Dirk looked at the 8-foot-tall suit skeptically. “That’s the armor?” he asked, looking it over. “It looks more like a drone, or maybe a cyborg. I don’t have to do anything weird to wear it, do I?”
I shook my head, “Not even remotely. I paired some low tin-tier monster cores with a base-level drone. It will be keyed to your nervous system, like a caliban, but this version operates more like an atmospheric fighter.”
I showed him the inside of the suit. “It’s a prototype, and I made sure that your limbs don’t fold into the suit’s limbs like an Exo-suit. It’s going to be a little tight, and right now, I am still working out the control system, so hopefully, it won’t try to digest you the way a pure golem would.”
“Hopefully?”
I grinned, “It won’t try to digest you. I promise. That’s why it’s locked down until it calibrates. Have you ever used a performance-enhancing enchanted item?” I was messing with him. Golems can't eat, but a small, mean part of me was enjoying his nervous expression. Payback for embarrassing me about my... physical changes.
He nodded slowly.
“It’s sort of like that. If you try to use a performance-enhancing enchantment without giving it blood, or time to adapt to you, or for you to train it, it either doesn’t work, or you wind up hurting yourself. That’s why the cockpit is as big as it is… so there’s no way for you to hurt yourself with it.” If you used something like a belt of might without giving yourself time to adapt to the increased strength, you could screw yourself up beyond royalty, wrenching muscles, dislocating your bones, and breaking your knuckles.
There was also the fact that I cannibalized a maintenance pod for about half of the suit, but since he wasn’t a maintenance engineer, he didn’t need to know that. The thing looked a lot like a maintenance pod, but instead of typical slow grapplers, it had proportional arms and was designed to walk. Most importantly, instead of a standard maintenance assistance drone brain, I’d upgraded the whole thing to tin rank and added a grand total of three low-tier monster cores to power and help assist the limbs.
His foot pedals SHOULD drive the legs forward and backward, the arm cores should help power his limbs and allow them to act as quickly as he could, at least up to tin rank, and the nerve link should help his responses control his limbs and balance innately, at least, in theory.
“So why me?”
I smiled as winningly as I could. “Because you are a solid copper-tier warrior. The arms and legs are up to tin-tier reactions, so you should be able to tone down your speed to the point that you can test if they really respond at speed. More importantly, the cockpit,” I pointed where he was going to sit to test it, “Is only standard steel and vacuum plastic. That means if anything goes wrong, you are more than capable of ripping your way out.”
“If it works as it should, you get an experimental pilot qualification, which is something almost no marines other than drop pilots get. That means a raise, and I'll also owe you a HUGE favor.”
He nodded, and I pulled the seat out on its swivel. Honestly, the thing was a nightmare, and it would probably be useless in an actual fight since tin-ranked limbs were actually weaker than what he could do bare-naked, but for a prototype system it should be fine, I hoped. Nothing inside could overextend his own body.
“Remember, give it a few minutes until the screen says neural link established. It shouldn’t hurt, but it might feel a little strange. When you are linked, put your hands in the manipulator grips and test the fingers, put your feet into the lower manipulator straps, and you should be able to walk slowly, move your arms, and use up to tin-tier speed and strength.”
He nodded, sliding into the tiny cockpit, swiveling the chair until he faced the front, and then locking himself into place. “Okay.” he said, “How do I start it?”
I chuckled, “You don’t, I do. Later models will hopefully just work when you put them on,” I said, activating the suit’s golem cores. Since I didn’t hear him screaming, I assumed that the initial activation was going well.
“So if this is weaker than copper tier armor, and weaker force boosting than just my natural abilities, what’s the point?” I heard Dirk’s voice coming through the tinny pod’s speaker.
“This is a prototype. I've purposefully cut back the strength and speed enhancements, but if this works, it means I can create enchanted drone-assist armor that boosts your speed, durability, endurance, and strength, and even increases your weapons and ammunition loadout without slowing you down.”
