of military-grade mechsuits, derived from the incredibly small, incredibly strong self-organizing nanosphere.

Promise sealed her see-through slick armor and wrapped the utility belt around her waist, and then hung a thigh holster on each side, and cinched the straps tight. Two auto pistols disappeared, and then a handful of extra magazines went into the pouches on her belt. She pulled on an ablative vest for added protection. Near the bottom of the locker was her mother's GLOCK. Promise picked it up with care.

“What are you going to do with that?” Kathy said as she rushed into the brow of the barracks. The entrance had an exterior and interior door. Kathy came in so fast the inner door opened before the brow could scrub the pocket of air it had momentarily trapped. Suddenly the barracks smelled like burnt toast. “This isn't Montana, ma'am. That is not a real wep.”

Promise shrugged. “It's my good-luck charm.” She pushed it into the flap of her belt against her right kidney and gave Kathy a that-settles-that look.

“Uh-huh. Just don't pull it. You'll just get yourself killed. Or me.” Kathy scraped the bottoms of her boots on the entrance rug, leaving two white streaks on the mat. She pulled out a ration bar and gnawed off a hunk as she advanced toward her locker.

“Let me guess. You were at the chow hall.”

“First order of survival,” Kathy replied after swallowing. “Why'd you interrupt me? I had a hot plate and a corner table calling my name. Real eggs and fresh bread. And fresh berries, ma'am.
Berries.
Now all I've got is this.”

“Too bad. Get your gear. Here, I'm afraid you're going to need this.” Promise tossed a roll of slick armor over her shoulder. “We leave in—” She looked down at the chrono on her wrist. “—ten mikes and we need to make a stop first.”

Promise swung by the weapons rack and grabbed a pulse rifle, slung it over her back, and removed a rebreather from the set of hooks above it.

“Coming?”

Kathy took in Promise's appearance. Her eyes darted from the vest to the thigh holsters and the pulse rifle, and then she looked down at the roll of armor in her hand. “We're leaving our mechsuits behind, aren't we? You actually buy this crap?”

“Yes.” Promise nodded as she donned her rebreather. “And, no, at least not all of it. Hurry up. Chrono's ticking and I don't want to make the colonel any angrier than he already is.”

“I'll have to leave my baby behind,” Kathy complained. She puckered her lips and dug in her heels, and looked ready to disobey orders.

“You'll survive.”

“You've got that right. One mike, please.” Kathy put her NBA on under protest, kicked open the locker, and gutted up. One by one she laid five weapons on the bench beside the locker. Two pulse pistols and two conventional semi-autos, and a backup for her ankle holster. She pulled out her vest and put it on, and holstered the e-weps in cross-draw positions on the vest. The c-weps slid into her thigh holsters. Promise counted five pistols, and Kathy wasn't done. She slammed the lid on the locker and grabbed a grenade launcher from the door. The sling of rounds went over her head and arm and across her chest.

“What?” Kathy said. “You said to leave my armor for this. That doesn't mean I can't be armed.”

Promise tossed Kathy a rebreather. “The colonel is going to pitch a fit.”

The outer door parted and Promise and Kathy jogged outside into the snowy ash.

 

Fifty-four

MAY 25
TH
, 92 A.E., STANDARD CALENDAR, 1912 HOURS

THE KORAZIM SYSTEM, PLANET SHEOL

COMBAT OUTPOST DANNY TRUE

“Lieutenant, what are we
doing in here?”

Kathy and Promise were standing in the middle of a temporary warehouse. The walls were honeycombed like their transient barracks and the sound of machinery and the smell of industrial chemicals filled the air.

“Welcome to Charlie Battalion's short-term morgue.”

“You sound chipper,” Kathy said. “Why?”

“Few sights rival a row of pristine battle armor. Take a look at that.” Promise pointed at the back wall, inhaled deeply, and sighed.

“Right. All I see are a bunch of virgin mechsuits.”

“Exactly.”

Two platoons' worth of undamaged, unclaimed suits of armor stood at attention against the rear wall. They were the battalion's reserves, and Promise drank them in like a cup of gourmet caf gutted up right.

Kathy wrinkled her nose. “Smells like a motor pool to me. Oh, wait, it is a motor pool and we're deploying without our armor. Life's not fair.”

If Promise had had thirty mikes she could have uploaded Mr. Bond to the onboard computer and calibrated a spare suit to her biometrics. There simply wasn't time, and she was sure the mechsuit would have been a deal-breaker with the colonel.
Good thing I'm going into battle without my armor, or I wouldn't be going at all.
Promise laughed out loud, and quickly covered her mouth. Kathy looked at her with growing alarm. Promise waved her concern away. “I'm just thinking how weird it is be deploying in skin. When's the last time we did that?”

“Um, never,” Kathy said. “We're mechanized Marines.”

Promise took a moment more to covet the armor. The wall of articulated plating glinted in the overhead light. From head to toe, she saw beautifully untarnished, undamaged virgin peristeel.

“Chrono's ticking,” Kathy said. Her tongue started clicking like an antique wall clock. “We need to go. Colonel Halvorsen is waiting and that is not a good thing.
Capisce?
”

“Have patience, Kathy. Indulge me.”

The sight of all that throw weight brought Promise's blood to a simmer, and few things could do that. There'd been a tall Montanan who'd come close and failed, only because Promise had run back to the Corps instead of into his arms. Mr. Jean-Wesley Partaine had been a man of steel with a heart of clay, and she'd let him go because her life was the Corps and his was Montana. At the moment, virgin armor was as good as it got.

“Personally, I've always found our armor a bit boring,” Kathy said with a yawn. “It's sexy to drive, plain-jane to look at.” Kathy picked up a boot and brushed the ash off the toe.

“Not plain. Untarnished. It's clean like armor should be.”

“It's more fun when it's dirty.”

After bashing heads,
Promise thought. “Point taken.”

Proper mechanized Marines didn't mark up their armor, or paint it loud colors, or stencil their significant other's name on the metaled butt cheek. In the history of the RAW-MC, no self-respecting toon or company or battalion of Republican Marines had deployed with war paint. If you modified anything it was the weapons mix, or the interior cushioning at the shoulders and hips, more plating here in trade for compartments, or an extra compartment there instead of armor, and you could always change your AI's voice to sound like your grandpappy or your daughter or a semi-autonomous witless mech. War paint was for the weekend warriors in the planetary militias, and delta-sierra mercenaries. Bright colors made for bright targets and you didn't paint shoot-me-heres on the hull of your ride home.

“Come on,” Promise said reluctantly, walking through the semipermeable deflector shield meant to keep the ash out of the next room.

Victor Company's suits were in bay three, just through the first opening of the main entrance. Promise and Kathy found their armor strung up in the air. Their mechboots were about at face level and tendrils snaked from the chest and arms, in and out of their cracked armor. Teams of servomechs were busy scraping and washing Sheol's atmosphere out of every armored plate.

“That's depressing,” Kathy said as she gazed up at her suit. It was fouled all over. Promise spotted three holes in the upper torso of Kathy's suit and an ugly gash on the left shank where a missile had torn deep enough to expose the suit's internal structure. Had she not sealed the leg with smartmetal Kathy probably would have lost it.

“I can see her bones. My poor baby.” Kathy had tears in her eyes when she turned to look at Promise. “So, mind filling me in on what we're doing?” Kathy glanced at the chrono on her wrist. “We're about out of time.”