Mech Warrior: Born of Steel (Mechanized Infantry Division Book 1) Read online

  But Dane could feel the tense agitation growing in his limbs, the exact same feeling that he used to get a week before a title fight.

  Yep, Dane thought as he glowered over to the opposing corner of the room, where Osgud was lifting his head to roar with laughter, alongside his cronies, Private Marks, Italino, and Hopskirk.

  “. . . cripple!” Dane overheard. Osgud formed a spastic dance with his legs to prove the point and sent a laughing look over to Dane’s corner.

  A nod. Yep, Osgud is precisely the sorta guy I don’t get along with, Dane thought. The private was the loud, brash, and arrogant sort of guy that Dane used to meet in the amateur-pro gyms for Mech-Wrestlers.

  Usually guys who rely on their muscle to get what they want and have stopped using their brains… Dane thought. And also, the sort of guy who took great delight in reminding the younger Dane of his useless father and his unfortunate bad luck.

  “Hey,” Bruce said a little more sternly, standing up and making the whole bunk shake and vibrate as he did so. Bruce was a large man. A very large man of American-Japanese heritage, who had, like Dane, once had a sporting career. He had been an amateur-pro sumo wrestler until the Exin had attacked, and he enlisted instead.

  “You want to get your head out of your ass?” Bruce was looking at Dane like all this trouble was his fault.

  “C’mon, Bruce—that isn’t fair. Don’t you see that?” Dane snapped back. The few weeks of constant exercise and being shouted at by Lashmeier had left him feeling drained and touchy.

  Bruce threw another look over at the corner where Osgud and the rest had descended to conspiratorial whispers, interspersed with cackles of laughter.

  A shrug from the mountainous shoulders of Cheng. “I see someone who isn’t worth it,” he said in his deep growl of a voice before turning back to Dane. “And I see someone who is lucky to be alive and still feeling guilty that they are,” Bruce said with a nod to Dane’s outstretched legs.

  “What!?” Dane blinked, his anger suddenly hot and high in his throat. How was this fair? How could Dane be treated like less than nothing when Dr. Heathcote had especially selected him for this?

  “You’re right. Osgud is a pinhead.” Bruce gave another titanic shrug. “But pinheads are everywhere, even before the Exin. But you, Dane Williams, seem to have your head screwed on. Or I thought you did,” Bruce muttered. Leaning forward against Dane’s bunk, he said in a low, serious tone, “Do you want to waste your anger on someone like Osgud and the others, when you could be trying to save up that anger for the ones who really put you in this mess…” Another look at Dane’s legs, “The crawdads?”

  He was right, of course, Dane thought with an agitated sigh, but a part of him now felt embarrassed and didn’t want to admit it.

  “Just as long as he stays out of my way!” Dane said, swinging his legs over the bunk, making Bruce move out of the way hurriedly. He willfully threw himself to the floor with a thump that sent a shiver of pain through his knees, but one that he relished all the same.

  I’ll show them who’s a cripple! Dane thought angrily, just as the session bell went off for the first training of the day.

  “Marines!” Lashmeier shouted at them as they filed into Fort Mayweather’s Training Gymnasium One, which had been curiously transformed into what looked like an assault course. All of the equipment and weights had been stacked aside, leaving the long hallway stretching out to the open cargo doors at the far end, with hurdles across its length, and then a tall set of steel frames.

  More PT, Dane thought with a groan. They’d already had their regular pre-dawn marathon jog and compound body-resistance exercises—but the sergeant liked to vary the morning sessions. At any time it could be PT, or weapons practice, or briefings and problem-solving. Physical Training was widely regarded as the worst of the three (with briefings and problem-solving a close second).

  “Your mothers are going to be proud that they spat your mewling faces onto Earth today, Marines!” Lashmeier took great pride in his speeches. Dane wondered if he wrote them beforehand as the sergeant strode back and forth before the assembled line of private-nothings.

