The armor positioning arm slid out and encircled my waist, snugging me into the torso segment. The armor sections began snapping over my body, interlocking, shrinking, and expanding to my exact measurements, repositioning against muscles and joints, expanding and contracting to fit me. Snugging tight. I fought the desire to bolt as the helmet and face piece locked over me.
Claustrophobia and memories from my own piece of hell stabbed into me like knives. The respiratory tube shoved between my lips, into my mouth, and against my cheek with a puff of stale air. I exhaled that first puff, inhaled slowly on the second. The armored boots snapped shut midcalf.
I stretched out my fingers, knowing the worst was still to come, and forced myself to hold utterly still. I breathed. Again. Again. The glove sectionals encasing my fingers slid and shifted to the proper lengths.
“Prepare for peripheral nerve engagement, left hand,” the speaker said. I gasped and swore as minuscule needles, thinner and finer than acupuncture needles, pierced my palms, along the sides of my fingers, and into my fingertips. “Bloody damn,” I spat. The pain was like having my hand set on fire. “Prepare for peripheral nerve engagement, right hand.” It too engaged. Sharp, burning, cutting, and then intensely icy as the chemicals coating the needles in my hands began to take the pain away. The worst was over.
I opened my eyes, looking out into the night through the suit’s visual screen and sensors—some low-light sensors that let me see clear as day, some infrared, and some high-tech, designed to break through known heat and cold shielding. Fancy electronics, way better than my old suit.
“Do you wish catheter and bowel removal collection to be initiated at this time?”
“No. God no.” Once, long ago, the first time I tried on armor, I had made the mistake of saying yes. Never again. I’d pee in the suit and let it slosh in my boots first.
“Liquid oxygen breathing supply required?” the speaker asked.
I said into the tiny speaker inside the faceplate, “No. Current Earth atmosphere, night desert conditions, West Virginia.”
“Complying,” the suit said. “Except for critical chest and head areas, this suit is a soft suit until hard suits are required. Should environmental factors or physical attack necessitate suit hardening, a tone will sound.” I heard a soft tone. “This indicates that Dragon Scale hardening is imminent. If wearer wishes to negate suit hardening, wearer must say either, ‘Postpone,’ or ‘Reject.’ Otherwise, Dragon Scales will convert. This will take approximately one second, during which the suit will not move.”
“Lack of movement while under attack?” I asked.
“Correct. All suit-monitoring sensors are on the upper left screen. This suit should be charged to full capacity before using. The suit is currently at forty-six percent power. This provides approximately twenty-two hours of normal, non-combat usage. Full combat usage will drain this suit’s current power levels to zero in less than seven hours.
“All others of your unit may be located and followed via screen number two at the lower left. Other sensors and screens may be positioned by use of the buttons on the left palm.”
I stepped down the small rise to the pavement, my combat boots silent and comfortable as jogging shoes. The night was completely alive; I could see as well as in daylight, though the color palate was gray, green, and glittering silver. And I could see what was behind me. There were no blind spots. I held out my arms, and the scales covering my arms and legs interlocked and shifted with every movement. This suit wasbloody brilliant!
Cupcake was a yellow glow to my left in the unit-member screen. Jagger was blue. Amos was pink and shaped like a big teddy bear, which I did not tell him. We locked up the armor container and geared up from another container of goodies, choosing weapons for the fight with the gang, and tools to free the Simba. We used the anti-recoil feature in reverse, to toss heavy equipment around and lock everything up. It was going to be a very long, tiring night. But I did so love new toys.
???
We left the parking area secure, under the control of two of Jagger’s people—Outlaws by their garb, totally loyal to him by their attitude. OMW riders in Hell’s Angels’ territory was a recipe for disaster. We needed to get out of here fast, before Marconi got wind of Jagger’s people.
Cupcake drove the rig, headlights bouncing in the darkness, Jagger and Amos in the back (which was now empty except for its passengers, a huge pump, and an Antigravity Grabber). I sat shotgun, and the cats took over the dash, tails twitching with excitement.
We picked up the earth movers, which was a lot easier than I expected thanks to my new AG Grabber. The rig was carrying far more than its approved weight capacity, but we crossed the river and turned upstream at a steady six kilometers an hour. I could walk faster than that, but with the weight and the condition of the roads, I couldn’t complain.
Impatient, I tapped my comms. “You there?”
“Copy,” Mateo said. His voice changed slightly, sounding almost gentle, a tone I rarely heard. “You’ve done amazingly well.”
A glow rushed through me. Praise had come seldom in my life. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay after Marty?”
The question hit me in the gut like an icy sucker punch, and the glow vanished. I wasn’t thinking about Marty, neither his betrayal nor his death. “No. But I’ll deal with it when I get home.”
“Copy that.” He went silent. Mateo understood nightmares.
To keep from seeing the look in Marty’s eyes as he died, I tapped comms to Jagger. “You get confirmation from Marconi that we can take out the gang operating in his region?”
“His exact words were, ‘You do this for my city, and I will open peace and territory negotiations with McQuestion.’ And he’s keeping the Law occupied elsewhere tonight.”
“He’s not going to start a riot, is he?”
“We agreed that collateral damage was foolish. Otherwise he’s in full control.”
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
