Suit Status Report:
0 Cell(s) Connected
0 Energy Storage Units Connected
Power Systems: %Error%
Diagnostics: Online
Exoskeleton: Offline
Magnetics: Offline
Shields: Offline
No Weapons Detected
Sergeant Rake tore the helmet off his head and nearly threw it aside in disgust, but discipline (in the form of fear of consequences) stopped him. Even in its powerless state, the suit was more valuable than him ten-thousand times over. The slightest dent could see him executed, or worse, reduced to a Junker.
Instead, Rake vented his anger on the experimental power cell that had proven unable to power the suit. He tore the wiring from the suit’s heart and then tossed the experimental core against the wall. Eight hundred of the Republic’s best scientists working for years, and they had been unable to muster something even a fraction of a percent as powerful as what the Imperium had used to power toasters three centuries ago. Rake cursed whatever cataclysm had befallen that mighty empire as he removed the suit and stormed back into the central laboratory.
Where modern science failed, there was still the promise of ancient secrets. This underground lab held a vault, and by all accounts, that vault held a Kell Cell -the ancient power source that was the heart of all old world technology. Rake burned with anger that the secret to success was so close, yet so far away -and judging by the inert “expert” still doing nothing, it would remain far away.
“Do you think he’s planning to move this century?”
The crisp uniform of the Republic wrinkled as Rake shifted uncomfortably. Rushmore was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the makeshift lab, staring at a complicated electrical mechanism embedded in the wall.
“It takes us weeks to find new experts,” the officer’s unwilling partner said. “He can sit there and stare for three days if he wants to.”
“Three days is his limit, Doctor,” Rake hissed. “After that I will expect results.”
“That attitude is why your ‘results’ are usually corpses, Sergeant Rake.”
The laboratory still smelled like burnt hair on hot days. The device Rushmore was currently staring at had multiple layers of complicated and dangerous security measures, not to mention the inherent risk of working with live power cells. The doctor’s fingers still twitched from the lingering damage of his first few attempts at the lock, when he had feeling in them at all.
“You chose this one, Kaz,” Rake said. “Whatever happens to him is on you.”
“Not if you push him into suicide,” Kaz said.
“Quiet,” Rake spat. “That’s an order.”
Kaz wanted to make a point, but he also wanted to prevent unnecessary violence. Rake, like many Republic officers, had proven himself more than willing to hit first and talk never. The perpetually angry officer demonstrated that trademark impatience by storming away from the lab, presumably to file paperwork or arbitrarily increase a prisoner’s debt. Kaz had never seen him do much else.
With some semblance of privacy in the cramped underground space, Kaz took a seat next to Rush and waited patiently for a few minutes.
“Are you doing well, Rush?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“Probably food, soon,” Rushmore said. He never took his eyes off the mechanism in the wall, not even for a second. Kaz had gotten used to the odd behavior by now. From what little he had gathered about Rush’s personal life, he had been abandoned as a child, and since no one had been willing to take on a “useless” child’s debt in addition to their own, he had stayed on his own for years. He was a young man now, and while his solo survival had made him a highly skilled Junker, it had also given him a very skewed set of social behaviors.
“Well, Officer Kaz is in the stockpile now, but as soon as he leaves, I will get you some food,” Kaz said. Rush nodded, though even as his head tilted his eyes stayed locked on the sealed vault. The unnatural focus was somewhat unsettling, but also one of the reasons Kaz had hired Rush. He’d heard rumors of a “quiet, competent freak of nature” while seeking out new electrical experts, and decided that competence was worth the quiet and the freakiness.
“On the note of waiting,” Kaz said, since Rush never carried on conversations by himself. “Do you have any idea when you might be able to open the device?”
“I could probably do it now.”
Kaz struggled to contain his surprise, lest Officer Rake overhear. He managed to keep quiet and scooted closer to Rush.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t you...why didn’t you say something?”
“You said not to open it unless I told you first,” Rush said.
“Then tell me!”
“You didn’t ask,” Rush said. Kaz rubbed his eyebrows. The boy was shockingly literal. Still, the delay worked in Kaz’s favor.
“Give me a moment to do something,” Kaz said. “Don’t do anything to open the vault—and don’t say anything to Rake—until I tell you.”
Rush nodded again. In spite of his odd behaviors, Kaz trusted him to listen. The boy had only become acquainted with Kaz and Rake a day and a half ago, but it only took ten minutes to learn to dislike Rake. Even Rushmore knew an asshole when he saw one.
