Dark Dragons (15 page)

Tony had his own vibro-knife out, the blade just inches from
his face, with an awestruck gaze of both timidity and anticipation. 
“Wow,” he whispered.

Darren began to think of things he didn’t want to, things he
had been so cruelly thrust upon to face at the ripe age of eighteen.  But
kids always died in war.  Kids his age.  War had a cruel affinity for
young blood, Darren thought.  His Grandpa Seymour had disintegrated in a
Vietnamese rice paddy in 1967 at the age of twenty-two, his dad less than a
year old.

Darren put the knife back in its scabbard and looked inside
his helmet.  Tiny electrodes along the inside lining were nestled within
the folds of padding.  He rubbed one of them lightly, expecting an
electric shock for some reason.  He possessed the most advanced weapons
system ever to exist on Earth and felt god-like.  As he stroked the row of
cold electrodes, however, the feeling of something dark and sinister slid
through him like a constricting anaconda squeezing the life from a lamb. 
Thought-control, yes, but who had the control? 
Me or the suit?

“Enough stalling,” he said finally.  “Time to get the
show on the road.”

*

They had to remove every stitch of clothing to wear the gray
sub-suits, which meant stripping down to the bare ass in broad daylight——a feat
accomplished in record time.  The light gray suit worn under the armor
modules was about a half-inch thick, but it didn’t feel like foam or
rubber.  The sub-suit actually felt like flesh.  Creepy, Darren
thought.  Once they had the loose garment on, the little computer housed
in a thin box behind the neck sensed the body’s presence and quickly
constricted the suit into a tight-fitting undergarment that covered the entire
body from neck-to-toes, even going halfway up the butt crack.

“Whoa, hello!” Darren said. “That’s kinda kinky.”

“Hey, look,” Nate said, looking down at his crotch. “There’s
even a little access door for piss ‘n’ shit maneuvers.  Wonder if this
thing is machine washable?”

The sub-suit maintained a variable temperature from very
cool to very warm depending on the wearer’s preference and pulled sweat through
micro-evaporation patches throughout the entire membrane.  Charcoal lining
inside of the sub-suit absorbed body stink, too.  Farts and all.

The sub-suit’s primary operation was to serve as the
point-of-assembly for the individual armor modules.  The secondary
function provided medical analysis, physiological monitoring and first aid
administration controlled by the suit’s main computer located in the
helmet.  On the upper-right of the visor screen, Darren could monitor his
EKG and EEG rates, oxygen levels, respiratory counts, blood pressure,
adrenaline count——even a fancy toxicity monitor continuously tasting the blood
for foreign chemicals and dangerous microorganisms through several painless,
subcutaneous sites.

Pneumatically injected through these same sites, many first
aid medications were stored inside the upper back cuirass module: four pain
narcotics of various potencies, nine different beta blockers, epinephrine,
potassium iodide to protect from low level radiation, a large bladder filled
with an intravenous saline/glucose solution, and an oxygen-rich concoction used
to treat circulatory shock with a low-blood pressure vasopressor and a
physiological positive-feedback inhibitor.

Most impressive, a universal antidote of intelligent,
DNA-shredding nanobots castrated foreign bacteria and viruses, even cancer
cells instigated by radiation poisoning.  These same medical nanos could
also chemically attach their carbon-atom bodies to harmful agents like 
nerve gas or animal venom, rendering them inert by altering their atomic
structure.  Here, within their alien combat suits resided the World Cure
for every known scourge of mankind——malaria, HIV, cholera, E. coli, influenza,
tuberculosis, Ebola, smallpox, bubonic plague, and the worst of all,
cancer.  Darren could only shake his head.

The sub-suit was also filled with a thick nano-salve that
pumped through the suit’s pores and formed a synthetic skin to seal off
puncture wounds and isolate burns, as well as provide a local anesthetic and
antibiotic to the damaged area.  The sub-suit even had heart defibrillator
electrodes and chest-pumping, constriction rings in case of cardiac
arrest.  All of these fancy, medical tinker-tots were designed to perform
one purpose . . . keep the combatant alive, healthy and primed for battle.

