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Description
HEAVY: chapter two
Mechanism
“Whenever in the future wars the battle is fought, armored troops will play the decisive role”
Heinz Guderian

As we stood there, the tension grew. We knew we were the first unit to receive the new armor, and we couldn’t wait. Opposite us, the techs, thirty-three in total, lined up next to the coffins, awaiting their assigned pilot. Two to every coffin, except mine, the Captain’s, and the lieutenant’s. We had one tech each. I saw Sacha next to mine. I guess he was assigned to the maintenance and development team now. The professor was off to one side with a bank of monitors and a headset, surveying the scene in front of him. On his signal, the techs opened the cases, revealing the drab colored armor in the inside.
The sight that greeted my eyes was amazing. The suit was a redesign from the original M-1030, taller, heavier, and more readily armed. There were hard points on the shoulders, legs, and the hips, perfect for the new modular weapons systems, the helmet looked like a motorcycle helmet in shape, but there didn’t appear to be any visor. Instead a tight cluster of three dots held micro cameras. There was a couple more areas on the head for these camera sets. It looked rather intimidating. I liked it. The old helmet had a visor like a SWAT team gas mask. Much tougher, of course, but similar in appearance.
Its legs were much more massive than the armitage, and still smaller than the broadsides. I could see the turbine fairings where the hover fans were mounted. Those where the reason for the added height, bringing the height of the unit from the two and a half meters of the armitage to nearly three meters. It had some more bulk too, but just where it was needed. The shoulder pauldrons were bigger, housing two mounting points each, one for weapons and one that could be used for ammo bricks, or for more mini missiles.
As I moved forward to unpack my armor, my platoon was doing the same. Turned out Nina was wrong, as everyone was getting new armor. All the type armitage suits were being replaced with armitage II armor, with a similar helmet design and reinforced knee, hip, and back servos. They could move faster, carry more, and fight better. The broadsides got similar upgrades. The legs were beefier, more resilient. The others got the helmet upgrade, hard points, and a few other details. Nina had a completely redesigned unit. It had a modular camel rack so her weapons load out could be tailored to the mission.
I let my hand caress the armor. It felt different, cooler, less like the poly-alloy ceramic composite that used to protect us. This felt much denser, if one could feel the density of armor with just a touch. Much more powerful. “So, is this a whole new unit?”
Sacha handed me a small manual, stuff my briefing didn’t cover. “The M-1035 Firestorm. Boss said it was developed from your team’s data. Medium modular assault armor. You can carry any weapon in the heavy infantry tool box except the heaviest. So no avenger for you.” He stuck his tongue out at me. He was having fun with this assignment.
I found the finger print spot and placed my thumb on it. The suit opened, revealing a redesigned interior. It was padded and looked like the cells could swell to keep us comfortable. I climbed up and began the familiar power up sequence. Sacha pulled up a large set of wheeled steps and helped me make some adjustments before the power up was done. Then he ran a systems check with me. The process was smoother than before. “We only have to make minor adjustments and calibrate the sensors. The development team took the measurements from your old suit. How is it?”
“Feels like it was built around me.” It did. They took the new pieces into consideration when they made the adjustments, because it fit like a glove. He climbed down and moved the steps and guided me out of the coffin. The suit responded better than the old armitage units too, moving just like a second skin. There used to be a half a millisecond lag on movement outside combat conditions. “It’s a piece of art.”
We moved through the adjustments easily. It was so closely matched to the old suit. The sensors on the other hand where much more difficult. In most power armor, the remote systems were controlled by a combination of neural pickup harness and eye tracking micro sensors. In mine, and I am sure the Captain’s and Lt’s suits as well, everything was through a connection to the neural-jack. It allowed me to control much more and still function normally. That was taken into account too.
The firestorm could carry two deployable remote weapons, and I found out racks designed to fit on Nina’s dreadnaught would allow her to carry up to four more for us. That gave us amazing firepower in the field. Also, four more types of deployable weapons were developed, and not just for us. Now the cyclones could carry a pair of remote SAM pods, with four missiles each. The other pods were a twin anti-armor missile battery, an automatic grenade launcher in 20mm, and a deployable Metal Storm defense suite, capable of launching thousands of 2mm projectiles into the path of any missile or mortar shell.
We went through the new equipment and controls next. There was a new line-of-sight laser coms system, much more powerful than the previous generation system. The pod deployment arms, weapon rack arms (we could carry spare guns now), hard point controls, mounted weapon targeting sensors, and a slew of new sensors. Then there was the completely new equipment. The twin back mounted winches, the two smaller arm winches, the hover jets, and the stabilizing pylons for using heavy bore weapons. And two collar mounted 5.56mm anti-infantry guns.
