Mechanical (5 page)

            "At ease, Lieutenant. How do you feel?"

            Tom lowered his right hand and regarded the general.
How did he feel?

            "I feel … I feel great, Sir."

            The general said nothing, just looked at Tom's Serpent with narrowed eyes.

            "How did he make the transfer?"

           
What transfer?
thought Tom.

            "All indicators are green, General. He's fully operational and ready to begin training," the lab-coat person said, exchanging a look with the man holding the laptop still connected to the computer embedded into the back of the Serpent's left arm.

            "Are you ready to take the fight to the enemy, Lieutenant? Ready to fight for your sister?"

            "I'm ready, Sir. The Serpent's a hell of a weapon, Sir," Tom said. He didn't fail to notice that the general exchanged another look with the lab-coat person who glanced at the laptop guy who stood behind Tom's Serpent.

            "Lieutenant Riley, if you please," said the man with the laptop. Tom lowered his arm and the man disconnected the cable and returned the Serpent's armor plate that covered and protected the arm computer.

            "Soldier, we have less than three days to train you before you go out. In that time, we'll go though basic Serpent training, comprehensive target intelligence assessment and weapons practice. Feel up to it?" The general had a fierce look in his eyes, and his face appeared a bit more animated than Tom had ever seen before.

            "Sir! Yes Sir!"

            "We commence in fifteen minutes. You are now piloting one of the most expensive weapons that the United States military forces possess. Lieutenant, do not disappoint me," the general said, a dark look entering his eyes, and his face hardening into a mask again.

            The general left the hall.

Day Two, Fort Belvoir, Virginia

They had taught Tom how to fold down his legs and arms, and now he moved awkwardly in the corridors of the hangar, a butterfly waiting for the chance to unfurl its wings and fly but still forced, for the time being, to crawl on the earth.

            He was still being escorted by troops in full combat gear toting anti-tank missiles who moved alongside the tech types, but Tom barely noticed them. A heady feeling of power flooded him. He felt strong, in control, able to do anything. Everything around him seemed to be made of cardboard or paper. He could bend metal, punch through walls, jump incredibly high. In fact, Tom had to struggle just to keep sedately walking onwards.

            Once, they stopped before a security door, and Tom reached out with one hand towards a hole that had been made in the plaster wall. Then, he extended one black finger to its full ten-inch length and touched the hole. The dimensions fit perfectly. A Serpent had made that hole. Apparently, he wasn't the only Serpent pilot to feel all that power surging inside.

            "Lieutenant Riley!"

            They had entered another large hall, and Tom looked inside in amazement. There were already two Serpents there, extended to their full height. One moved towards Riley enthusiastically.

            "Sergeant Jebadiah?"

            "Yes, Sir. How do you like the Serpent, Sir?"

            "It's fantastic," answered Tom slowly. It was quite incredible seeing a Serpent moving from inside another Serpent using its unparalleled quality vision. Even just walking across the floor, Sergeant Jebadiah's Serpent moved with a smooth, powerful motion that resembled nothing Tom had ever seen before. A panther's movements seemed paltry in comparison.

Tom paused to watch Jebadiah's Serpent's motion. He saw power, sheer power. Tom had never seen anything that gave the impression it held so much compressed power, just waiting for the chance to rip away and explode into action.

"And it is a good thing too, Sir. Let me tell you, I really hoped we’d get some good chow in this here base, but they just stuffed me in the machine. It’s a great machine Sir, but they should have fed us first, know what I mean, Sir?" Sergeant Jebadiah asked.

Tom looked at the third Serpent in the hall. Ramirez's Serpent just moved in small circles.
A lion inside a cage,
Tom couldn't help thinking.

"Lieutenant Ramirez, what do you think of your new personal battle tank?" Tom asked.

Ramirez said nothing. He just kept moving and opening and closing his hands.
On his Serpent, they really looked like claws,
Tom thought.

"I've heard he wouldn't obey the mechanics' orders. They had to restrain him, Sir," Sergeant Jebadiah said.

"How?" Tom said, recalling how powerful he felt in comparison to the puny humans in the hall he had woken up in.

"Don't know that, Sir. Probably through one of them computers," the sergeant said.

A side door in the hall opened, and Tom turned to see his least favorite person, the lab-coat man, enter the hall and move to the front of the room to face the three Serpents.
A child standing before a grownup. He is like a tiny lamb cringing before three giant, lithe tigers. Like a morsel of flesh confronting three huge black killing machines.
Tom shook his triangular and horned viper-like head, trying to clear his mind of these thoughts.

My head is not even inside the Serpent's head,
he thought bemusedly.

"Very well, gentlemen. You have less than seventy-two hours before your mission begins. This gives us much less time than needed to instruct you in the use of your Serpents. However, since this is all we have, I suggest we put to good use whatever little time we do have. You'll be going through three training exercises. To survive the last one, you'll need all the help you can get."

Tom and Sergeant Jebadiah turned to the man and listened. Tom sighed inwardly. He always hated lessons, and he didn't find this one any easier to bear. Sergeant Jebadiah had folded down so the man wouldn't have to crane his head up to the ten-foot-high machines. Tom hesitated before following the sergeant's example. What did the man mean by surviving the third exercise?

The man explained about the nerve connections and electrode-sensor mechanism, which was the system that enabled them to control the Serpents with the same ease they controlled their bodies. Then he went on to explain how their control extended beyond simple motion and motor direction. They could also feel, to some extent, whatever the Serpent felt.