“Cool. So wait, you are going to do this for ALL the Marines? This is like one of those mechsuits from sci-fi holos.”
I nodded, “If I can. Normal enchanted gear uses hefty materials, expensive runic, and rare reagents to add in enhancements, which makes it insanely expensive for even minor boosts. At a minimum, I should be able to use drone systems for self-repair, a bunch of enhancements, and maybe more.”
“More?” he asked.
I nodded, “Yeah. Imagine armor suitable to handle starship-class rifts, like fighters, but with all of your special techniques unlocked. That's my goal.”
“Cool… Hey, it says neural link established. You were wrong, though, it does hurt a little, like electricity running down my spine.”
I nodded and turned down the neural feedback a little. The system was probably a little overpowered right now, at least electrically, and right now the test pod barely had any nerve feedback. Of course, a final product should feel like controlling your actual body, but that was something that I was working on. I didn’t expect it to require a subdural neural link like David’s proto-Caliban, but that lack was one of the things I was trying to test.
“Alright, I am hooked up and the shock is gone. What next?”
“Go ahead and lift your arms in front of you.” he did so smoothly, and I was weirdly proud of it. I mean, he wasn’t a golemancer or a drone controller, and the arms were obeying his commands smoothly as he made them. “Okay, now try to carefully tap your fingers together, one set of fingers at a time.”
Dirk started chuckling as he tapped his fingers together, and then clenching his fists, made the drone make bench-press motions. After a moment, he started drumming the drone’s fingers rhythmically on the big steel thighs, pounding out a drum beat very quickly.
“Okay, my fingers work great, it’s hard to move the arms without moving my real arms, though. I can sort of feel my fingertips ticking together. Is this successful?”
I nodded and took a few steps back. Braxis and Dienne-Lar, watching from nearby, also carefully took steps back toward drone bay #6. “Go ahead and try to take a step forward, very slowly. Remember, your actual knees…” and I winced as the drone’s leg slid forward before the whole rig overbalanced and slammed sideways into the deck.
After a LOT of wrangling, Dirk was able to get the drone back to its feet, pushing off with an arm. “Okay, I don’t like not using my knees. Trying to balance with just my brain and the foot pedals is total scrot.” He walked forward down the drone bay, and backward, and even got a few hops in, thundering metal feet impacting the deck nearly as heavily as an assault golem. The Drone bay was reinforced to handle a lot more than that, but it was still a little staggering.
I checked the drone. Nope, no overextension, no hyperextension, and while its reflexes were not responding as quickly as Dirk’s reaction, that was expected for only a tin-tier control system. I was going to try it with a few more marines, but after that, it would be time to start working on a smaller copper model, one that fits like a regular suit of heavy armor.
“Okay Dirk, it’s time for the hard part.”
“The hard part?”
“Yep. The test was mostly successful. It’s time to shut down and exit. It didn’t try to eat you, did it?”
Drake’s voice almost squeaked, “No… what do I do?”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
***
Two weeks later-
Warrant Officer Wasserman was looking over the suit of heavy armor. It was almost seven feet tall but was shaped a lot more like an environmental suit than the prototype abomination I’d had Dirk test before.
“So this is the mark five?”
I nodded, almost grinning, “Yes. I haven’t gotten started on the BIG suits yet, but I am hoping that the captain will let us hit a unit rift to give them a field test. Right now, I only have three, and the reason this one is so tall is that I custom-designed it for Lance Corporal Steel. He’s a big man, Warrant.”
“And he’s tested it?”
I nodded, “Both he and Lindsay have tested theirs out. I fixed the Mark three’s problems with channeling focus, and umm… had Dienne-Lar work on the aesthetics a little.”
“The aesthetics?”
I nodded slowly, “Yeah. Even Dirk said that the Mark Four was a nightmare. The self-repair manipulators uhh… apparently strongly provoked atavistic reactions that I didn’t expect.”
