On Distant Shores (Exiles Triology Book 1) (23 page)

Everett whistled, slow and soft.  “I think I would rather face off with the wee beastie again!”  This was said in a very bad, mock Scottish accent.

Mike laughed, bitterness clinging to the sound.

“Yeah, Mitchem is in shock now, but I’m pretty sure that will wear off soon.”

Everett nodded, “Good luck with that.”

Mickey spoke next, “Boss, as soon as I’m done checking up on everybody, I want to check out the big critter that we snuffed.”  Mickey’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm.  Mike couldn’t blame him.  A new species that nobody had ever seen before would be enough to stimulate anybody’s interests.  Mickey looked like a big, dumb bruiser, but he wouldn’t be on the team if he was.  The man was scary smart when it came to medicine and chemical/biological weapons.

Mike clapped a hand on Mickey’s shoulder.  “Yeah man, as soon as we have everybody secure and scout up the elevator shaft, maybe you can figure out what the hell that thing is.”

“Thanks, boss man.”

Mike grunted, and turned around to go find out what was what.  He was more interested in making sure that nobody got eaten or killed. 

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“Gentlemen, ladies,” Mike looked around at the engineering team, “My team was almost eaten by a cross between a velociraptor and a stegosaurus.  There was a mild earthquake that moved the floor of this facility by about five to ten degrees.  Strange things have happened.  Welcome to the twilight zone.  A ground movement that is capable of tilting this building that much should have brought this entire damn underground facility down on our heads.  And yet, the only major thing that happened, is that the corridor that leads to the rest of Area 19, seems to have disappeared and been replaced by liquid rock.”

Mike stopped to let all this sink in, “Things are crazy around here, but my team and I are going to do everything we can to make sure that everybody gets out of this alive and safe.”

He turned to Bob, “Did you say there lasers and slug throwers for the mech armor?” he asked.

Bob nodded, “Yeah, but we have to go to the storage room.”

Mike pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders, “As long as we get them on and loaded before the next evil beast crawls through the door of the elevator shaft.”

That thought brought out some serious looks among the techs.  Luis, one of the electrical engineers, looked a little gray.

The engineering team led the way to storage.  They had to maneuver down the stairwell to the bottom floor.  They rummaged around until Crandall whistled.  The techs walked to his location and started pulling black pelican cases out and brought them to Mike, who took them over to the door.  Soon there was a pile of twelve cases.  There were ten cases that were the same exact size.  Then there were two cases that were slightly smaller.  Mike figured that the larger cases were the ones that held the armament for the mech armor.  He didn’t know what the smaller cases were.Mike moved to the stairwell, and grabbed the rope.  He tied the first case to the rope and then yelled up, “First case is ready.”

More techs were upstairs, and they started pulling the case up.  It was problematic to carry the case up the stairs, with the crazy angles involved, so this was the best way to get them to the fourth floor.  Soon enough, all twelve cases were on the fourth floor.  Mike, Bob, and the rest of the techs followed the cases up the stairwell.  By the time Mike and his group of techies arrived, all but three of the cases had been transferred out to the mech armor.

As the people brought the pelican cases, Joel Weitz opened up each one, checked to make sure there was no damage, and all parts were present.  Weitz was still a pain in the ass, but after the monster attack, he was cooperating.  Once he was satisfied with the components, he passed paired cases over to Crandall and his group, whotook each set of the pelican cases and put them next to each suit of mech armor.

John Smith, Luis Garcia and Tracy Sheffield started attaching the weapons to the mech armor and then Smith hooked up diagnostic equipment to make sure the software for each weapon was working correctly.  Once he received a green across the board, they started working on the next weapon.  It took about thirty minutes for each weapon to be installed.

Mike and the team watched as engineers moved from armor to armor.   Bob was sitting close, smoking a cigarette.

“Bob, what kind of weapons are those?”  Everett asked.

“Those are a pulse laser and one very small rail gun,”he answered.

“Why a laser and a …. Wait, what the hell is a rail gun?”  Rob asked.

Bob shrugged, “well, with the batteries that the armor uses, it was thought that a miniature rail gun for far targets, and a pulse laser that can cut metal as well as anything else that gets in its way, would be the best armament for the mechs.”

“Grenades, chain guns, small arms, missiles?” Mike asked.

Bob shook his head in the negative.

“No, weapons like that need someone on the outside to charge or clear the weapons, because they’re mechanical.  With these weapons, all you have to do is turn off the electronics to the weapons, and they’re on ‘safe.’”

“Rail gun?” Rob asked again.

Tom was the one that answered, “Yeah, a rail gun is an electronically fired projectile.  The projectile is magnetic, and a pulse of electricity shoots the projectile through electro-magnetically charged rails, hence the name.”

Rob stared at Tom.

“Wow.”

Tom looked back, “What, surprised a hillbilly like me knows something about electro-magnetic ballistic projectiles.”

Rob shook his head, “No man, you actually used the word ‘hence.’  I didn’t think you hillbillies knew that much English.”

Smiles broke out around the pair.

“Well, gallito, it’s a new age.  We hillbillies don’t just make ‘shine in the woods anymore.”

Rob smiled, “Do you even know what that word means?”

Tom smiled back, “I know it is better than Maricon or Mamoncete.”

Rob replied with his middle finger.

Mike looked over at Bob, while the two men argued back and forth.

“Bob, what the hell is up with the battery?”

Bob suddenly seemed nervous, “Ah, what do you mean?”

Mike stared at him, “That mech armor uses a hell of a lot of energy.  And it’s very quiet, like sneaky quiet.  So, that means it’s all electrical.  I don’t think you’re changing the batteries every night.  I looked in the garbage cans, and I don’t see a whole lot of AA batteries there.  There are no cables to charge the suits up.  With the amount of time that we’re spending in the armor, I think it would run out of battery power fairly quick.”