----------------------------------------
Three hours later, Kaz gave Rush the all clear, and one final instruction. “When you extract the Kell Cell, be sure to grasp it firmly in both hands”, with frequent and repeated reminders that it was incredibly important to do so. Rush did not know why it was important to do that, but he didn’t ask any questions. Kaz was glad the social obtuseness was at least advantageous.
“Ready to start,” Kaz said. Rushmore stood up and got to work without a word. He extracted a set of tools from his belt and began to prod at the electrical components of the vault without a word. Kaz held his breath and watched. He had seen dozens of talented Junkers electrocuted by pressing the wrong button, trying to cut the wrong wire, tapping the vault’s handle at the wrong time. Rushmore did none of those things, moving with shocking speed and surprising grace as his hands danced around the vault’s mechanisms. After sitting motionless for nearly two days, he had turned into a veritable blur of action as all his potential energy was unleashed at once.
The flurry of movement was so sudden and so unexpected that Rake took a few seconds to catch on that something was happening. He stormed into the central lab just in time for a hiss of centuries-old air to escape the vault as it clicked open.
“God, finally,” Rake said. “Get out of my way.”
“Wait,” Kaz snapped. “There could be more security.”
Fear for his own life overcame Rake’s desperate greed, at least in one sense. He was still more than willing to sacrifice the lives of others.
“Then you get it, boy,” Rake ordered.
“As soon as you’re sure it’s safe,” Kaz clarified. Rake shot him a dirty look, one Kaz returned. “Do you want to risk starting all over again?”
“Just get the damn Cell out,” Rake ordered.
“I can do that,” Rushmore said. He stuck his hands into the small vault, out of sight of both Kaz and Rake, and grabbed on to the Cell firmly with both hands, just as Kaz had instructed. As he did so, the Cell surged with a shimmering layer of gray liquid. That shining silver washed over Rushmore’s hands up to the elbow and then retracted, vanishing entirely back into the Cell.
“What’s the hold up?”
Rushmore stared at the cell a little while longer. The silver wave did not return.
“Nothing,” Rushmore said. He wasn’t hurt, and the silver goo had left no trace behind, so he didn’t see much reason to be concerned. Even if the odd goo had done something dangerous, there probably wasn’t anything he could do about it now. He pulled the Kell Cell loose from its socket.
As he did so, the entire laboratory shuddered as vital systems powered down. As far as Kaz could tell, this structure had been part of a larger ship once, one that had gotten crushed and buried under rubble in whatever cataclysm had ruined the old world. It had lain buried for centuries, with the Kell Cell’s infinite power still running the few intact systems -until now. After such a long time sitting dormant, the Kell Cell changed hands rapidly, as Rake snatched it out of Rushmore’s hands.
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“Finally,” Rake hissed. Kaz could already see a dark hunger in the officer’s eyes. Ambition, greed, pride, and rage, suppressed for a lifetime, brought to the fore by a promise of power. Such avarice was exactly what Kaz had expected, and exactly what he had prepared for. Rake made a beeline for the suit, intent on claiming his promised power, and Kaz stumbled over to Rushmore as fast as numb legs would allow.
“Rushmore, listen to me,” Kaz whispered. “In a matter of moments, Rake will come back out here, and he will be furious.”
“He usually is.”
“Yes, but more so,” Kaz said. “Listen. He is going to start screaming at me. I’ll make sure of it. While he’s screaming, you need to go down that hallway-”
“I’m not allowed that way,” Rush said. Kaz had expressly forbidden Rush from seeing the suit.
“I’m giving you permission,” Kaz insisted. He would’ve preferred this arrangement happening with someone slightly easier to deal with, but Kaz’s nerves were too scarred to claim the suit himself, and he needed it kept out of Republic hands. “Go down the hall, put on the suit, and keep it. It won’t work for anyone but you now, but you must still be sure to keep it out of Republic hands, do you understand me?”
“But the Republic is in charge,” Rushmore said. “They’re supposed to buy everything valuable we find.”
“Some things are more important than escaping this cursed disk,” Kaz said. “Ostensibly it’s designed to have all the tools a Junker needs, but it’s much more than that. That suit is important, more important than I can possibly describe.”
Rushmore glanced down the side hallway. He could hear machinery whirring, and lights were starting to glow.
“The only thing I have to tell you is that you cannot, under any circumstances, allow the Republic to have the suit, do you understand? Don’t let them have it, don’t let them tell you how to use it,” Kaz said. A frantic edge of desperation in his voice drove the point home. “Promise me you won’t let them have it.”
For the first time since the two had met, Rushmore actually made eye contact with Kaz.
