Exodus, page 20
Simon stood and stared at the armor for a moment. All of his life, his father had taught him what the armor meant, what he might one day be called on to do.
When he’d been younger, he’d loved the armor for what it had allowed him to do. Suited up, he could run faster, jump higher, survive harsh impacts, and was incredibly strong. The HUD inside the helmet gave him a 360-degree view of the world, as well as access to a range of infrared and thermographic vision.
Even by itself, the armor was a weapon of incredible destruction.
“Is something wrong?” the female voice prompted.
Simon had to speak past the tightness in his throat. “No. Nothing’s wrong.” He entered the vault and approached the armor.
His father’s letter lay on a shelf near the armor. Trembling, Simon opened the letter, knowing the words on the page were the last he would have from his father. He dreaded what he would find.
Instead, his father’s gentle words and understanding voice filled his mind and his heart. It was almost too much. For a moment, emotion crippled Simon. He focused, drawing it back into himself and walling it away. Don’t think now. You’ve got things to do now. There’ll be time to think later. Time when you can’t do anything but think.
His father had always coached him to think that way when he faced battle. When he’d been little, Simon had always imagined being at his father’s side, fighting the demons with him.
Only the demons had never come. That dream had gone away when Simon had been a teenager. Simon’s need to get out, to do more, had dawned within him then. And his father had tried to tighten the reins.
“Simon Cross,” the computer voice asked, “is there anything you require?”
“No. I’m fine.” Simon dragged his finger across the seal of one of the pockets inside the armor’s breastplate. The pocket opened and he folded the letter inside tenderly.
He stripped to his skin, then dressed in the armor automatically, stepping into the breeches, then sitting on a reinforced bench that would take his weight. The suit was heavy. The designers had realized the need for some extra weight when fighting monsters. Throwing an empty tin can at a target didn’t do as much good as throwing one filled with contents.
Fully dressed—because alloy was used, with the thickness of the armor walls, the self-contained environment unit, waste disposal, and the onboard med-system—his weight came in at almost four hundred pounds. For all of that, he felt the microfusion plant and NanoDyne servo-systems made him nearly weightless and move like a circus acrobat, with improved speed and strength.
Once the breeches were locked into place, he slid his feet into the oversized boots. They came with electromagnetic soles that could be charged in a heartbeat to allow him some “friction” on friendly metal surfaces, allowing him to run up walls for a short distance or resist being pushed or even dropped if it came to that. Anchors could be fired from the soles as well, as weapons and to ground him.
He pulled on the breastplate, then the sleeves. They connected to the shoulders of his breastplate at his spoken command. The gloves slid on smoothly, locking into place as well. Already he felt light, stronger, more whole than he had in two years. He couldn’t believe how much he’d missed the feeling he now had. Lifting the featureless helmet, he pulled it over his head. It ratcheted into place.
Complete. The thought spun through his thoughts, pulling him into tighter focus.
At first, Simon could only see through the faceplate like it was made of glass. There weren’t any special visual adjustments being made.
Simon took a deep breath. “Online.”
At once, the suit powered, pulling energy from the solar-charged cells that had been in hibernation. Once powered up, the cells would last for years. Even when the suit was in constant use, the recharge time was minimal. Solar streaming through the microfusion drive proved infinitely better than prior solar batteries.
In addition to the solar cells, most of the armor also ran on arcane energy as a backup. Some, like Derek’s armor, operated primarily on arcane energy with the solar cells as backup.
The armor hardened. All the seams bonded through electromagnetic or magical means, depending on the nature of the armor. Simon’s armor held bonds formed out of both. Liquid poured into the cavities separating his flesh from the form-fitting armor, making everything more solid.
With the liquid in place he wouldn’t get jostled or thumped around during impacts or sudden stops. It was even hygienic and therapeutic, capable of cleansing and medicating wounds that weren’t life-threatening. If a limb were amputated, the suit was designed to seal, stanch the blood with a tourniquet, and stabilize the wearer with medical drugs.
Simon lifted his arms effortlessly, glorying in the power. He turned and made his selection of weapons. He chose the broadsword he and his father had forged together before they’d made his armor after he’d gotten his full growth. Warriors always grew into their final weapons before they were ready for their armor.
He added a Spike Bolter, holstering the pistol at his side and sheathing the sword down his back. Turning, he looked into the mirror at the end of the vault.
An armored Templar warrior stared back at him. Readouts quickly identified the dark blue and silver image as nonthreatening. He took pride in the look, remembering how he’d first felt when he’d seen himself in armor.
He’d gotten his first real armor at twelve, the age when boys and girls would have been allowed into battle with the demons if they appeared. Thereafter, he’d forged new gear as he’d grown out of what he had. When he’d reached his full growth and had found his best fighting weight, he’d forged the armor he now wore.
The dark blue and silver armor glinted in the light. In bright daylight, without the stealth mode activated, the mirror-bright surfaces could prove blinding.
All that was missing was his father standing behind him.
Simon turned and left the vault. The door swung closed behind him, locking tight with a loud bang.
I hope you can hear me, Dad, Simon thought. I’m going to be everything you raised me to be. I’m going to make you proud.