Apparently, their personal battle tank had touch sensors all over its body, especially concentrated over the surface of the hands and fingertips. These allowed the pilot to feel whatever the Serpent felt. This tactile capability wasn't quite like the sensitivity they had in their own bodies, but it was fairly good and had several advantages.

Tom tried it out, moving one of the long fingers of his right hand over the surface of the armor of his left arm. He did have feeling in his finger, it just wasn't like the feeling he had in his own body. He could feel the smooth skin of the armor, its cool exterior. He realized he could indeed feel the temperature of the arm, which was just slightly colder than the air around him. Concentrating, he felt another thing, the gentle tapping of the finger on the armor.

The man was right. The Serpent had good tactile sensitivity; it was just not like the one he had in his body.

Tom returned his attention to the man and sighed inwardly again. They said they had a time constraint, but the man talked and talked. Probably he liked hearing his own voice, Tom thought, almost as much as he liked his oily ponytail.

The lab-coat man was now explaining about their power storage capabilities. He said the Serpents weren't running on gasoline and stopped to laugh, though no one joined in. The Serpents' power storage was something called a supercharged lithium-ion power cell. It could provide power for more than two weeks of continuous operation, and they were able to charge it from a wall outlet, though a special three-phase power outlet would provide speedier charging.

They had to be careful of the power cell because it was quite volatile. Although it was located next to their bodies inside the Serpent's torso, inside the most protected compartment, any hit that penetrated the torso and ruptured the power cell would create quite a spectacular fireball.

The lab-coat man's laughter died suddenly and he recoiled. Tom turned to see that Lieutenant Ramirez had stopped circling and now stood stock still, his viper like head turned to the lab-coat man. Even though the Serpent's faceplate was completely blank, Tom thought he felt a chill going up his own spine when he looked at Lieutenant Ramirez's Serpent.

"What happens when the power runs out?" Lieutenant Ramirez's Serpent had a pleasant synthesized voice, just like all the Serpents, but he spoke in such a lethal whisper that the lab-coat person become almost as white as his lab coat.

"If the Serpent loses power, your bodies will probably still survive for a few hours more but … I don't know. Don't lose power, okay?"

There was a moment of silence, and then Lieutenant Ramirez resumed his circling, moving his gaze away from the lab-coat man who took a moment to breathe in deeply before he went on.

Now Tom started getting a little dizzy. The lab-coat man talked incessantly, filling the air with a lot of information about their Serpents, starting from the passive visual concealment, extending to the infrared band, then on to the protection afforded by the Serpent's armor being dependent on the angle of penetration of incoming bullets, and then to the impact-resistive properties of the composite polymer material their armor was made of.

Tom's attention wandered to the computer display on his left arm. He peeled back the armor plate and the display flickered to life. Idly, he touched the Communications icon and  a new display that showed three status icons appeared: short range, medium range and command networks. Tom also found that he could direct the computer's display to overlap his field of vision, either partially or completely. It was really cool technology. They had a built-in head-up display.

The lab-coat man stopped talking, and Tom looked up hurriedly and guiltily, but the man just stared at Lieutenant's Ramirez's Serpent, who was now opening and closing its right hand. The ten-inch-long fingers opened and closed like switchblade knives.

Just how did they select the volunteers for this project?
Tom wondered.

"Your sensors…," the lab-coat man continued a little shakily, and Tom did not blame him. Among the three ten-foot-high, sleek humanoid personal battle tanks, Ramirez's Serpent looked decidedly demonic. "Your sensors," the lab-coat man repeated himself, "are the best our current technology could produce. You have visual range sensors, including zoom and autofocus functions. You have night-vision capability and infrared surveillance capability. You can record still images and high resolution video for later analysis. You can—"

The lab-coat man stopped talking yet again. Tom sighed out loud and turned to Ramirez. Lieutenant Ramirez's Serpent was near the wall, moving his hand slowly, creating five deep gouges in the wall, his fingers cutting into the plaster with ease.

Ramirez's second hand was slowly clenching and unfolding, looking for something else to gouge.

"You can… . There's also a radio scanning ability integrated into your visual sensors. Your system can pinpoint most ranges of radio frequency radiation. You can track all radio transmissions sources: find out their power and their locations fairly rapidly without—"

Ramirez's Serpent surged in the man's directions, claws raised, head lowered, body poised to strike.

The lab-coat man shrieked and ran out the hall.

"Are you crazy? What's wrong with you? Why can't you just listen to the explanations?"

"I don't like him," Ramirez said without looking at Tom. He straightened up and started circling the room yet again.

"You understand we need the information to succeed in the mission, don’t you? Do you realize how little time we have?" Tom asked.

Ramirez said nothing.

"Attention, please!" Jebadiah shouted.

All three Serpents stood at attention. Tom had an instant to consider how strange it was for three black giant humanoid machines to salute. He also glanced at Ramirez, whose Serpent was standing in text-book accurate attention pose.
Interesting, isn't it. Above all else, Ramirez is a true soldier.
Another Serpent entered the room through a large door at the back of the hall and marched inside.

Captain Emerson's Serpent unfolded from his folded state and rose to stand in front of them.

"We're moving out. The first exercise starts in twenty minutes. Learn everything you can. You better hope it will help you in the third and final exercise."

Looking at Captain Emerson's Serpent through his own  visual sensors, Tom saw things he hadn't seen before. The tough black armor was gouged and pitted.
Bullet holes and explosion fire,
Tom thought. Looking closer, nothing had actually penetrated the armor nor even come close to that, but still, the damage showed.

We're not invulnerable,
Tom thought.

This was the first thing to put a damper on Tom's elation since he had woken up inside the Serpent two-and-a-half hours ago.