Thinking of his sub-suit’s amazing properties, Darren felt
confident about his physiological integrity as he donned his knee-high
boots.  The next piece to go on were the thigh and pelvic modules, the
two-piece torso——the cuirass, a rather tricky piece to squeeze into——and the
four separate arm modules including the forearm sections with the hoist-cable
gun on the right and the armor-piercing gauss gun on the left.

The gloves with shrapnel-proof scales were the last section
the guys put on, and when they did, something startling occurred.  All of
the armor modules, sensing the adjacent sections, snapped together into
position with tiny servo motors, conjoining themselves mechanically and
electronically into a single, holistic unit.  An outlet inside the back
cuirass module plugged into the sub-suit’s computer port and linked the two
up.  Darren moved his limbs around, bent down to touch his toes, even did
a couple of jumping jacks, and discovered he still had a full free-range of
motion.  Joints like elbows and knees were never exposed, continuously
hidden under silently rotating and whirling scales of the armor modules with
almost liquid-like movement.

“Far out,” he said.

They stood quietly in the California sun, looking themselves
over for a while before Tony spoke up.  “We look like we just jumped out
of a video game.”

Nate and Jorge snickered, agreeing with Tony’s remark, but
for some reason it pissed Darren off. 
Teenage Star Warriors—Rated M
for Mature
or not, this was real.  He couldn’t deny that a real-life,
video game ambience had taken over, but it instilled no feelings of
disconcertion.  In fact, it made him nervous, and he hoped Tony, Nate and
Jorge warmed up to his line of reason soon.  Darren would rag the first
person who thought of a name for their group, Tony the likely romantic. 
The very notion of an epithet infuriated him.  He didn’t know why. 
Hubris, maybe.

When he put the helmet on, the main computer activated three
separate actions at once.  First, the flexible metal ring around the
bottom of the helmet constricted and interlocked with the matching ring around
the sub-suit’s neck.  When he was ready, the sub-suit would ziplock him
into a pressurized, zero-g spacesuit with a one-hour supply of oxygen stored
inside the front cuirass armor module; tiny servo motors in the helmet would
connect air lines in the neck, otherwise non-zero-g breathing was done through
a filtered breather mask.  Second, a small motorized appendage hidden
under the helmet plugged a cable from the helmet computer to the electronic
sub-systems in the back armor module, forming a link to the sub-suit and opening
communications with the gauss gun and the hoist-cable.  This same
appendage also connected a drinking nozzle in front of Darren’s mouth to a hose
leading down to a removable hydration bladder inside the back cuirass armor
module.  Finally, the suit’s first aid pack pumped a tiny 5cc dose of
medical nanos into his bloodstream to act as a small “rapid contingency force”
against a chemical or biological infection before a larger dosage could be
administered.  Wires in the blood, Darren thought.  He barely felt
the injection.

Five soft, red flashes twinkled in his eyes.  The
optical monitor above the visor had just calibrated his line-of-sight. 
Invisible micro-lasers tracked both eyeball movement and the ciliary muscles
controlling the shape of the eyes’ lenses.  When he plugged into his
Dragonstar, this would link his eyes into the weapon system’s optical-guidance
that controlled the servo motors in both laser and gauss cannons.  It also
generated a crosshair reticle on his visor and kept the computer data there in sharp
focus regardless of focal distance——eight inches in front, a hundred yards off,
or ten miles away.

The visor’s upper right corner was reserved for the
biomedical sensors, while the upper left displayed suit functions, damage
information and Chemical-Biological-Radiological-Nuclear analysis of the
surrounding environment.  On the bottom center, a box showed various
computer messages and other relevant information like weapons status and
remaining ammo counts.  A 3D compass rotated in the lower right corner as
Darren pivoted his head around.  Next to the compass were several
indicator arrows slaved to the Incoming Fire Sensor on the top of the helmet
which retraced projectile or laser fire back to a hidden enemy’s
position.  The center of the visor remained free of graphics, retained
only for night-vision/infrared viewing and weapons sights.

Darren grabbed the butt of his laser rifle secured to his
back and sent a thought-command to the magnetic clamp there.  The pulse
rifle vaulted out of its holster with a quick snap.  He put it to his
hips, aimed at the trees in front of him and accessed the weapon’s scope. 
A gun sight with red cross-hairs immediately appeared in the center of his
visor with range and IFF data.  The weapon would not fire if Darren accidently
aimed at one of his bros or another human during the heat of combat, clearing
the Fog of War quite a bit.

