As for instance, right now she was panting and grinning like a maniac. Whoever it was, she’d just dropped him. Poor guy didn’t even know what happened. It got her adrenaline pumping double-time and brought a feral smile even if there was a possibility she’d just killed someone who’d been a friend.
When all this was over, she was going to have to have a long talk with her neuroses.
When she got to the heap of marine, Mosasa had already stripped the helmet and had cables leading into the body of the suit. “I got patches into the transponder and the data recorder. Open up.”
Shane ripped off a patch that covered a few ports that Mosasa had installed in her armor. Mosasa had done extensive mods to the operating system of her armor, chief of which was modifying her transponder and data recorder to leech security codes from another suit’s system.
Mosasa plugged her into the fallen marine, and she saw that it was Corporal Hougland. Ivor noticed her stare and said, “Don’t worry, she’s still alive.”
That generated two thoughts. She thought, You’re not supposed to worry about the enemy’s casualties.
The other thought was that Corporal Hougland would have killed her without any hesitation.
Mosasa nodded a few times, looking at a readout mounted on Shane’s midsection next to the ports he was using. “Good, the transponder codes took. You’re her now.” Mosasa gestured toward Hougland and disconnected the cables at the same time.
Mosasa was right. Shane could call up Hougland’s tac database, the info on her data recorder, even the radio was modified to synthesize Hougland’s voice with patterns lifted from the recorder.
“Okay,” Shane said. “Ivor, take her. Mosasa, let’s get moving. It’s already past seven.”
Shane and Mosasa ran to catch up with Hougland’s patrol route while, behind them, Shane caught a glimpse of Ivor grabbing Hougland in a fireman’s carry and heading toward the woods.
I’m her now, Shane thought to herself.
It was an uncomfortable feeling.
* * * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Loopholes
“Never turn your back on the villain, especially when he’s unconscious.”
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
“God Almighty hates a quitter.”
—Samuel Fessenden
(1847-1908)
07:01:00 Godwin Local
Ivor Jorgenson ran full tilt into the woods, toward the bolt-hole. Halfway there his shoulders ached and his lungs were on fire. The marine was too damn heavy. He had to put her down for a while.
Once he was out of eyeball range of the complex, he had time to set her down. The marine would be out for hours; they wouldn’t need him to pilot things until everything was over, forty-five minutes from now. It was good that he had the time, because the minute he leaned his burden against a convenient tree, he felt every joint in his body protest the exertion of the last ten minutes.
He was too old for this.
In his prime he could have carried this woman across a few klicks of tundra. He knew that because, when he was in his prime and Fleet Commander of the Styx Presidential Guard, he had done just that for a soldier wounded in an aircar crash.
But that was two decades ago.
Or, another way of thinking, it was only nine years ago.
Or, yet another way of thinking, it had never happened at all.
Hands on his knees, catching his breath, he realized that this was the first time he had thought about Styx in years. What should have been angry thoughts were predominantly nostalgic now. The nostalgia was embarrassing.
You can be nostalgic for anything if you’re far enough removed from it.
And Ivor’s memories of Styx were as far removed from present reality as they could get. Because of his brush with the wrong end of a wormhole, a decade-long chunk of his memory just didn’t happen as far as the rest of the universe was concerned.
Even if the universe didn’t accept it, that decade was still credited to his body’s account. He was twenty years older than he’d been on Styx, and he wasn’t up to lugging heavy marines in full armor uphill through dense woods.
Slowly, he stopped hyperventilating and felt his muscles unkink.
Once he could move without pain, he decided to lighten his burden. Nothing in the plan called for him to take the armor, too. He was just supposed to restrain the comatose marine. He walked over to her.
The name-tag read Hougland.
“Pleased to meet you, miss.” He told her as he felt for the emergency release on the suit. Triggering it would scrag the armor, but it needed to be there for medical access in field conditions. He groped around until he found the trigger.
“Forgive the imposition, but I just can’t carry all this.”
He hit the release and multiple hisses announced the separation of the seams on the armor. He picked up Hougland’s chest piece and looked for a suitable place to ditch her armor. A few meters away he saw a deadfall that seemed to fit the bill. He picked up a few more pieces and walked over to the pile of old wood and began to dig a suitable hole for the armor.
He was in the midst of digging when he noticed a red light flashing on the inside of one of the leg pieces he had brought over.
He picked it up and examined it more closely.
The flashing light was the last of a series on the side of a small rectangular box that would fit snugly on the inner thigh. A sick feeling washed over Ivor when he saw it.
This box, and things like it, went by a number of names—hardwire lightning, express, black speed—all of which meant the same thing; military biological augmentation via drugs and electronic hardware that hyped metabolism, recovery times, and reflexes to screaming high levels. The cost to the body using such things— skyrocketing blood pressure, burned out neurons, not to mention addiction—was so high that it was insane to use the things outside of combat.
If the marines out there were wired with this, then they were expecting to be attacked.
Ivor was about to run for the bolt-hole to warn Tetsami and the rest of the team about the set up when the second thought hit him.
Maxed recovery time.
Ivor turned and ducked just in time to avoid decapitation by the branch Hougland was swinging. He hadn’t heard her approach, and he was very glad that Mosasa had taken her weapons.
Hougland swung again and Ivor scrambled back, over the uncertain footing of the deadfall. He felt a breeze as a meter-long chunk of wood the diameter of his thigh swept by his face.
We took her weapons, but why am I unarmed?
Ivor backed over the precarious footing as the marine, clad only in briefs and a sweat-stained T-shirt, advanced on him.
Because we thought the driver didn’t need any, idiot.
“Do you think,” he said, nearly slipping on a loose branch, “that we could talk this out?”
Another swing. Not lethal, she was just testing the range. Ivor was beginning to feel that all this was a bit much. He glanced behind him and saw that he was backing toward the lip of a ravine.
The ground shifted beneath him, and he felt his right foot sliding downward. He still had Hougland’s thigh armor in his right hand. “Corporal Hougland, I’m sure we can come to some accommodation before permanent violence is done.”