Chapter Twenty-Seven

The next morning dawned as most of them did, with the sun slowly edging its way up, the light searing its way around the edges of the blinds, and me wondering what the hell had crapped in my mouth, as clearly something was doing it, judging from the goddamn awful taste and dryness.

I slid out of bed, made it into the shower and woke myself up, scrubbed myself clean, and regarded Reign from the bathroom door, beautiful, long limbed, stark naked and fast asleep, and for just a few seconds I considered prodding her with it to wake her, then I thought better of it.

First of all, she didn’t wake in a great mood, generally.

Secondly, I was bruised to buggery, and if I was to enjoy the experience I needed a medikit first—I was honest enough with myself that I accepted a ‘small’ one would do the job, but that wasn’t important—and last of all?

There was an absolute shitload of things that needed to be done today to get things moving.

Yesterday had been needed, by the gods of chrome and blood it’d been insanely needed, and not just because I was at least a liter lighter on my feet.

I needed to get myself back on track, not just the team. For that, I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with, and we needed to run some tests.

We needed to know if I could actually accommodate the new arm and the spinal mod. If the new spinal mod, the tier four, was actually usable, and not riddled with viruses or whatever? I’d not checked the exact figures yet, but I was grimly sure that I was going to be either right up against my capacity for mods, or possibly over it.

The only good part about all of this, was that your capacity for mods was… fluid.

It was worked out on a combination of things, and none of them were exact guarantees.

For most people, the rule of thumb was that if you added your ‘mental power’ and ‘toughness’ stats together, they gave you your capacity.

For most people the scores of those two sections weren’t that impressive, not blowing my own trumpet, but high mental power usually didn’t come with high toughness.

That wasn’t to say that smarter people weren’t tough. Toughness was a mixture of many things, and it bled over into mental power quite a lot.

Mental power was all about how adaptable, how easily you learned, and how smart you were. That was one way of looking at it, and that toughness was all about how well you could take a beating, how long you lasted in a fight, and how much punishment you’d last through.

That wasn’t it though.

Not entirely.

Mental power and toughness together were taken by some as mental fortitude .

It wasn’t a term used much outside of special forces and operators, but mental fortitude was a lot more about that little voice that tells you to get back up.

The one that says yeah, you might have gotten your ass kicked, but you weren’t down, nor out.

It was the little voice that made you never give up, that made a guy or a gal with bullet holes in them stand up and take another blow.

It was what made you damn well fight, and win, against all odds.

I should be dead.

Fuck I should have died on the fingers, I sure as shit shouldn’t have thrown myself off them and let necrosis take my left arm. I shouldn’t have fought and bled through all the shit I had, I shouldn’t have been blown up, cooked, and fucking thrown out of buildings, without spending half my life in hospital.

I should have gotten put down, and damn well stayed down. I should have learned that my place was with the rest of the trash in the gutter, I wasn’t smart, not really, and I certainly wasn’t overly intelligent. I wasn’t naturally tough like the orcs were, nor fast and graceful like the elves.

I wasn’t sneaky like the goblins, nor fucking insanely skilled like the dwarves.

I was human. I was the average.

I was also the man that had stood toe to toe with an assault mech.

I’d dragged myself through the undercity, with a gun with one round in it, and I’d emerged broken, bloody and triumphant where ghouls had died.

I was the man that’d led a team of nobodies into the depths of that fucking arcology, and had killed off a gang. I was the man that’d fought fucking APS one on one, and carved them a new fucking asshole.

I was the man that’d faced and fought banshees, ghouls and specters, that had saved kids and that had led a team for more than half my adult life.

Maybe I was an asshole, sure, maybe as Fergie used to tell me, I was just plain fucking bad luck, and too dumb to accept it, but what I really was?

I was a stubborn fucker that not only didn’t know when to quit, I didn’t know fucking how. My toughness and mental score might be nineteen, when combined, but my mental fortitude?

That was a number that could smash steel down, and bend titanium.

Taking a deep breath, I summoned the standardized personal breakdown again, and I ordered the RI to run a full system re-evaluation, knowing just how fucking painful that was going to be.

It started at the tips of my fingers, a twitch, like a muscle that was on the verge of going into cramp, a quiver that ran down and up and back again a dozen times, even as a sensation like spiders crawling on me picked up across my body.

As it went, I felt my internal temperature spiking as the old ‘grey matter’ was massaged. There was no need for the times tables and shit like that, that we’d been taught in class as a kid. No this was a full on electrical surge and test, as synapses were fired over and over again, as muscles bunched and released.

