"I see."
"On the computer — Internet — everything good is English." "Probably," said Stoner." "Someday, I go to New York."
"Why New York?"
"My cousin lives there. Very big opportunity. We will do business, back and forth. There are many things I could get in New York and sell here. Stop!"
He put his hand across Stoner's chest. Stoner tensed, worrying for a moment that he might have sized the men up wrong.
"There is a second Moldovan border post there," said Deniz, pointing to a fence about a hundred meters away. "A backup. If you don't want to be seen, we must go this way through the field."
"Lead the way."
Folded, the Man/External Synthetic Shell Kinetic Integrated Tool — better known as MESSKIT — looked like a nineteenth century furnace bellows with robot arms.
Unfolded, it looked like the remains of a prehistoric, man-sized bat.
"And you think this thing is going to make me fly?" asked Zen, looking at it doubtfully.
"It won't take you cross-country," said scientist Annie Klondike, picking it up from the table in the Dreamland weapons lab where she'd laid it out. "But it will get you safely from the plane to the ground. Think of it as a very sophisticated parachute."
Zen took the MESSKIT from her. It was lighter than he'd thought it would be, barely ten pounds. The arms were made of a carbon-boron compound, similar to the material used in the Dreamland Whiplash armored vests. The wings were made of fiber, but the material felt like nothing he'd ever touched — almost like liquid steel.
Six very small, microturbine engines were arrayed above and below the wing. Though no bigger than a juice glass, together the engines could provide enough thrust to lift a man roughly five hundred feet in the air. In the MESSKIT, their actual intention was to increase the distance an endangered pilot could fly after bailing out, and to augment his ability to steer himself as he descended.
"You sure this thing will hold me?"
"Prototype holds me," said Danny.
"Yeah, but you're a tough guy," joked Zen. "You fall on your head, the ground gets hurt."
"It's much stronger than nylon, Zen, and you've already trusted your life to that," said Annie.
A white-haired grandmother whose midwestern drawl sof tened her sometimes sardonic remarks, Annie ran the ground weapons lab at Dreamland. MESSKIT was a "one-off" — a special adaptation of one of the lab's exoskeleton projects. Exoskeletons were like robotic attachments to a soldier's arms and legs, giving him or her the strength to lift or carry very heavy items. The MESSKIT's progenitor was intended to help paratroopers leaving aircraft at high altitude, allowing them to essentially fly to a target miles away.
Annie and some of the other techies had adapted the design after hearing about the problems Zen had had on his last mission using a standard parachute. If MESSKIT was successful, others would eventually be able to use it to bail out of high-flying aircraft no matter what altitude they were at or what the condition of the airplane. MESSKIT would allow an airman to travel for miles before having to land. If Zen had had it over India, he might have been able to fly far enough to reach an American ship and safety when his plane was destroyed. And because it was powered, the MESSKIT would also have allowed him to bail out safely from the Megafortress after the ejection seat had already been used.
"Try it on," urged Danny, who'd served as the lab's guinea pig and done some of the testing the day before. "You put it on like a coat."
"What's with these arms? What am I, an octopus?"
"You put your hands in them. Your fingers slide right in.
See?"
"Yours, maybe."
"Starship can test it just as well," said Danny. "I got it," snapped Zen. "You don't need to use reverse psychology on me."
"Now would I do that?"
Zen gave the MESSKIT to Danny to hold and wheeled himself to the side of the table. He maneuvered himself out of the wheelchair and onto a backless bench, then held up his arms.
"I am rea-dy for the operation, Doc-tor," he said in a mock Frankenstein monster voice.
Once on, the gear felt like a cross between football pads and a jacket with a thin backpack attached. His hands fit into metallic gloves. Bar grips extended from the side "bones" of the suit; they looked a bit like silver motorcycle throttles, with buttons on the end.
"Comfortable?" Danny asked.
"Different," said Zen.
Annie was looking over the device, adjusting how it sat on his back. Zen moved back and forth, twisting his torso.
"Here, press the left-hand button once and pick this up," said Danny, bringing over a twenty pound dumbbell.
Zen could curl considerably more than twenty pounds with either hand, but he was amazed at how light the weight felt.
Danny laughed. "Don't throw it. You should see it on boost. You can pick up a car."
He was exaggerating — but only slightly. The MESSKIT used small motors and an internal pulley system to help leverage the wearer's strength.
The more Zen fidgeted with the suit, the more he saw its possibilities. Annie and the rest of the development team might think of it as a way to help him get out of a stricken Megafortress. But Zen realized that a similar device with artificial legs instead of wings could help him walk.
Like a robot, maybe, but still…
"So when do we test it?" he asked.
"It looks like a good fit," said Annie, tugging down the back as if she were a seamstress. "We can set up the gym and go at it tomorrow."
"Why not today?" he asked. "Why not right now?"
The others exchanged a glance, then Danny started to laugh.
"Told you," he said.
"Come on," said Zen. "Let's get to work."
The news about Lieutenant Colonel Bastian's Medal of Honor hit General Samson like the proverbial ton of bricks. The more he thought about it, the more he felt as if a house had fallen on him.
Though his first reaction was to swell with pride.
Samson had seen combat himself in his younger days, and he knew how tenuous courage on the battlefield could be. He also knew that for a soldier to get the Medal of Honor while managing somehow to survive was extremely difficult — luck really, since by definition the sort of selfless act the honor required meant death in nearly every case.
Samson had been on the mission that the President was citing Dog for.
Well, in the theater at least — and even a vague association provided at least a modicum of reflected glory. A commander takes responsibility for all that his people do, good and bad; personal feelings toward Dog aside, the colonel's success reflected well on his commanding officer, no matter how far removed from the actual event.
But as Samson thought about the implications, his mood quickly sank. For one thing, he wanted Bastian gone from Dreamland, and the medal would make it harder to push him out. It might even be impossible if Bastian decided to fight.
Worse, what if Bastian put his hand up to become wing commander? How could he refuse a Medal of Honor winner?
Bastian wasn't a full colonel, and wing commanders almost always were. But hell, the guy had held a post a major general now commanded, and had won a Medal of Honor in combat — only a supercilious prig would deny him the post if he truly wanted it.
How did Bastian get the medal, anyway? Samson wondered. Wasn't the process normally begun with a recommen dation from his commander? In what drunken stupor had he written that recommendation?
Samson's phone rang. He picked it up, and heard his chief civilian secretary, Chartelle Bedell, tell him in her singsong voice that Admiral Balboa was on the line.