I looked through all the control interfaces and set my default load out for easier setup. There was a new shotgun available, with less of a chance for an auto burst issue. The chain fed design had its weakness’. But this was a top mounted pan fed design. It looked like it lacked the cycle rate or capacity of the M9000, but made up for it in reliability. And it could load the HE shotgun shells. Unfortunately, it couldn’t mount the 40mm grenade launcher. I’ll fix that later. To make up for that there was a shoulder mounted 20mm grenade launcher available. The M2A90 MMG was still the standard weapon, and it came with a semi-auto 40mm grenade launcher.
For heavy weapons there was a new auto reloading bazooka in 90mm, a 50mm high velocity cannon, and a heavy multi use missile launcher. Each was collapsible or compact, and magazine fed, able to fit on the backpack weapons rack, right between the pods. There was a mount on the rear skirt armor for the magazine box. This gave us two extra magazines each, or one for the missile launcher. Now we were packing some punch against armor. That also explains why the legs and back were reinforced on all units.
The skirt armor was redesigned on the broadsides and reinforced for the armitage II. Now the front plates went to the ankles, and the rear and side plates made thicker. The firestorm had knee length front and back plates and the sides went to mid-thigh. And across the board, they were made more flexible to movement with a special fabric similar to the Electroflex used in the joints of our armor. By altering the current we could make the skirt armor rigid to aid in stability or for extra protection.
Also, the Electroflex was reformulated. It was still a carbon Nano-tube fabric reinforced with titanium mesh to stop shrapnel. But this was a thicker fabric with a silky semi-gloss look. That semi-gloss meant it was impregnated with aluminum alloy and a fire retardant. Electroflex was a synthetic muscle, using electricity to cause it to contract or relax, augmenting the servo joints. This arrangement made us at least 20 times as strong as normal, even stronger than most load lifting or construction exoskeletons. We of course had to carry about a half ton or more of armor, plus weapons and ammo.
When we finished, I climbed down and started going through the weapons crates. Mini-missile launchers, rocket pods, ammo bins, mine racks, grenades, and a grenade launcher. There was a shotgun, a .50 MMG, a 20mm heavy machine gun, a 35mm Anti-Material Cannon and every kind of heavy weapon the firestorm could be equipped with. I got down to familiarizing myself with everything. That took about three hours.
I heard a squeal from off to the right of me. Nina was going through a huge pile of weapons crates. She had most of what me and Manx where going through, plus more goodies. She even had a three barrel 20mm Gatling. Christmas came early twice this year. Right now she was unpacking a 50mm high velocity gun for the camel racks. It seemed like the heavy infantry was being prepared to do much more than the NATO missions we had been doing lately.
I checked the new pack weapons too. They were all the same size as the cannon to make balance easier. The mortar was redesigned to be self-contained. The missile packs looked kinda useless, with only four shots for the anti-air and two for anti-armor, but they would be enough for ambushes. The cannon was the same, just faster servos. Then I looked at the metal storm packs. Not useful for most of the work we did, but they would be great for a fire base or an ambush. They were clusters of fifty barrels, one lower and one upper, and the micro radar module in the middle. There was a visual, UV, and IR signature tracking module also. The module gathered the info the unit needed, aimed the barrels, and then fired off a wall of 2mm pellets at the incoming missile. The pellets were small, but were fired with enough force to shred most incoming projectiles in flight.
Then I got to the final box. It was labeled XM-1. I flipped the clasps on it and opened it up curious. What greeted me was unlike anything I had seen before. It looked like it was half axe and half butcher’s cleaver and it had a slot in the handle for a power pack.
“What’s this?” I look over at Sacha.
“We have been developing that for a while. It’s called a thermal axe. It heats up enough to slice through even ceramic armors. It’s made out of a new alloy that gets tougher as it heats up.”
It sounded pretty awesome. Wonder how it would fair in the field. If it was like everything we had been testing, it would work well with some fine tuning. I pulled it out of the case. It was a heavy beast, probably around a hundred and thirty. The power pack probably added another forty to that. That’s why power armor gets the good stuff. We can carry by our lonesome a load that would stagger a platoon of light infantry. And we can use it.
I pulled the data chip and added it to the pouch I kept for such an occasion. We were only supposed to need them once for our suits, but if we have to synchronize in the field, like in Africa, then we need the chip. And you never know when you would need to make field repairs.
I took out the mount for it and looked it over. It was fairly simple and held three back up batteries. It looked at my suit. It’s going on the right hip. Left hip will be spare ammo, legs micro-missiles, left shoulder grenade launcher and anti-salvo pack, right shoulder, anti-salvo pack and ammo box. I had to figure out how to get more mounting points.
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Over the next few days, we trained extensively on the control systems. I managed to hack together a rail system for the shotguns, that way we could mount grenade launchers. Also a new shotgun ammo came to us. They were called penetrators. Unlike normal HE rounds, these had an impact activated timer. They would burry into a wall, and two seconds later explode, causing micro shocks in walls and roads, doing much more damage than a normal HE or slug could.