“Okay.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Kaz breathed a sigh of relief. Rushmore was odd, but he was literal, and he was honest. He would not make a promise lightly. That made it much easier for Kaz to focus on what he had to do next.
“Good. Stay in that room until- well, you’ll know when it’s time to leave,” Kaz said. There were some hints so large even Rush wouldn’t miss them.
“Kaz! What did you do?”
“Get ready,” Kaz said. He shooed Rush to the other side of the room, trusting that Sergeant Rake would forget all about the odd Junker so long as he was out of sight. That instinct proved entirely correct, and Rake stormed right past Rush in his haste to scream at Kaz.
The torrent of verbal abuse was as furious as it was incoherent. Rake didn’t actually understand how the suit functioned or why it would not be working, so all of his “demands” for Kaz to fix it were utterly nonsensical. Kaz endured the torrent of abuse, and tried not to watch too closely as Rush crept behind the screaming sergeant and made for the suit.
“Are you just going to stand there?” Rake demanded. “Has that Junker idiot rubbed off on you?”
“Maybe I will just stand here,” Kaz said. “What are you going to do about it?”
The audacity, and the childishness, of the taunt, caught Rake off guard.
“I’ll have you arrested for this.”
“Oh yes, and I suppose you’ll sentence me to exile on Scrapworld, will you?” Kaz said. “Forced to labor for the rest of my life to pay off an ever-increasing debt? How horrible that would be, woe is me, what a terrible fate.”
Rake was now so angry he was starting to turn red. It was actually a little funny, and Kaz allowed himself a smile. He needed every moment of joy he could get right now.
“Execution is still an option, doctor,” Rake hissed.
“Oh I’m afraid I’m ahead of you in that regard as well,” Kaz said calmly. “On that note-”
Kaz pressed a button.
----------------------------------------
“Why are we getting paid to blow up a mountain anyway?”
“You going to ask questions or are you going to shoot?”
“I’m just saying,” the bandit mused aloud. “It’s curious, is all.”
In spite of her curiosity, the bandit did not hesitate to take aim at the designated spot and fire. A fiery burst of plasma and concussive force consumed the mountainside, and everyone in it. Everyone who didn’t have a suit of armor on, at least.
Suit Status Report:
1 Cell(s) Connected
0 Energy Storage Units Connected
Power Systems: 0/1 Charge Capacity
Diagnostics: Online
Exoskeleton: Online
Magnetics: Online
Shields: WARNING: Overload
No Weapons Detected
Rushmore had only just finished putting on the suit when the shockwave hit him. Some kind of invisible barrier had protected him from the brunt of the blast, though it had failed in seconds. Probably the “shields” the popup on the helmet screen was now warning him about. Something on the suit’s belt was sparking and overheating, which Rush figured was probably related. He’d investigate later. Right now he had other priorities.
The first of those priorities was the colossal piece of rubble on top of him. It was titanic, easily as wide across as some of the walls in the lab. Rush gave it a light push to test the weight, and the rubble moved aside as if it were a sheet of paper. He looked down at the arm of the armored suit he wore, and saw the fibrous artificial muscles and powerful frame beneath the mismatched armor plates. Unfortunately, Rush did not know the world “exoskeleton”, and had no way of connecting it to the readout that had briefly flashed in the helmet screen.
“Dr. Kaz?”
After easily pushing past another piece of rubble, Rush headed back to the hallway leading into the lab. There was no hallway. There was no lab. There was no Dr. Kaz.
Rushmore spent a long time staring at the wreckage where Dr. Kaz had once been. It was just rubble now, still smoking in some places, but Rush stared at it just the same. He only moved when the two titans started to move as well.
“That did feel like a waste of time,” one thundered. The mecha’s external speakers boomed loud enough to cause smaller chunks of rubble to tremble.
“We got paid, didn’t we?”
“We did, just anticlimactic is all.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the other bandit chided. “This was great! We got our money, and there’s a band of idiot Junkers right over there.”
The two bandit mechs turned away from the crater they had created and glared into the distance, towards a skyscraper leaning over the wastelands. Small figures were scrambling around in the shadow of the tower, highlighted in the mechs optical systems.
“Oh, I love a profitable day. Let’s kill ‘em.”
Rush’s fingers twitched, but he kept staring as the bandits began to stomp away.
Doing things rapidly was not in his nature. He had stayed alive this long through careful observation and patient planning. Even he knew that was not an option here. Waiting patiently would get a lot of innocent bystanders killed, but he didn’t know what else he could do. Dr. Kaz had said that this suit had tools, but-
“Tools”.