  “Because on this glorious day, you lucky lot are going to get your first introduction to…” Lashmeier swiveled on a heel with a scrape of sound so sharp that Dane almost thought that it could light a match. He pointed toward one of the side doors to the gymnasium, which was rolling open at his command, to reveal a second, much darker hall on the other side lit with electric-blue LEDs.

  The next-door hall was shaped like a half-octagon, and there appeared to be high cabinets or booths along its edges.

  No, not cabinets. Dane’s heart leapt. Cradles.

  “The AMP, or Assisted Mechanized Plate!” Lashmeier crowed joyously.

  Each cradle on the walls next door held an eight-foot-tall suit, like a metal golem inside its own open sarcophagus.

  They’re like Intrepids, Dane instantly thought, but they were more compact and looked much, much sleeker.

  “You’ve all been assigned your support staff, so wait for your name to be called and get introduced,” Lashmeier was shouting. “Suit up and return here!”

  Dane could barely control his excitement to get his hands on another Mech, and when “WILLIAMS” was shouted over the speaker system, he couldn’t feel his own legs at all as he jogged to find Joey Corsoni standing in front of one of the cradles.

  “Big man.” Joey threw him a mock salute and a sarcastic grin before stepping out of the way to let Dane at the AMP. “I guess I don’t have to explain how this baby works to you, do I?” he said, moving to the engineering panel at the side of each cradle.

  “Yes. Run me through everything,” Dane said without a moment’s hesitation. “I want to know everything about this suit, from basics all the way up.”

  After all, Dane thought, I’m only going to be as good as my suit is.

  “Okay then, she’s probably a little different to what you’re used to,” Corsoni said, hitting the release for the large rubber-headed clips to open over the suit.

  With hissing noises, the breast-plate, arm, thigh, and calf-plates opened to reveal padded cradles which he could lean into. Dane did so.

  “So, she’s a composite on a main harness form,” Corsoni said, hitting the buttons for the opened plates to close securely again, self-locking and tightening around Dane’s limbs and chest.

  “Comfy? She’ll self-calibrate once she gets used to your body measurements, blood pressure, and what have you,” Corsoni said.

  Hot damn, Dane thought. No fiddly little harnesses and straps that he had to tighten each and every time.

  In a moment, his arms and legs were secured in sturdy composite tubes of metal plate.

  “Then comes the main suit harness,” Corsoni said.

  Dane saw the segmented, servo-assisted belt move across to connect and cinch at his waist. There were hisses of release at his neck, and he had to manually pull the padded webbing down over his shoulders to click into place at his belt with a whirr as they self-calibrated, too, allowing flexibility and hold in his upper body movements.

  “She’s compound alloys and silica-threaded carbon plate,” Corsoni was saying, tapping the side of one of Williams’s thigh-plates with a sharp metallic knock. “They’ll take most gun shots from any pedestrian weapon, rifle, right up to general purpose machine gun.”

  Then there was a whirr as the breast-plate swung into place in front of Dane. It, too, was made of interlocking, composite pieces like the scales of some insect-creature. Each of them could shift independently and jointly with its sheathed fellows.

  The plate auto-calibrated into place, and last came the connecting mechanisms, as each composite part of the suit locked with its neighbors, using cogs and pistons and servo-mechanisms.

  “She’s got a miniaturized U-14 accelerator, meaning that you can run practically forever as long as it’s fired up.” Corsoni tapped the part of the outer front-plate roughly over where Dane’s heart should b
e. The entire suit added almost nine inches to Dane’s height and width in every direction.

  “This one hasn’t been activated for field operations, so she’s empty.” Corsoni said as he tapped various hollow-sounding weapons modules spaced around the AMP. “But in the hot, she’ll have all the usual lights and thermal scanners and filtration systems and what have you—as well as a standard smart laser here.” He tapped the back of Dane’s leading forearm. “And your general purpose weapons will mount here.” He tapped Dane’s waist.

  Of course, Dane thought. With all of the added strength built into this suit, he would be able to hold an entire general purpose machine gun all by himself (normally, they took a team of two people to carry, position, and fire).

