“Power levels are low, Shining. Three seconds before the hatch is fully open.”
“I don’t like it.” But I followed instructions to the letter. I unplugged the IP and dropped inside the utter blackness. My body hung, seemingly weightless as I fell for over two meters. I landed, a hard jolt absorbed by the suit’s anti-recoil. “Bloody hell,” I grunted. Around me was nothing. Not a thing. It was that dark. My mind conjured skulls and Bug-aliens. My heart raced.Twenty seconds.I had twenty seconds. There was no glowing yellow ring.
I didn’t know which buttons to initiate on the glove, so I whispered “Flashlight, external” to the suit, and a beam came on, small and focused forward, from my chest. Directly into a wall of dead electronics. My left glove buzzed, a faint vibration, and I looked down to see indicator lights. The oxygen levels around me were acceptable, my heart rate was too fast, and I was below ground. Good to know. Beside the altimeter was a flashlight icon. I pressed the increase button and more beams came on. I turned in a circle. The hatch I had dropped into was the one for the warbot suit. It was huge.
“You okay?” Jagger asked, the faceplate and armor sensors allowing me to maintain contact with the others.
“No,” I griped, spotting the socket. I jammed the IP plug into it. A keyboard lit up. Too slow, too faint. I manually keyed Mateo’s code, saying, “Mateo, four, eight, one, six, alpha tango delta.” Beside it was the faint outline of a five-fingered human hand. I gripped my right glove in my teeth and ripped it off. The pain was out the roof as the needles released, but I placed my bare palm on the hand plate.
As I did, the hatch closed. What now? Had Mateo lied to me about me having a safety net of twenty seconds? Had he stuck me here? Why?
A shudder ran across my body and tripped my racing heart. “Bloodyhellbloodyhellbloodyhell,” I chanted under my breath over and over. Seconds passed. I was still chanting when a faint vibration juddered up through the soles of my feet.
The Simba came alive, saying, “Suit Initiated Main Battle Armored Tank is active. Batteries are at redline five percent. This battle tank requires a minimum of twelve percent battery capacity to initiate sensors, and twenty-seven percent to be considered battle-worthy.”
“We’re out of power,” I said into my comms. I put my glove back on, whichhurt, and looked around for something wet to decontam the hand plate.
“I got this.” Vibrations from outside told me Jagger was doing something. I had no idea what. But he could hear me. The discoverers of Entangled Dark Neutrinos were my new bestest friends. Clanks and thuds reached me through the skin of the super-armored tank. A heavy thump sounded through the hatch.
“Simba requires basic WIMP power or three days of solar gain power to extricate from current location,” the tank said, talking to someone. Not me.
“That sucks,” I murmured.And I’m stuck.But I didn’t say that. Yet.I found a cloth in a tight little pocket on my suit and added water from the suit’s water supply. I scrubbed the hand-plate clean of my sweat and nanobots.
“Okay. Got it. Shining, attempt to activate the airlock and get out of there,” Jagger said.
Thinking that nothing in life was ever that easy, I unlocked my face shield and slid it out of the way. It telescoped closed at the back of my neck. I was in love with this suit.
The Simba’s air was machine-sour and dank but bearable. I directed the suit lights above and grabbed a lever. Twisted it around. A brighter slit of darkness appeared around the edge of the hatch as it began to slowly open.Bloodything worked! I engaged the reverse-recoil feature of my armor and leaped from the floor. Toward the opening hatch.
I banged the back of my head on the hatch rim as I jumped. Passed the sandbags and flew into the air.
I landed beside the hatch in a four-limb crouch, the anti-recoil feature of this suit too good to be true. Behind me, the hatch began to close.
And then I felt the pain.Bad. I yanked off my glove again and reached a hand to the back of my head. Something wet met my fingers. I held them to the suit lights.
I was bleeding.
I had left my nanobots inside the closed hatch.
“Mateo?” I whispered. “We got problems.”
“Talk to your boyfriend somewhere else,” Jagger said. “I’m transferring power and I need this space.”
Mateo said, “Specify problems.”
“I said,move,” Jagger snarled.
I had kissed him. Right. Things were happening inside him. In the lights of the suit, I stepped on top of the sandbags and jumped to the shore, stepping over hardwires that came from somewhere ahead in the dark.
“I banged my head on the hatch. I left blood behind.”
Mateo cursed. It was fairly inventive for a cyborg with half a brain.
“Wash your head,” Mateo said, after a too-long pause. “Jagger, the tank was infested with PRC mech-nanos. Clean that wound with strong antiseptic,now, and seal up the bloody cloths until you can get them under an AG.”
Jagger landed beside me, picked me up, and raced back toward the clearing.
As Mateo’s words settled inside me, everything came clear. “You sorry, bloody son of a bitch,” I said. The Simba hadn’t been accidently buried. No. It had been infested with PRC nanobots and deliberately buried.
