Skies Over Tomorrow: Constellation (2 page)

“The neural output from your cerebral cortex is exceeding normal parameters,” the voice said over the commotion coming from the speakers. “It would seem your concern for Lieutenant Carlston is making you distraught.”

“Me concerned about him? Distraught? Whatever.”

“You're not concentrating on the mission at hand.”

“Check your directive program. You're starting to sound bossy.”

“I am within limits of my directives.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I function as link between you and the Hard Shell—”

“That's right,” said Simone, “and that's all I need you to do. My feelings are not your priority.”

“Your concern for Lieutenant Carlston is affecting your concentration. I must remind you that he is irrelevant to the mission.”

“Thank you, Attila. I know that.”

Attila, the name Simone had given her Hard Shell's biocomputer, received a surcharge of bioelectricity from her limbic system, its main power source with which it had a direct connection. A hollow fiberoptic cord, filled with synaptic fluid, plugged into the back of Simone's head and ran from the jungle of her black hair. It penetrated the plush, liquid-filled, web woven lining of the Shell, and continued through the titanium plating of the suit into the CPU compartment that was situated near the seventh vertebrae of her neck.

“Remain focused on the mission.”

“Attila.”

“Lieutenant Carlston's predicament is a distraction. The slightest doubt or hesitation may lead you to a similar circumstance.”

“It's been eight days,” said Simone.

“Irrelevant.”

How could she argue with a computer? No matter how intelligent they become, they will never understand. She lowered her head as Attila terminated the distress call and said, “A record of Lieutenant Carlston's situation shall be logged in twenty-minute intervals, for your review after this mission.”

“What for? His situation is irrelevant, remember?”

Attila did not respond.

“What time is it?”

“It is now 16:51.”

“And the waiting continues.”

The late afternoon of the clear blue sky and the mild breeze flowing through the treetops were soothing. Boredom was quick to resettle and dig into Simone's mind, looking to unearth the memories of her brother. She directed her thoughts to the summer of 2006 and her days in boot camp, remembering Master Drill Sergeant Knuckles. His shouting. She remembered him well. His humiliating her and yelling so much and so loud broke her down into tears the second week of camp, after which he built her up to be strong and unyielding. Then there was the sense of camaraderie felt with Dugmyer, Geoffrey, and Washington, knowing that their lives were in her hands as hers was in theirs. She had made a promise not to let them down if they were ever in firefight—a vow of honor and loyalty that meant nothing since she left them and became an Army Predator.

For all the reasons she had for joining the Army, most of all she wanted to be a part of a unit—a team. It never occurred to her that she would be part of a squad in which the individuals operated alone. She believed she would participate in a mission that would, with teamwork, tip a war's outcome in America's favor. Just the opposite had happen. In joining the Army's new Special Forces, she operated in solitude like a Siberian tiger, and with a Hard Shell, she was just as stealthy, powerful, and effective as the big cat had once been—before its extinction.

It was 1997 when the United States Army initiated its radical and latest Special Forces Program. It was said that a four-star general set out to revolutionize the Army after being so inspired by the movies from which he entitled the imagined curriculum. He literally wanted a company of invisible soldiers.

Simone came to like the idea of a highly trained soldier just sitting unseen in a hot zone and neutralizing the enemy—one at a time if need be. Snipers did this and very well, but the Pentagon wanted a soldier to remain in operation for days on end to annoy, frustrate, petrify, or in the quaint and eloquent words of Master Drill Sergeant Knuckles, to “fuck with the enemy.”

The achievement of this goal came about with the development of the Pill. With its approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the Army tested the drug and its new program during peacetime training, and even during a number of covert joint-operations with the CIA, Navy and Marines. They were pleased with the results. Nonetheless, there was a flaw. A number of classified missions failed with the loss of soldiers. The problem was not with the soldier, or the drug, but with the practice of concealment. The current methods that made a soldier “invisible” failed to meet the Army's expectations. If the Predator program were to be a success, then it needed a technology that would make a soldier virtually unseen. The Army spent billions of dollars issuing bids, sponsoring research, and subsidizing institutes, just to possess their dream of invisibility. Unbeknownst to the Army, part of their dream came about with Japan's technological advancements for NASA's International Colonization of Mars project.

In 2004, Japan's Honda Corporation introduced the Powered Insecta Suit to replace dated spacesuits. Though it could not make a soldier invisible, the Army realized the powersuit was what it was looking for, and as far as it was concerned, could make it into what it envisioned. Thus the Army sought to develop armed applications of the powersuit for its Predator program. Initially, the United States purchased three at ten billion dollars each. They transported the powersuits to Area 51, where researchers dissected them to tinker with and tool over. What was discovered surprised many in the military's upper echelon, including the president.

Japan manufactured biomechanisms remnant of armor worn by knights during medieval times; however, the streamlined appearance of the twenty-first century protection reflected the sleek design of exoskeletons from the insect kingdom. At some areas, like the thorax, the shell's maximum thickness of ten centimeters—in which six and a quarter centimeters consisted of titanium plating and underlining—proved to be equally as durable as the reactive armor of a M1A1 Abram. The light material composite of the armor, in addition to the biological properties it exhibited, stunned the researchers.

The accomplishment of the powersuits' harden exterior resulted from the combined implementation of nanotechnology and bioengineering. Studies discovered that having been created to assimilate from DNA material properties of the rhinoceros beetle, nanomites were encoded to replicate the hard, resilient nature of the species' exoskeleton. Interestingly enough, a microscopic cross-section of a suit's covering revealed it to be capable of regeneration due to the nanomites' incorporation of the autotomy genome, adapted from the reptilian family of Lacertilia. With supplementary programming, the nanomites functioned more like human skin cells and formed layers that could be recognized as the epidermis, dermis, and subcutaneous layer. There was very little doubt that part of the success of the powersuits was the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of nanomites that made up their casing. It became apparent the powersuits were to be more than just spacesuits, or protective armor.