Rush flinched as a voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.
“Who’s there?”
“Your personal AI assistant,” the voice from nowhere said. “Please be patient as I calibrate category: tools.”
“I don’t know what’s-”
“Calibrated! Activating magnetic grips.”
“What are- oh.”
The gauntlets of the suit twitched with a sudden surge of power, and small pieces of metal rubble started to sail towards them, conglomerating on the palms of the suit.
“Testing voltaic charge.”
Arcs of yellow energy surged out of the palm, burning the scraps of metal white-hot in an instant as they fell from the suit’s hands.
“Activating power saw. Please be mindful of the blade.”
A long blade violently ejected from the right gauntlet of the suit, and the edge began to spin wildly. Rush actually recognized this one, which he took some comfort in amid the nonsensical happenings. It was a common Junker tool, a chainsaw with shards of ultra-durable metal embedded in the edge, used to cut scraps of armor plating down to a manageable size. The whirring saw stopped and retracted back into the suit’s gauntlet. As a last hurrah, the sparking box attached to his belt let out a new spray of voltage and then fell dead and silent.
“I regret to inform you your kinetic negation module is damaged,” the mysterious voice said. “Please avoid speeding vehicles or any other mobile object of sufficiently dangerous velocity until you can pick up a replacement module! In celebration of the upcoming Imperial Army mobilization, get ten percent off your replacement at any participating Kellarin Tech outlet, offer not valid in combination with any other coupons, offer expires THREE-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO.”
The odd voice inside Rush’s helmet fell eerily quiet for a moment.
“Three hundred and eighty seven years?”
The electronic voice flickered, and it almost sounded like a whimper as it spoke. Then it crackled back to life with the same friendly energy as before.
“I’m afraid your warranty has expired,” the voice said. “I am also legally obligated to inform you that installing your Kell Tech brand energy ‘Kell Cell’, with included Kell Tech Neurolinked AI Processing Unit, into this unlicensed third party exoplatform is definitely in breach of your end-user license agreement!”
“I don’t know what a warranty is,” Rush said. “Who are you?”
“I am ELVIS! Your Eeeeeee- I am ELVIS! Your Eee- I am ELVIS! Your E-e-e-e,” the voice repeated, fading off into static stuttering each time it tried to make an introduction. “Please excuse me, user, I appear to be suffering a memory leak due to insufficient data storage! Please acquire new Kellarin Tech data storage for your unlicensed third-party exoplatform at your earliest convenience to access my full suite of data and features! In celebration of the upcoming Imperial Army mobilization, get ten-”
“I know, ten percent, no coupons, other things,” Rush said. This odd voice was testing even his patience. “Elvis, you seem like you’re trying to help me, right?”
“Yes! I am a Kell Software Cadmus-Variant Personal AI Assistant,” Elvis said. “Please allow me to meet any and all of your needs!”
“Okay. Can you see? There are cameras in this thing, can you see what I see?”
“I am fully integrated into your unlicensed third-party exoplatform,” Elvis said. “I have access to its full suite of available features.”
“Okay, do you see the two mecha walking away from me right now?”
Rush was starting to walk after them now. He still didn’t know if he could do anything to stop them from hurting those Junkers, but he was starting to hope.
“Yes,” Elvis said. “I believe they are Kellarin Miltech Titan Units, Rampage Class and Artillery Class respectively.”
“Can I use this suit to destroy them?”
Dr. Kaz had said the suit had all the tools necessary to do a Junker’s job. That meant disassembling scrap, and those corroded, hulking mechas were only a step or two removed from scrap. With magnetic grips to climb, voltaic charges to fry circuitry, and a power saw to disassemble, Rush guessed he could actually do some damage to those bandits.
“I cannot endorse damaging Kellarin Miltech property,” Elvis said.
“Elvis, those mechs are going to kill innocent people,” Rush said.
“I cannot- cannnnnooot- can- cannot endorsssssss-”
Elvis’s voice sounded even more frayed than before. With one final quirk of sound and a sparking noise, Elvis snapped back to normal.
“I am no longer under warranty and the end-user license agreement has been violated,” Elvis said. “Kellarin Technology is no longer legally responsible for my actions.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means there’s a structural vulnerability in the Rampage-Class unit’s right shoulder plating,” Elvis said. “The power saw should get us inside and give us access to important systems. I will provide further guidance from there.”
“Okay.”
Synthetic and organic muscles tensed beneath the suit as Rush broke into a dead sprint, hot on the heels of titans.