  “And last, but definitely not least,” Corsoni stepped back to hit a button on the engineering tablet he had taken from the wall and a large helmet-type system lowered itself down from the roof of the cradle. Dane just had time to pull up the rubber collar mantle from the breast-plate over his neck as the helmet locked and settled into place. The world went dark for a second then blue-green neon lights started flashing.

  >TRAINING AMP 023 Activating…

  >Cycling accelerator unit…

  The entire wrap-around visor over his face was also a data screen, Dane realized. The darkened crystal or bullet-proof glass started to lighten to show the world and the grinning Corsoni outside.

  “What you’re seeing there is your HUD, or heads-up display,” Corsoni said.

  Whoa, Dane thought with another tremble of excitement. The Intrepids never had anything half as sophisticated as that!

  >Recognizing User… PVT WILLIAMS, D…

  As the electric neon flickered over Dane’s vision, he also felt the suit adjusting, tightening and loosening all across his body as it calibrated for his exact body size.

  >General Systems Check… GOOD…

  >Filtration, Biological, Chemical, and Radionic Protections… GOOD…

  >Connecting to Federal Network…

  Dane saw a rather unnerving blue-green circle spinning slowly around its own tail for a moment in the dead center of his vision. Then it resolved to read CONNECTED, and his vision became overlaid with identifiers and signifiers.

  >PVT. HOPSKIRK, J…

  >PVT. CHENG, B…

  >OBJECTIVE 1: GYMNASIUM ONE…

  “Your suit is plugged into the Federal Marines mission servers at all times,” Corsoni explained. “So, they’ll be direct-loaded with your mission parameters and will update as you complete each one.”

  Dane looked at the faint, pulsing green arrow already pointing him back to the gymnasium.

  And Dane saw no reason to ignore it, as he made to move his legs.

  His metal humanoid suit took a wide, confident step forward to clang onto the floor of the AMP launch room.

  “Whoa there!” Corsoni had to skitter back. “You feeling good? Normally, I’d get people to stand and feel the weight of it first…”

  “What weight?” Dane laughed. Even though this military Mech seemed to have far better defenses, and packed far more stuff, it was also far, far lighter than any of the brawling Intrepids that he had once worn.

  Dane lifted his metal Mech-Gauntlets in front of him, looking at the segmented metals and closing them into a fist with glee. He even threw a few practice punches into the air, feeling the weight and swing of the arms—just a little bit more than his body.

  “The suspension on this baby is a dream!” Dane was saying, knowing that the mark of a really good Mech suit was the fact that it felt lighter and lighter. The suspension and servo-assists should carry their own weight, leaving you feeling as though you could move just like normal.

  But somehow the engineers of the Mechanized Infantry had managed to make this suit feel better than normal, Dane marveled. He felt stronger, faster, tougher.

  And definitely not disabled.

  “Okay, champ,” Corsoni said. “Just follow the mission objectives as they come up, do your best, and I’ll see you on the other side.” Joey slapped the metal of Dane’s back-plate.

  “Go get ’em.”

  >4… 3… 2…

  >1.

  As soon as the digits flickered on his suit’s timer, Dane lunged into action, extending his metal legs as if he had been born with them. He easily outpaced the pack of other trainees, who had been standing in a line at one end of the gymnasium.

  First hurdle.

  Dane threw an arm, felt the jar through the suit, and slapped the top of the metal hurdle as he vaulted it with ease, lifting his legs so that his knees bent as he landed. This forced him into a metal roll that sent out sparks on either side.

  Booyah! Dane fought to control his excitement at how easy it was to move in this suit. He felt alive like he hadn’t for months.

  The next obstacle was the metal bars that stretched across the back of the gymnasium room, before the open cargo doors at the back. Dane lengthened his stride, stepping once, twice, then a hop to jump up to the frame and grab it with his metal arms, pulling himself up much more easily than he would have if it had just been him and a rope.

  This suit takes all the weight off my legs, Dane was thinking as he scaled to the top in moments, swinging one leg over the bars and pausing for a moment to breath.