But that was only, Simon knew, if he was given the chance.
Outside the weapons complex, Simon stood for a moment and looked around. Inside the suit now, he felt bigger and more powerful. Leah looked incredibly small.
“Simon?” Leah looked surprised. She took a step back from him.
“Yes.” Her voice and his sounded normal to Simon, but he knew his would sound different to her.
She stared at him. “It’s just…you look a lot different.”
“I know.” Simon felt different, too. The HUD had him connected to the world in ways he’d forgotten. The sensor relays that had activated once they’d come into contact with the skin over his spinal column gave him a lot of feedback. He could touch and feel, but he had a lot of control over what sensations he experienced. True pain would never touch him as long as the suit’s integrity hadn’t been breached and the healing wards and drugs remained intact.
“Is that everything?” Derek asked.
“Yes.”
“What about personal belongings?”
Simon thought about the other items his father had left in the vault. Images and vid, keepsakes they’d gotten from different places they’d gone to, all of those things were still within the vault.
“Nothing that I want to carry with me,” Simon said. If he fell, he wanted those things to remain intact. The Cross family had dwindled over the years. His father had had a younger brother, but the brother—Robert Cross—had died in a tragic accident.
Simon was all that remained of his family.
Derek hesitated. “You might not get to come back for it.”
“Yes,” Simon said, “I will. If I live, those things are the only inheritance my father left me. I won’t be denied what little there is.”
Graydon dropped a heavy hand on Simon’s shoulder. The old Templar’s metal-gloved hand clanked.
“You’ll come back and fetch what you need, lad,” Graydon said. “Whenever you’ve a mind. I’ll give you my word on that.”
Simon took the old man’s hand and shook it. “I appreciate that.”
“No trouble, lad.” Graydon smiled. “You just be careful out there.”
Simon said he would, then he followed Derek back out of the House of Rorke Underground.
The trip back from Baker Street tube station was vastly different for Simon than the trip to the area. Even though he’d been wearing night-vision goggles, Simon hadn’t been able to truly see.
With the helmet in place, though, the interior of the tube line was lit up as brightly as daylight. Simon walked fearlessly. He was a predator in his natural environment now.
But he was more able to see the carnage that had been left behind by the marauding demons. The HUD was so sophisticated it matched the real colors around him instead of rendering them in green.
He worked so hard on not seeing what he saw that he almost missed the start of the attack. The HUD painted the figures hanging upside down from the tube ceiling green as he turned the corner.
Other twisted and misshapen figures lay in wait behind the overturned cars of the tube train. Once he saw them, though, Simon knew they were Darkspawn.
“Ambush!” one of Derek’s men yelled in warning.
Out of habit, Simon reached for his sword and the Spike Bolter. He spotted Leah behind him in the HUD view. Backing into her, he growled, “Get to cover.” Then he had the Spike Bolter up in his fist and was firing. A string of detonations ripped away the quietness inside the tube.
The palladium spikes ripped into one of the Darkspawn hanging from the ceiling, pinning the creature to the stone surface. The demon yowled in pain and anger as it tried to rip itself free. Its thin body whipped and twisted, tearing the wounds in its flesh even larger.
Upon closer inspection, Simon saw that the demons had woven a web of cargo netting they’d undoubtedly scavenged from the overturned tube cars, on the ceiling. They’d worked awfully quickly to have set the ambush up on the Templar’s return.
A moment later, the Darkspawn Simon had nailed to the ceiling braced its feet and pulled through the spikes. Dark blood ran freely from the wounds. Snarling, the demon landed only a few feet in front of Simon. It lifted a weapon and took aim.
Whirling, Simon dodged out of the way of the deadly beam. The beam struck the wall behind him. Through the HUD, Simon could plainly see that Leah was in hiding beside one of the overturned tube cars.
Simon attacked before the Darkspawn could fire again. He swept the sword cleanly through the demon’s neck. The headless corpse stumbled around for a few moments, then collapsed in a broken heap.
Beyond the demon he’d slain, Derek and his men were hard-pressed to keep up. Swords flashed and occasional firearms filled the tube tunnel with bright light and noise. Stepping over the obscene corpse stretched on the ground, Simon moved forward to engage the enemy further.
Four Darkspawn launched themselves at Simon. He lifted his foot and smashed it into the face of the center one. “Spikes,” he ordered out of reflex.
Spikes popped out of his boot soles and tore into the demon’s face, slicing through two of its eyes and leaving them in ruin as it staggered back.
Firing the Spike Bolter into the face of another Darkspawn, Simon nailed the creature to the side of an overturned tube train car. The third creature blocked Simon’s immediate sword attack, bringing up a rifle to block the heavy blade.
Shifting, seeing in the HUD that he had plenty of room for such a maneuver, Simon spun to his right, bringing the sword around in a glittering arc. Using all the power that the servo-motors and actuators in his armor gave him, Simon slashed the demon into halves.
The fourth Darkspawn threw itself at Simon’s chest and knocked him backward. Other demons fired Grapplers and cluster rifles.
“Warning,” the soft feminine voice inside his helmet said. “Incoming.”