He shrugged, “People have nightmares about scavenging tendrils bursting out of their joints and backsides like a nest of worms. What did he change?”
I looked at David a little grumpily, “Using kinetic manipulator fields. I mean, I get it, but it’s less efficient. But he said that there are rifts where monsters can do something like that and that it would freak people out.”
David nodded, “There absolutely are. Good call getting him involved. Was he the reason the suits look uhh… Muscular?”
I nodded, “Yeah, I sorta wanted to increase the plating, but the armor isn’t really like a drone, and if I tried to put reinforced servos at every joint, it would not only look inhuman but actively interfere with trained reflexes and certain traits. Also, Dienne-Lar may prefer females, but he also has a certain attraction to herculean male forms as well.”
Chief Wasserman nodded, “Yeah, he does, but it was a good choice. It looks like one of those ancient statues that the old worlds keep in museums, only made out of obsidian. Can you give me a quick rundown?”
I nodded, appreciating the praise, although I’d prefer a hug, dammit. I’d gained three copper ranks designing and putting the things together, and Dienne-lar admitted it had gained him a rank, as well. He also wanted one, but there was no way we had the materials to create more than four of the things.
“Well, first off, even with all of the ship’s facilities, these can’t be mass-produced, and if the wearer changes their physical shape too much, it would have to be rebuilt, like if someone got too muscular or put on too much weight. Each of them takes a solid day just to assemble, even with the drone bay printing most of the parts.”
He nodded, “That’s a step up. Most enhanced armor can take almost a year to enchant. Leaning on your traits isn’t bad, just don’t run yourself dry.”
I smiled and then put on a more professional expression. “Well, these models count as class three copper-tier enchanted armor. Full environmental and thermal protection up to 1500 degrees passively, the melting temperature of steel, or 2000 degrees as long as there is energy for the cooling systems, and down to 12 degrees passively or absolute zero with the heating systems. Radiation shielding up to 80 kilorads, and the usual package of ten thousand hours of air reclamation.”
“Ten thousand hours?”
I nodded, “Ten thousand plus. You can also increase that, or power the thermal protection if you can replace the cores as they are expended, or you can give the cores time to recharge. It’s shielded magitech instead of electricity, as per Dienne-Lar’s suggestion. The electrical system uses cool hydrogen microfusion that can draw off your internal air supply too, which again, the cores can recharge.”
He nodded, “I am not going to tell you how impressive the energy system alone is, but keep going.”
“Okay, umm, it has solid spiritual and necrotarsic protection, which Kessler helped me with, up to Silver Tier. I wanted to try for gold tier but the only gold-tier spiritual-linked individual we have on board is you, and your system is still healing and getting rid of necrotic energy.”
“Kinetic redistribution and absorption systems. The armor itself is copper-tier, but with the copper-tier kinetic absorption, it can handle up to silver-ranked attacks in most cases. Between that and the power absorption, it should be able to handle even high-ranked plasma for a limited time. Acid is only up to steel ranked, though, but that should be good as long as you keep it in mind, and water-flush decontamination is built in. Fully electrically and Faraday shielded up to gold rank, but that’s just a matter of physics, as is vibration and shock protection. Zero psychic shielding, but that’s basically because I have no idea how the mental stuff works.”
He smiled a little, “If you have it EMP shielded up to gold rank, the Faraday shielding innately gives it some decent psychic shielding as well. How’s it move?”
I sighed, “Well, the initial adaptation for the cores and data systems takes almost half an hour. I tried to cut it down, but the more systems you add, the longer the neural link takes to adapt. That’s just hard magitech, and it’s true even if you are adapting gear piecemeal. Once you have it customized, though, it only takes about twenty seconds to re-enable.” I sighed. “That’s where the downside comes in.”
“The downside?”
I nodded and pointed at the boxlike contraption nearby. “Yes, you can eject the armor pieces if you have to, but getting it re-enabled, by hand, takes an engineer almost half an hour to get everything slotted and lined up. Or you can keep it in a loading box, which will let you put it on or take it off quickly, but each loading box has to be customized to a particular suit. That means space in the armory or each berthing.”