Bob looked around before he answered, pitching his voice lower, “Ah, you guys know anything about quantum physics?”

All four guys stared at him.

“You do know about nuclear physics, right?”

Mike was back on solid ground with that question.  “Yeah, we know about nuclear physics.  Kind of our specialty.  We deal with nuclear, biological, chemical, and other nasty stuff. But we don’t do esoteric physics.  We’re more hands on than experimental.”

Bob nodded, “Well, you know how much energy a nuclear bomb can produce.”

Everett leaned towards Bob, “Are you telling us that these are nuclear batteries?”

Bob held up his hands, “No, no, they aren’t nuclear.  Not at all.  That would make any major battle these armor were used in a radiological nightmare to clean up.  No, we went a different route.”

“And?” Mike asked.

“Well, we, or I should say, three brilliant men, Drs. Degrassey, Dr. Manard, and Dr. Nachman, figured out a way to mine quantum fluctuation for energy.”

“You mean, our Dr. Nachman?” Everett asked.

“Well, yeah,” Bob answered.

The four team guys stared at Bob.  He looked back at them. 

Mike continued, “So what you’re telling me, is that you created a perpetual motion machine here.  With free energy.”

Bob shrugged again, “Well, not exactly free.  There was a reason you needed the DOE clearances.   We couldn’t just let any person stumble around inside the armor.”

“Is that why this facility still has electricity?” Everett asked.

Mike thought about it, “Yeah, I kind of wondered about that myself.”

Bob nodded, “Actually, yes.  And not just this facility.  We put four of those on an aircraft carrier to replace the nuclear engine.  Passed with flying colors.  We were going to convert the entire fleet and put them in places like NORAD.  That way, our military would have power in case of any attack.”

“How far along had you gotten?”  Everett asked.

Bob shook his head, “We just completed trials on the aircraft carrier, and we were going to ramp up production for the rest of the country.”

“How long do they last?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know anything about that.  You would have to ask Dr. Nachman about it.  But, if you’re around Jamison, Mitchem, or Randall, they probably wouldn’t let him answer.”

Everett spoke, “That needs to end now.”

Mike nodded agreement, “yeah, I don’t know what’s going on, but when we’re finished with the recon, we’re all going to have a sit down and a chat about what’s going on around here, to include super-secret code word stuff as well.”

Bob looked at them both for a few seconds, then replied, “You may have problems convincing some people about that.”

Mike nodded, “Yeah, I get that feeling as well.”

The three were interrupted by smartass Weitz.  “Ah, Bob, Chief Duggins, the first armor is armed and ready to go.”  He wasn’t acting like a smartass now, though.  Probably the carnage of the huge monster carcass moderated his responses.

“That won’t last for long
,” Mike thought to himself.

“Which armor is it?” Everett asked.

“Armor 4,”

Everett looked over at Tom, “Tom, you’re up.”

Tom nodded and moved towards the mech armor with his rifle in hand.  He wore his kit over his special mech armor uniform.  Tom scrambled up the side and stepped into the cockpit.  He stored his rifle and then grabbed the helmet and put it on.  Lights flickered from the cockpit as he spooled up the electronics.  Weitz had his head phones on and started talking Tom through an abbreviated start up sequence.  He explained how to use the pulse laser and the mini-rail gun.  As he was doing so, Smith and Sheffield would load what looked like magazines on the upper portion of the arm which held the mini-rail gun.

“How many rounds does that rail gun have?” Mike asked.

Bob, shook his head.  He didn’t know.

Everett turned and yelled, “Hey, Tracy, how many rounds do those magazines hold?”

She held up two fingers, followed by three clenched fists.

“Good lord, two thousand rounds?”

Three heads turned towards Bob, “well, the slugs that thing fires are smaller because they move at a much higher velocity, causing as much damage as a larger caliber bullet.”

“What caliber, and how heavy is it?” Rob asked.

“I don’t know the exact specs.  A lot of that was handled by the military.  You would probably do better to ask Lieutenant Pang when she gets back.  They look like the size of a twenty-two caliber to me.  They’re square though, not shaped like a bullet.”

The techies and the team watched as Weitz scrambled down the mech armor.  Once he was off the armor, he called Tom over the radio, and let him know that the armor was clear for operations.

As the armor stirred to life, the others backed away, knowing that Tom would have to get his balance, and get used to the tilt in the floor.   The next armor up for weapons was Mike’s.  Soon enough, Mike was in the cockpit, stowing his rifle and putting on the helmet.  He tried to scrape the helmet with his sleeve to get the puke out.  He didn’t have time when the monster attacked.  He couldn’t get it all out, so he yelled for a towel.  Somebody threw him an old t-shirt, which worked fine.  It didn’t get the stench out though.  He was going to have to do a thorough cleaning when he got the chance.  As he turned on the helmet, he noticed two new displays.  He leaned forward, going through systems check as Weitz’s voice muttered in his ear.  As Weitz went down the check list, he replied in the positive, the board lighting up green until all systems were online.  The two red indicators indicating missing systems were now gone, replaced by green.  He immediately understood that those indicators were for the weapons.  He felt the foam engulf his body, and knew that he might actually be going into combat in the mech armor.

He broadcast,“Radio check, over.”

Tom answered, “Roger, boss man, I have you Lima Charlie.”

Mike stood the armor up, and, as with Tom, everyone backed away to let Mike get used to the angle in the floor.  “Tom, I need for you to move forward of the carcass towards the elevator shaft.  I’m going to start cutting up the carcass so that we can move it out after the recon.  The last thing we need in here is a pile of rotting meat.”

“Roger, Chief, I’m moving forward now.  Chief?”

Mike replied to the question, “Yeah, what’s up?”