The hover units were easy to pick up. To me it was like ice skating when I was little. Manx thought about the roller skates she had as a kid. And we figured out some fast attack tactics for our squad. We were still in need of practice for accuracy while moving, but that’s just how it was. And the captain let Manx requisition some crates of .50 caliber steel core ammo. So now she could chew up some light armor.
Nina fell in love with her new suit. It came with forearm locks and mini reloader arms, enabling her to carry the 35mm AMC as a one armed weapon. She got accurate too, and with the Gatling on her other arm, and her camel mounts on her back, we were sure that our team could take on just about anything.
I got used to the thermal axe. The downside was it was so hot that I could feel it through my armor. But when we trained with them, it sliced through the tank we hit like it was a piece of ratty fabric, carving a gash straight through the armor plating and the hull. Max also figured out in a pinch, the lowest setting could be used to roast hot dogs and marshmallows. The captain chewed him out for an hour, not for figuring it out, but for doing so while the R&D team was watching. Sacha told me later that the Professor couldn’t stop laughing. He said something about how a soldier will always figure out how to get hot food. Something about jeeps and cans in the last century.
In that time the 72nd platoon joined us. They were a heavy assault platoon, mostly broadsides and dreadnaughts. The armitages got replaced with the new firestorms. They loved it, but I noticed their firestorm B model lacked the hover jets. This was so they could move as a unit. We got to train extensively with them. They also got new long range weapons so they can act as our rear support.
2nd lieutenant Riley Blake, the man in charge of the 72nd turned out to be a decent guy. He was short, about 5’8”, with dark hair and eyes, stocky, and had an easygoing attitude. And he was a hell of a dreadnaught pilot. He was horrible at poker though, so before he quit playing me I got a few hundred off him. I offered him his cash back for platoon shift passes, but he graciously declined. Probably didn’t want to get lynched. Smart man.
It was our day off from training. I was driving to the R&D lab to surprise Sacha for lunch. A bouquet of daisies was on the passenger seat. He was going to be surprised. He thought I was on duty today, but once we went through basic maintenance with the mechanics, we were cut loose. I pulled up to the guard shack and showed my ID to the MP standing there. He looked it over then checked the bed of the truck and the undercarriage for anything dangerous. When he finished he lowered the steel and concrete barrier into the ground.
I nodded and drove in to the visitors parking and grabbed the bouquet. As I locked up I looked around. There was the small car Sacha drove from our home, so I knew he was still in. I went in, showed my ID and asked the receptionist to not announce me. She smiled and gave me a conspiratorial wink. Then I checked my gun and spare magazines with security and headed for the lab.
I ran into the professor on the way up, and he told me that Sacha needed a break and to go right into the computer lab. He was in there by himself at the moment. So I went on in.
He was staring at a computer simulation. Something labeled project 999, it seemed huge. It was called a mobile defense platform; it had a body like a tank, eight multiped type legs, and from the waist up of a dreadnaught at about the middle of the back. There was an error message on the monitor as he sighed in defeat and entered some new variables before running it again. I watches as the legs folded like a resting scorpion and six turbo fans picked it up. It moved to what looked like forward motion then the error showed again as the rear fans took too much power and flipped it over. He laid his head down with a thud.
I decided now was a good time. “Try to modify the thrust control program from the dreadnaught suits and scale it to the unit’s parameters. This looks like a similar control issue.” He jumped much to my delight and whirled around to look at me. “Hi baby. Wanna go get lunch?”
“Drevon, you almost gave me a heart attack. Who let you in?” the Professor walked in before I could answer.
“Will what Drevon suggested work, Sacha?” he looked at me with a wink.
“Yeah, but I don’t think the original computations would work. I tried just scaling the program first, but the thrust was too high and it would hover at a vulnerable height”
“No, you have to remember that the size and power of the fans when you scale the program. Here, lemme show you.” I walked over and entered the new parameters, then ran the program. It moved a bit sluggish at first, but when it transitioned the front blades picked up the slack and the rear lowered output to do minor control work. The center fans adjusted to provide lift and thrust.
He looked at me in disbelief and the professor seemed impressed. “I did study mechanical and industrial engineering in college during my regular infantry days. Your problem was that the dreadnaught uses small high output fans for its bulk. This has fans that are six hundred percent scale to that versus a body weight and max load that is only about triple the max of the armor.”
Sacha watched the simulation and made some minor adjustments for steering. For its size, it was fairly graceful. Like a bull that could dance ballet. It looks great moving, but it’s still a bull. He seemed pleased and saved the data.
“Let’s go to lunch. Are those for me?” he takes the daisies. I nod and lead him out of the office. He hands the memory chip to the professor as we leave. I didn’t realize that fate was going to be cruel to us black cats yet again, and I just played my part.