The powersuits alone looked animated; however, they were perceived to be awkward and overall heavy to don and operate. This seeming notion was later refuted after a suit's Lilliputian hydraulic system was found to assist it in amplifying the grace of the human body in motion. The means by which a suit's biocomputer interfaced with a pilot made the emulation of body motion possible. In operating a powersuit, a special type of electrode, placed on the shaved head of a pilot, received motor impulses from the cerebellum of the pilot's brain and transferred the brainwaves to the biocomputer. In nanoseconds, the bioelectrical signals were translated into streams of photonic data that pulsed across the suit's micro fiberoptic network, to the tiny hydraulics that were its muscles. Test pilots remarked how easily and weightless the powersuits moved with them, mimicking their every action.

The entire biocomputer network imitated the nervous system of the human body. The speed with which the biocomputer itself executed also mimed the human brain and performed tasks that far exceeded the researchers' expectations. Its artificial intelligence and quantum computing gave it the ability to preside over the multitude of auxiliary systems of a powersuit, highlighting its importance as the liaison between man and machine.

The biocomputer's function as intermediary was best seen with its supervision of a powersuit's sensorium network. Between the titanium plating and the shell's subcutaneous layer was a thin stratum composed of sensory nanomites. These units amalgamated with the primary nanomites of the armor, up to the epidermis, and functioned only to relay registered sensations to the biocomputer, which then interpreted the data and conveyed it to the pilot's brain. This was how Simone felt changes in the environment. She felt hot and sticky if the humidity level was high, or cold and wet if she was up to her waist in a river. Conclusively, the biocomputer tied a pilot into a symbiotic relationship of sorts with a powersuit. With artificial intelligence, the armor had reasonable logic. With a pilot, it had a soul and was very much alive.

Just as Simone gave her Hard Shell a life force, it in turn gave her a mechanical type of extrasensory perception. With twelve optical sensors, positioned like spider eyes on the head section and included infrared and X-ray vision, her sight was comparable to spy satellites. The computer's ability to analyze molecules in the air allowed her to smell the underarm musk of a person three kilometers away. She was able to detect and identify subtle oscillations, like the heartbeat of an enemy in hiding. The suit's peculiar catlike feet gave her the capacity to feel ground vibrations, detect land mines, and walk—even run—in a manner that was deafly quiet. The padded soles of the feet smothered and muffled the sound of snapping twigs and shuffling of grass or leaves.

The design and mechanics of the powersuits were achievements many were sure made the Japanese proud. Notwithstanding, the U.S. Army built upon their accomplishments and improved the cerebral interface between the pilot and the powersuit, by having the biocomputer receive neural input straight from the brain. It was an operation that Simone did not like. The headaches were intolerable the first couple of months after the augmentation to her cerebral cortex and the underlying Paleomammalian complex. This enhanced joining of man and machine was, however, the minor of two important modifications to the powersuit.

The major change came shortly after the war started with China, bringing the Army's dream of eighteen years into fruition. 2015 was the year invisibility became a reality.

The Micro Refraction System was the brainchild of an aspiring scientist, majoring in nano-optical technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and her boyfriend, a textile designer. It was a classic union of art and science. Their invention allowed nanomites to be “stitched” on a woven mesh of fine fiberoptic threads. The end result was a plastic wrap-like material with the strength of leather. It was patented as opticloth.

Initially, a vast network of nanomites had been sewn on both sides of the material, in which the units on front mimed functions of the brain's optical lobe and units on the back acted the part of an eye's retinal layer. Using pixel-size photoreceptive panels, the retinal units collectively worked to capture and filter images as shaped by light into data that flowed to the optical units. Upon receiving the data, the optical units then reassembled the visual information and, like the retinal units, collectively projected the reproduced image. The image as created by the optical units was so refined that when laid in the palm of a hand, the only distortions were in the areas where the opticloth curved and draped over the hand. Despite the warping, the material was invisible. Thus, the basis of invisibility was defined as the created illusion of seeing through a being or thing.

When the Army had obtained the rights to the opticloth, the specs for the optical and retinal nanomites were reengineered such that each unit type performed the other's role while maintaining the implementation of their original function. This alteration revolutionized the opticloth because it allowed the units to be stitched to one side of the fiberoptic mesh, which was important for the Army because if it were to be applicable in the Predator program, then the powersuits had to be invisible, and not the opticloth itself. Furthermore, the redesigning of the opticloth resolved an anticipated issue of applying it to a powersuit in which the solution presented itself when the changes were made to the material.

Primary and sensory units extracted from the suits were replicated and sewn to the rear of the opticloth since it was now vacant of the retinal units. When the opticloth was molded and conformed to a powersuit, the nanomites on the backside joined with those of the shell and created a seamless covering. This procedure also facilitated the problem of linking the opticloth to the biocomputer, which was programmed to supervise and operate the optical carapace at the pilot's discretion.

Upon command, the ocular nanomites opened a twofold refractor that linked with adjoining panes of neighboring units and, for a brief second, gave a powersuit a mirror-like shimmer before it slipped into the unseen. The new design of the units allowed for photoreceptors of the lower, retinal panes to be strong enough to receive imagery through the reproduced visual of the upper, optical panes. The biocomputers, which underwent additional programming that allowed them to process data received from each individual retinal unit and orchestrate that data among the optical units, produced a solid image of their environment across the powersuits, rendering each invisible no matter what angle they were looked upon. When the suits moved, there was no distortion or interruption in the flow of light data across the optical layer. Even with a suit's silhouette, where curves and edges that changed planes were suspect, there was no distortion.