Although this feature can be deactivated quickly by code
override,
he reminded himself.

Darren thought-activated the rifle’s zoom-scope, and a tree
120 feet, 4 inches away suddenly shot up in clear focus.  He could
actually see ants wriggling around the creases in the bark.

He pulled the trigger, and a recoilless burst of invisible
laser-light struck the tree two feet above the ground.  The tree hung
momentarily in the air before it finally smashed down on the severed stump and
slowly keeled over into the ferns below.

  The others released their own rifles and sighted in
targets.  Jorge spotted a large rock the size of a volleyball and reduced
it to a cloud of flying stones.  Tony and Nate opened up on a stand of oak
in the distance.

“Let’s try the gauss guns!” Nate said like a kid on
Christmas morning.

Darren shook his head.  “No, let’s save our ammo, all
right?  Pulse rifles only.”

Tony drew the needle pistol from his thigh clamp and fired a
single shot at one of the trees.  The flachette embedded itself into the
wood and exploded, removing a huge chunk from the pulp with a loud bang and a
smokeless cloud of splinters.

“Tony, save the ammo.”

“You didn’t say anything about the pistol.”

“Our ammunition is limited.  Let’s try to be
conservative.”

Tony looked down at his feet.  Darren caught movement
there and looked too.  A garter snake was weaving between Tony’s boots
toward Nate.  But Tony just stood there.  At any other time upon the
sight of a snake, he would have been trying to climb onto the nearest person’s
shoulders and screaming for his mommy.

Tony looked around at everyone with a bemused
expression.  “Weird, huh?”

“You all right?” Darren asked.

Tony watched the snake disappear into the tall grass at the
edge of the woods.  “Yeah,” he said with a smile. “What the hell did that
thing really do to us?”

“I don’t know,” Darren replied.  “But I like it.”

Nate began to chuckle like a mad scientist.

“What’s so funny, home slice?” Tony asked with a
sneer.  “You just find out you longer have a phobia of fat-free Twinkies?”

“No, asshole,” Nate answered.  He closed his helmet
visor with a thought-command, and his suit let out a soft, machine-hum, and
Nate——disappeared.  “I forgot about this.”

“Yeah, that’s right!”  Tony shouted.  A split
second later, he too faded from the world of visibility.

Darren and Jorge looked at each other.  Jorge smiled .
. . and joined Nate and Tony in camouflaged wonderland.  Everyone’s pulse
rifles, needle pistols and vibro-knives, all separate components from the suit,
were also invisible.  Microscopic receptors on the suit absorbed photons
of visible light, infrared and ultraviolet and redirected them to their
opposite receptors.  Like the Dragonstars’ invisibility feature, the suit
cloak was used for quick defensive and evasive operations because it drained so
much juice from the suit generators.  Nighttime invisibility would be less
stressful on the suit.

Darren sealed his visor shut and sent a thought-command to
the invisibility cloak, and he too slid into the ether.  Because the
outside of the visor as well as the VIS/IR/UV camera on his helmet was now
invisible, he was literally blind.  Observation had to be done with
high-frequency sound through a 360-degree echolocation projector on the chest
cuirass.  This formed a 3D image of his surroundings on the inside of the
visor.  The world around him appeared in various, false-color shades of
blue——nearby objects bright blue, extreme distances deep navy, and the sky
pitch black.  Everything remained surprisingly detailed, although one
notable drawback was the inability to see through transparent objects like
helmet visors or render 2D forms like pictures or the images in a mirror. 
Or the pupils of someone’s eyes.

Is this what a bat or dolphin sees? Darren wondered. 
“Weird,” he said.

“We better switch off,” Tony said.  “The receptors are
bogging.”

He was right.  The power bars in the upper left corner
were slowly dropping.  In just a couple of minutes, their suit computers
would shut down the invisibility cloak, the gauss gun, the hoist-cable and
every sensor so that the reserve capacitors could kick in and recharge the
primary batteries.  Which would take about ten minutes.  Ten minutes
in combat without weapons and sensors——not good.