I shrugged, “The Mark four could open up and you could just sort of step into it while it adjusted itself, but Taera said it was too creepy, like climbing up Cthulhu’s butthole, whatever that means. It was also a hardware security vulnerability that data cutters could exploit.”
David smiled, causing my heart to speed up a little, “That’s fine. I’d rather build armor bays in the berthing than force the guys to line up in the armory to load up in an emergency. It’s something we can work with. So far this looks amazing, I hope you put some transfer protection software in, though.”
“Transfer protection?”
Wasserman nodded, “Yeah, the armor is damned close to an epic copper-tier item. That means thieves.”
I looked at him, an eyebrow raised, “But I wasn’t done giving you the basics yet.”
“There’s more?”
I nodded, “Yeah. I can add something, I guess, but you might want to let the ship’s data security team have a crack at it afterward. I am not really good at that.”
He nodded, “That I will. Consider that a priority. So you said there’s more?”
I nodded, “Yep. Not a lot, but when I said traits could be used, I wasn’t kidding. Since I couldn’t use traditional servos, I talked to the Chief Engineer. Did you know we had a nanoweaver onboard?”
He shook his head, “No, but with the number of rifts this ship hits it doesn’t surprise me. What Tier?”
“Silver,” I replied. “But that’s another reason the suits look almost organic. Carbon pressure weaves simulate endoskeletal musculature instead of servos, so you can use copper endurance or might boost to multiply it. Dirk, for example, can easily out-muscle an iron-rank if he’s wearing the suit. We might need to invest in some new melee weapons, though, since the copper-ranked weaponry most of the troopers have as backups won’t hold up well to iron-ranked abuse.”
“Noted.”
“The same is true of the handplates, helmet, kneeplates, and the entire calf and foot assembly. Carbon pressure weaves, but they are sheathed in Iron-ranked titanium from the ship’s supplies. Yes, I got permission, but otherwise, a hand-to-hand fight would shred the armor. That’s also why we need to hit a rift… Iron-ranked metal isn’t cheap. I kinda spent all of my shares already.”
David laughed, “Remember the awards ceremony? Dirk chewed all the personnel that were bitching about you getting an extra share because he said you were a tech, and all of it would go back to getting new toys to help keep us alive.”
I blushed, “Uhh… I also got some snacks and a new umm… outfit. I mean, in case we have something I can’t go to in uniform or on shore leave. And I saved a little.”
He smirked, and then asked, “So is there anything else you want to tell me about the armor?”
I thought about it, “There were some other things I wanted to add, but Braxis put a hold on it because it would make the soldiers too dependent. Umm, what else… full climbing kit, inertial protection up to 200 G’s, standard in-rift comm package, floodlights, standard aiming and connection jacks, sensor suite with target acquisition, GPS, and IFF recognition…”
I thought about it, “Oh, and Murphy helped me set up an emergency medical suite and medical lockdown system.”
“Lockdown system?”
“Yeah, the medical suite is standardized, and then I have a core-powered emergency medical system for damage the auto doc can’t handle, and then if your life signs drop to zero, the suit itself institutes a full petrification protocol, revokable.”
“Like… magical petrification? The spell?”
I nodded, “Yes, but revokable, so it behaves like a cryogenic suspension system without all that mucking about with freezing, tissue breakdown, and accidental shattering. Murphy says that as long as your head and spine are still intact, the suit will let her bring you back alive. She calls it the goblin option.”
He shook his head, “That’s a hell of a lot of innovation, especially in only two weeks. How many ranks did you guys get?”
“Murphy got two, Kellar got one, Braxis got one, and Dienne-Lar got one… Braxis was surprised because he’s a lot higher tier.”
“And you?”
I blushed again, “Three ranks. I am high copper already. I also got a ton of trait upgrades.”