1
The Centaur paladin crested the rise, its pedestal traversing to bring its cannon to bear.
Staff Sergeant Reverent Pelletier, Perseus Union Marine Corps, darted forward and closed the distance. He raised Pashu, his IBHU, from where she hung from his left shoulder where once his organic arm was connected.
He didn’t have to activate a mechanical trigger of any kind. He merely “thought” it to fire, exactly as if he were pointing. The braided meson beam shot downrange just as the paladin’s cannon zeroed in on Rev. There was a burst of blue as the beam hit the paladin, followed a moment later by a spectacular blast as the enemy armor self-detonated.
<Another paladin, zero-four-three, three hundred, nineteen meters,> Punch, his battle buddy AI, said.
Rev spun around, the first paladin forgotten. At 319 meters, this one was too far for Pashu’s cannon, but Rev was well within the enemy’s range, and he’d have to run too far while exposed to get within his firing envelope before being nailed himself.
He knew his only option was his Morays. He started sprinting to his right as he fired three of his six missiles, each one a quarter-second apart. The paladin reacted, firing its self-defense belt, destroying the first missile and deflecting the second. But before it could fire a second belt, the third missile hit home.
A Moray was never a sure kill against a paladin, but this time, the missile burned through the enemy armor, setting off a catastrophic explosion, the pedestal cartwheeling thirty meters into the air before it came down with a thud and a cloud of dust.
<Riever, two-eight-one, one hundred five meters.>
Rev spun around again. Right in front of him, the cannon muzzle looking huge as Rev could almost look down it, the riever relentlessly closed the distance to him . . . and if he could see down the muzzle, he was within its sights. Rev dove to the ground as the blast fired where he’d been standing an instant before. Firing a Moray from the prone position was likely to drop the missile into the dirt before it could lock on and fly, so with a twitch of his shoulder, he switched Pashu to the 20mm cannon mounted beneath his main gun. Before the rieiver could reacquire him as a target, he fired fifteen jacketless rounds within a period of less than a second.
With every five rounds a tracer, he watched them cross the intervening space and slam into the riever. The thing’s twelve legs collapsed, and the main body smacked into the ground.
It didn’t self-detonate, but Rev knew it was dead. He stood up and brushed the dirt off of his front with his right hand as he surveyed the damage.
“Cease fire, cease fire on Range four-zero-nine.”
Rev turned back to where a door was opening from the underground range bunker. A smiling Daryll, the Sieben tech rep for the Camp Nguyen IBHUs, came jogging up to him.
“How did it feel?”
Rev rotated Pashu, trying to detect the same pulling sensation he’d experienced since the Centaur invasion. There wasn’t anything.
“Pretty good. Feels like when she was brand new.”
“Told you the new secondary harness was going to do the trick. The only thing better was going to be taking out the old and putting in the new model, but that would have taken another two months before you could start using it.”
Which wasn’t going to work, not with Rev’s orders to the Home Guard, the combined force that protected the home system.
“What about when you fired the twenty? How was the recoil?” Daryll asked as he took out his field scanner.
Rev had been using a .50 cal coilgun as his projectile weapon, which packed a pretty good punch in its own right. But the modified 20 mm cannon was finally finished, and the brass thought it best if he showed up at the Home Guard maxed out in firepower. There had been some concern that with the degradation of his support harnesses, the recoil of the twenty would be too strong even with the neodymium suppression system installed.
“Pretty good. Feels fine, in fact.”
“You say the word, and we’ll put back the fifty. You leave in three weeks, right?”
Rev nodded as he swung Pashu through her range of motion.
“OK, then, we’ve still got time. So, what do you think?” Daryll asked.
Having a 20 mm cannon instead of a .50 cal was pretty impressive, and every Marine in history loved things that made a bigger bang. The only downside was that he’d be sacrificing over a hundred rounds in his combat load.
But I sure don’t need to use as many, he told himself as he looked over to the dead riever.