My temperature grew higher and sweat poured down me. I started to pant, the effort doubling and redoubling as my heart raced faster and harder. My body stacked stress upon itself, over and over, my breath torn from me in great gasps like I was racing a marathon uphill with a fucking aircar on my back… and then it was over.

The change from the test beginning to the end was almost as great a shock as the abrupt start, and yet, as my heart stuttered, trying to regain a natural rhythm, I grinned to myself, watching as the sheet before me blurred.

The RI was the better method to track this kind of shit over the standard Keystone evaluation, because it saw everything. Literally everything that I went through all day every day, it saw, and so its evaluation of my stats wasn’t as limited as the ‘standard’ version was.

To be fair though, the evaluation that I’d been working off until now was updated and refined by the RI, so it wasn’t like it was massively out, but damn.

I’d been through some life changing shit since I last updated it alright.

Identification : Harry Kabutt

Species : Human

Bonus : None

Mod Capacity : 22

Mod Capacity in use : 13

Stat

Current Points

Description

Mods

Quality

Dexterity

11

Governs agility and movement.

Left Arm Mod: 2

Cost: 2

(Dex: 12)

Basic

Mental Power

12

Governs swiftness and fortitude of the mind

Brain Mod: 3

Cost: 3

Professional

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Perception

11

Governs an individuals senses and connection to the world around them.

Brain Mod: 4

Ocular Mod: 3

Cost: 4

(PER 12 + 14)

Basic

Strength

10

Governs physical strength and damage dealt

Left Arm Mod: 2

Cost: 1 (STR 14)

Basic

Toughness

10

Governs the body and internal fortitude

Basic Organelles: 3

Cost: 3

Spinal Reinforcement: 2

Cost: 2

Toughness: 11

Basic

Nine points! I had nine points remaining! I sighed like a fucking rocket hitting orbital, and sagged with relief. Nine points… that was plenty, well, for me it was, for now.

I didn’t know how many points the new arm and the damn spinal mod were going to take up, hell the spinal mod that I’d been looking at was a tier three, and that had needed six points, which was concerning, but…

In putting the new one in, I’d be removing the old. That sounded obvious, but it wasn’t to a lot of people. I’d be getting the two points that were taken up by the spinal reinforcement I had now, back. SO in effect, it’d cost me four more points than I had in use now.

That left me five points for the arm.

The arm was a custom job, as heavily modded as it was, but my current one was worth three points. I couldn’t see it costing eight, not overall, not for a fucking arm, when the spinal cost was to allow for systemic integration of things like a fucking APS or a construction or war mech.

Hell, I’d heard of helo pilots that could deploy swarms of fucking drones while flying the damn things around buildings, thanks to their specialist mods.

I couldn’t see a posh fucking vacuum cleaner with fingers coming to near enough the same cost as that kind of shit.

I blew out a long breath, nodding to myself that I needed certain things sorting out, and soon, such as the damn attaching, but before I could do that?

I needed a second goddamn shower.

Twenty minutes later—and Reign was still snoring—and I was downstairs, chewing on cold pizza, powering up the transport cradle for my suit.

These things were amazing, when you’d never seen them before, I reflected. Hell, as an experienced operator, using them was still a fucking impressive experience.

The cradle was higher than the suit was tall, fully laden, and was designed to provide a safe storage option for ‘in the field’. Essentially it was a self-contained brace, armor stand, and storage unit, that had recesses for everything that the operator could need.

Replacement components, new armoring, hell spare fusion cores and containers for the gamma cannons and railgun mounts were included…

It was just a pain in the ass that the damn slots were all empty!

The fact that fucking asshole Tyrannus had stolen it before it could be equipped? That rankled.

Sure, when I considered the options, the major clearly never had any intention of me getting my damn suit, but to have it turn up like this? Instead of the titan of war it really was?

It hurt.

Well, I had new sensor nodes now, and pods and a suite to install, as well as the fusion chambers to fix and the core to power and test.

The suit towered over me, as the transport unit locked into position, the controls on the side closest to where I stood—I’d used these fuckers a time or three after all—and I manipulated the inbuilt restraint system to slowly turn the suit, lowering it to where I could climb up the side.

It was awkward, genuinely it was, they kinda assumed that you’d have operational gantries and hydraulic hoists, or at the very least a damn toolbelt with all your bits and bobs in, and I had none of those.