A bright flare lit up his HUD as he fell. “Rocket!” he warned the others. If they made a reply, he lost it during the conflagration that followed.
Twenty-Four
T he rocket slammed into the wall to Simon’s left, barely missing two of the Templar entrenched there. The explosion knocked the Templar and the Darkspawn horde to the ground.
Simon heard nothing of the explosion. The armor’s automatic dampers cut in, muting all the outside noise. For a moment, his world was total silence, but he was buffeted around by the concussions.
Landing on his back, thrown back across the ground nearly twenty feet, Simon hurtled against an overturned tube car and came to a sudden stop. Slightly disoriented even with the armor’s defenses, he looked at his hands, making certain he still had his sword and the Spike Bolter.
When he looked up again, three more Darkspawn were headed for him. Flames clung to two of them. Simon’s hearing was already steadily returning as the onboard systems compensated for the auditory onslaught.
“Did anyone see where that rocket came from?” Derek demanded.
“No,” Simon answered. He gathered his feet and vaulted over the heads of the Darkspawn. Swiveling to his left, coming around in a tight arc, he pointed the Spike Bolter into a demon’s face and squeezed the trigger rapidly. Four spikes knocked the demon back in stuttering steps. It was dead before it hit the ground.
The second Darkspawn managed to lift a sword to block Simon’s blow. Shifting, Simon brought his right leg up and down in a heel strike that caved the demon’s head in. Another demon hammered Simon’s left wrist with a rifle butt, knocking the Spike Bolter free.
Giving ground, desperate because the Darkspawn were coming for him again, Simon gripped the sword hilt in both hands. He swung and parried, feeling the sword once more become a natural extension of himself.
As he fought, he thought of Leah, hiding somewhere in the shadows, defenseless and alone. She wasn’t the only one whose life would be like that. He remembered the people who had lost their lives on the coast. They had died only minutes from achieving freedom. He also thought about the people he’d seen hiding in the wreckage of the city, living as best as they were able and turning to preying on strangers.
Simon knew his father had trained all his life to prevent such things from happening. But it had happened anyway.
Breathing hard in spite of the augmentation of the armor, Simon finished the last of the Darkspawn confronting him just as another rocket ripped through the air. The female voice in his helmet warned him again.
This time, though, Simon tracked the rocket back to its source. “Mark target,” he told the onboard computer system.
“Target marked. Designation confirmed.”
Immediately, crimson crosshairs formed around the demon nearly a hundred yards farther down the tube tunnel.
Unfortunately, the Darkspawn wielding the rocket launcher had a better view this time. The rocket struck one of the Templar and left him lying in a pool of twisted and slagged metal.
Rushing forward, Simon scooped up his fallen Spike Bolter and sped for his quarry. A knot of Darkspawn blocked his forward progress. Only a few feet in front of them, Simon leaped into the air. Without the armor he could have performed such a maneuver, but with it, the move was even stronger.
Simon sailed a few feet over the heads of the Darkspawn, flipped, and landed on his feet hard enough to crack the cement floor underfoot. Even flipping through the air, the HUD had remained locked on the target and kept Simon oriented.
He ran, feeling the actuators and servos kick in, adding their own response to the sheer, naked strength that drove him. Adrenaline pounded through his system, and he knew better than to let it take over. But he didn’t have much choice.
All the years of practice he’d had in the armor hadn’t prepared him for how he felt while he was using the full prowess of the armor. Despite the practice he’d had, he couldn’t control his body.
He wondered if his father had suffered from the same reactions. Had Thomas Cross suffered from the enthusiastic anticipation that he now felt? Somehow Simon didn’t think so. His father was the most competent and complete man he’d ever known.
But he’s dead, isn’t he? The thought tore through Simon’s mind like a palladium spike or a Prayer of Conflagration. He felt his heart accelerate again. He wasn’t afraid to die. It was what he’d trained to do his whole life.
And yet…
“Accessing stim kit,” the armor’s onboard entity said. “Standby for anxiety alteration.”
“No,” Simon said, knowing that he just hadn’t acclimated to the suit and the situation. No one could have truly prepared for this. Anxiety, under the circumstances, was understandable. “Override programming.” He added the password.
By that time he was closing on the demon with the rocket launcher. The Darkspawn glared at Simon as it struggled to feed another rocket into the breech. A demon stood nearby, this one armed with a flexible curved horn hooked to a blob of reddish-purple moss on its back.
The horn started spewing liquid fire and smoke in Simon’s direction. In the next instant, intense fire covered him.
Even with the special armor, Simon knew he couldn’t last long. The NanoDyne tech hardwired into the armor as well as the spells weren’t inexhaustible. The defense systems dropped on the readout, spiraling downward now.
The HUD automatically switched from light-multiplier mode to thermographic display. The program was so sensitive that Simon could differentiate between tongues of flame that were a few degrees of heat apart.
“Warning,” the HUD’s feminine voice said, “defenses nearing critical—”
With two more strides, Simon burst free of the flamethrower’s superheated blast. He leveled the Spike Bolter at the demon wielding the flamethrower. Instead of aiming at the Darkspawn’s face, though, Simon aimed at the fuel reservoir on its back.
He squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession.