“No, I’ll keep it.”
“I told Doctor C you’d say that, even if your shoulder was screaming at you to go back to the fifty.”
“You’re beginning to understand the Marine mind well, Daryll.”
“Is your shoulder screaming at you, though? Between you and me?”
“No, it really does feel OK.”
Which was a relief. He’d been suffering during the entire fight for New Hope. His original harness had started to break free, and the connection to his shoulder stub hadn’t been designed correctly to take the constant beating and stress he was putting on it. Right now, though, he almost felt human again.
“What about Lieutenant Macek and the other two? They getting these mods, too?”
“All four of you are. Six of you, if you count everyone. You’re going to be a long way from home, so we don’t want anyone to start breaking down like you guys did. We just needed you to test the mods first.”
“So, I’m the guinea pig?”
“Hell, Rev. You’re IBHU Number 1. You’ve always been the guinea pig.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Rev said with a laugh.
The laugh faded as he surveyed the range again. “You know, I never would have survived if this had been real.”
Daryll shrugged as he ran the scanner over Reb’s shoulder and torso. “Reality wasn’t important. We just had to put you through the paces. ’Sides, with the war over, what were we going to do with all those tin-ass targets? Seems like a waste to just let them sit in a warehouse somewhere. Except that riever there was supposed to blow after you nailed it. I’m going to have to get on someone’s case about that.”
Rev raised his eyebrows in question, then he raised Pashu so that Daryll could see the three remaining missile sleeves.
“The range is cold, Rev,” Daryll said, but without conviction. “You want to risk those rockers?”
“These?” Rev tapped the new insignia on his combat suit’s cuirass. “They sped up my date of promotion so that I’d report into Titan as a staff sergeant. You think they’ll take that away just because a fake riever cooks off? I mean, that can’t be my fault, right?”
Daryll looked back to the bunker. There was a range NCOIC, the Noncommissioned Officer in Charge, there, waiting for them to leave so she could call in the civilian maintenance crew to come, clean up the mess, and prepare for the next training evolution, and she’d know if Rev fired another Moray.
“Besides, the guy in charge of targets must have loaded the riever up with fireworks, and it’d be a shame to waste that effort. Might even be dangerous for them to have to take the charges out. Just thinking of our civilian workforce, you know.”
A wicked smile crossed Daryll’s face. “You think I can stay here with you? I want to feel it.”
“Your funeral.”
“Do it. I’ll take care of the sergeant in the bunker later.”
“Get behind me.”
Rev slowly raised Pashu. If that was a real riever hulk, hitting it again wouldn’t do much. But this was a fake riever, meant to mimic the real thing only in as far as maneuvering, and it had been rigged for a nice explosion.
Daryll stepped behind him, just off his right shoulder, but Rev lowered Pashu.
“What, you changed your mind?” Daryll asked, obviously disappointed.
“That scanner you have. You can use that to test the trigger connections back in the armory, right?”
“Yeah. Why do you ask?”
“Can you fire a live weapon with it?”
“Well, yeah. But what does that matter?”
“You want to kill that riever over there?”
A huge smile almost cracked Daryll’s face in two. “Me? Damned right, I do.”
“OK, scoot around to my left side. Put your arm right along the top of Pashu. I’ll make sure she’s aimed, but you’ll fire. OK?”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Daryll shifted his position as instructed. His front was hugging Rev’s back, his left arm over Rev’s IBHU as Rev aimed at the riever.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Daryll pressed one of the controls of his scanner, and the missile fired. It slammed into the hulk an instant later, which went up into a huge ball of flame. The heat rushed back to flow over them. Rev, in his PAL-5 body armor, felt nothing, of course.
He turned around to look at Daryll. If Rev didn’t know better, he’d swear the guy’s hair was singed, but he was smiling to beat the band.
“Well, tin-ass killer, what do you think?” Rev asked.
“Righteous. Totally righteous.”
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