There were places to brace yourself though, and handholds, and with the suit being only a skeletal structure in places, that provided spaces as well.

Forty minutes it took me to install the first row of sensors, feeding the sections though, plugging in as I went, and making damn sure that the crystal matrix was perfectly polished for them

Back in the distant past, and the not so distant cheap ass maintenance past, they had used fiberoptics for this kinda shit. That was great and all, but the splicing process when they were damaged? It was inevitably shitty, and when it was done by the lowest bidder?

Yeah.

Crystal had changed all of that. They were either perfect, or they didn’t work.

That had led to a massive upsurge in quality, when some components needed to be perfect and could be made so? Well, why the hell weren’t the rest the same?

That had been a theory that had lasted at least a fortnight, hell maybe two.

That had been enough to massively improve the base line though, and then the centuries of slow degradation had resumed.

The crystals as I slid them in, locked into place with a solid click that gave me a warm feeling to my goddamn boots. It just felt right, as I rebuilt the suit, section by section.

An hour passed as I locked the next ring in place, and then allowed myself the luxury of climbing inside the suit. I slid down, the harness taking my weight as I slid into my familiar position. The fresh, brand new padding that weirdly had been put in place confused me for a moment.

That hadn’t been damaged, and it’d taken me months of missions to wear the comfortable grooves into it, so why the hell replace that, and not put the real bits in first?

That the sensors, power systems and more weren’t in, but the padding was? That gave me pause, and for the first time, I started searching the suit more minutely.

Checking the various sections I found what I was most concerned about.

Deployment pins.

Some fucker had triggered the deployment pins, that was why the fucking sections were all missing! I should have put it together instantly, never mind fucking moping around the damn suit all this time!

Some utter cockwomble had activated the emergency deployment pins, a safety cutout in case of a virus in the suit, one that forced the sections that were vulnerable out! A technician could easily reinstall them, we, as operators were trained to do it quickly in case of emergencies, but that someone had actually done it?

For a few seconds I raged internally, before I forced myself to calm. Tyrannus.

That utter cock had to have been the one that did this.

For a few seconds I’d suspected Oshbob, then I shook that off. That was ridiculous, sure there were ways to find the data online, and probably a way to figure out how to get access to the suit in the transport container, he’d had it popped open after all.

So, yeah, sure he could have someone that had figured out that when it was unpowered the right combination of sections to power, and to have found the controls for the deployment pins, but no.

There was also a theory that enough monkeys could write a fucking book, given enough time, and despite the evidence I’d seen, that was crazy talk.

No, it had to be Tyrannus.

That bastard had probably sold them to someone on the black market…

I paused, then started checking the various parts that Dondo had dropped off for me, and cursed even more.

They were in great condition sure, hell they were almost brand new… but that almost was the kicker. Here and there, if you know where to look, if you know which parts always jammed, and were always a bastard to remove?

I found matching scratches, both on the armor, and on the ‘new’ parts!

I was paying that fucking orc to buy my own suits goddamn parts off the black market!

For long minutes I sat there cushioned by the brand new bloody padding, and I seethed internally. Again, for a few seconds I considered if Oshbob could have somehow pulled this off, he was a sneaky shit after all, but… no.

No offence to him, nor to the girls, but orcs were generally dumb as shit. Sure, some of them were brighter than the rest, some were vastly more intelligent, freaks of nature, genetic mutations and all that, but no. All that I’d met of his crew so far were orcs, half orcs and goblins.

The exception was not the rule. For him to have people that could understand these systems, for them to figure their way around them? They’d need military experience, and at a classified level. No orc would be given that.

No, Tyrannus had been a desk jockey fuckhead, but he’d have had access to everything he needed to pull this off, and the motivation. I already knew he was a dick who’d sell his own mother given half a chance.

I dismissed the thought, and sat back, glaring at the systems before me, my reflection in the internal screens showing me just how much like a petulant child I looked right then.

After a few more minutes of anger—essentially spitting my fucking pacifier out—prompted by the sounds of the others moving around above me, I forced myself to focus on the good.

These parts I was getting would have all been checked for compatibility. They’d all have been tweaked to run with my particular suit, and the relevant coding patches that always needed to be done, despite the engineers assurances of ‘correct tolerances’ and such bullshit, they’d all have been done for me.

This was a good thing! It really was.

I managed to keep telling myself that for the rest of the next hour, until I added in the final sections to the power subsystems, and I triggered the primary boot.

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