  >Calibrating Maximal Oxygen/Dioxide Levels…

  He suddenly felt a little clearer-headed as he realized that the AMP suit not only calibrated to his body dimensions, but it also seemed to live-calibrate to his body’s needs in terms of oxygen!

  The tournaments I could have won with this! he thought. Dane cast a look back behind him. He was ahead of the others by almost thirty feet.

  A lot of the trainees behind were having problems adjusting to their new environment, making vastly exaggerated movements and over-extending their legs or leaning too far forward, or too far back.

  Poor body-mind, Dane diagnosed, remembering the primer lessons that he had been taught when he had first gotten into a Mech-Brawler suit. Some of the problems of a Mech suit were related to clogged or rusted machinery, but the vast majority of them, Dane knew, were due to the wearer simply not thinking on an instinctive level with the suit.

  It was a process that took time and practice, Dane knew—of getting used to the second skin that you found yourself within.

  But now, with a clang, one of Dane’s fellow trainees—Marks—had hit the climbing frame and was starting up.

  Better get moving. Dane turned, measured the distance to the floor—Ten feet. This suit can take that, he thought, pushing off with his arms instead of climbing down to land in a squat, as if the drop had been three times shorter.

  >Success!

  >OBJECTIVE 2: Deadweight…

  And Dane was running forward, his metal feet pounding toward the light as the next objective flickered into view.

  His helmet-plate hazed a tad darker as he burst out into the brilliant sunshine of a Virginia day. He saw that there was a series of crushed metal cubes—compacted cars—sitting in a row. A faint green arrow was pointing him straight toward the first, and then vectoring past it, to where a ditch-trench—the same they used for faux-battlefield training—ran past.

  >Deliver Deadweight…

  Dane hunkered down, raising his shoulders a little as he intended to ease off, just before seizing the crushed car. Maximum force to move the thing into the ditch…

  Private-nothing Williams was still ahead of Marks and the rest as he crossed the distance in a flash. He was halfway there with several running strides, three quarters—

  BOOM!

  The dirt at his feet exploded into pulverized rock dust.

  “Shh-!” Dane swore, awkwardly flinging himself into a leap through the explosion to skid awkwardly on the far side, hitting the dirt, and slamming into the side of the metal cube with his shoulders. Not what he had planned.

  They’re shooting at us! They’re freaking shooting at us! Dane thought in a panic as the ground near the base of the metal
cube suddenly exploded once more, spraying him with dirt and detritus.

  They never told us this in the mission parameters! Dane automatically hunkered down against the protected side of the cube as the ground exploded once more.

  “Ugh!” He heard the crackle of a voice over his suit’s speakers and realized it was Private Marks, one of Osgud’s cronies, but who had flinched a little too dramatically as the ground before his feet detonated. He was now tumbling head over heels into the metal block.

  There was a mighty clang of sparks, and the suit fell backward with a heavy thump. Another explosion scattered the earth near his shoulder.

  “Get to the cube!” Dane shouted to Marks. He saw the Mech start to awkwardly lift itself from the ground, just as another explosion lost him in a scatter of dirt.

  Oh crap! Dane left his crouch and rolled the distance to where Marks was now turned over, half of his back smoking with steam.

  “Marks! Marks—you okay!?” Dane asked, grabbing the Mech’s shoulders and dragging him to the shadow of the adjacent cubed car.

  “Get off me, Williams!” Private Marks was alright, it appeared. He shoved Dane backward with all the force of his suit, sending him skittering across the dirt in the middle of the explosions.

  Mouth-breathing son of a—! Dane swore, turning to scrabble and crab-walk back to his own deadweight.

  >Deliver Deadweight…

  His own objective was still flashing insistently as Marks was already pushing and heaving at his own cube behind him. With a grunt of frustration, Dane seized the ends and started to push.

  He felt the back-plates of his own suit contract and move in tandem, taking the force requested as hidden mechanisms tightened and dispersed the load over his back, shoulders, and down his legs. The weight was heavier than he had expected, but it started to shift and drag along the dirt as he shoved it, foot by stuttering foot, toward the ditch.