Jack
The labyrinth of hall networks made their selves apparent as soon as I go into the dim-lit hallway. I cursed then pulled out the map. I felt something hitting my left foot over and over again. I looked down to see one of the rat/robots that inhabited the corridors of this place. I grabbed it and turned it upside down. Its wheels flailed in vain to grip the ground and stopped as I open the command compartment. I slid open the compartment door to revile a map and a computerized voice asking me where I wanted to go. “The exit” I replied. The thing beeped as I slid the door back in place. I placed it on the ground and it ran off into the darkness, leaving me to stand there. Shows how intelligent the AI of this age is. <The computer is only as good as its programmer> Tiamat added. I ignored her for the most part. Then I heard a constant beeping that sounded like I was in an ancient submarine with sonar pinging off its shape. I followed the sound, figuring it to be the robot. I continued to follow the sound until I alas reached the door to the outside. I when out into the lobby and looked for Cortez. The robot the guide me turned back into the darkness, chirping as it went. I spied Cortez in one of the numerous chairs that surrounded the lobby. He took noticed and motioned me to come closer. When I got close enough, he pulled out and threw a energy bar to me. “You stayed in the Sim too long so we will have to skip lunch and fighter practice for ya.” I ripped the plastic off of the power bar and popped into my mouth. I chewed it just enough to swallow it without damaging my throat. “Before we get to the next class,” Cortez said, trying to ignore the fact I had my mouth open. I finished the bar and said “and what is that, sir?” a snicker when across his rugged face. “Don’t blow your self up, your going to Assault-Armor practice next.” Then he turned briskly on the heels of his military issued boot and started walking out the door. When I reached the door, the bright sunlight hit my face any my eyes painfully dilated. It was nearly blinding to follow Cortez through the camp but I managed. I did not see or recognize the path to the Assault-Armor training ground but I did sense the cool wind rush out of the doorway when we entered the complex. My eyes became adjusted to the florescent lights overhead as soon as we walked in. The building looked like a hangar of sorts. Big enough to house two fighters side by side. The building was transformed into a target arena. Each area had a distinct “feel” you could call it. There was a barren landscape, which was noting more than a plot of dirt with a few things growing out of it. There was a desert landscape (it was nothing more than a plot of sand). There was an urban landscape that had everything, from the out-of-date telephone wires to cars. As I gawked at the area, Cortez moved to a door in the wall. Right next to the door was a 10 by 10 feet door. I heard the distinct roar of a truck and the 10-frame door opened. It did not swing open or bust open. It simply when up. Cortez then yelled at me to get out of the way and I did promptly. He backed out a turquoise mover that had a robot looking suit on the back of it. The color of it was night-black and bipedal (it was humanoid) Cortez then press a button that lowered the thing from the back of the truck. Two prods shot out and picked up the suit and placed it gently on the solid ground. He pressed the same button again and they retracted. He then pulled the vehicle back into the storage area. As he did, I got a closer look at the suit. The first things I noticed were the arms of the suit. They had diamond bit saws the gleamed when the light from above hit them in a certain way. They say that a diamond is a woman’s best friend but the way they were positioned on this saw, It looked like it could make mice-meat out of anything. A flash of memory appeared in my mind when they showed us the vids from when the war began. The UNSC didn’t bother editing the tapes; they showed us exactly how the chain saws were used…now, as I look at the chain saws blades, I just can’t stop imaging them covered with blue blood, alien entrails, or organs. I broke my gaze at the jewel bit saws to the upper forearm. This was were all of the weaponry was keep when not in use. I spied a claw, (it was designed more like a tool than a melee combat weapon) a gun about the size of my fist, and a similar one underneath the forearm. I looked up at the copper-colored visor and saw that it was just like a mirror. This didn’t really perk my interest and I moved on. The size of the AA (Assault Armor) was about the size of the average man but I hardly looked human. As I stated before, the color of its outer shell was black, but I never noticed the texture of it. The AA shined as if it was just polished. I ran my finger down the plates of armor on the back of the AA. I felt the cold, smooth, metallic, shell of the machine as my finger ran down each shield of armor. There was no visible entrance that I could see to enter such a thing. “Examining your new toy?” my head whipped around to the source of the voice to find it belonged to Cortez. He must have gotten in as I was looking at this thing. I looked him in the eyes and figured that there was no point of lying to him. “Yes sir” I stated to him. A small smile flicked through his day-old beard. “Now, I need to get to the control room and turn the AA on.” I was puzzled for a minute as he said this. Tiamat (who was observing all this time) broke her silence by answering this question. <He doesn’t want you inside the Assault Armor unless he has the off button> she answered <so you don’t shoot the place up> I listened but didn’t give a reply; I was too busy looking at what my instructor was doing. Cortez climbed his way to a series of platforms suspend on razor-thin wires. They bounced and swayed to the side when he leapt from one to the other. I knew from the day at orientation that he was a SpecOp vet but I never really imaged that a person at that age could move that fast. He reached the room and I heard the screeching of the speakers as they came on. I heard a sound that sounded like air rushing in to fill a vacuum and turned around to see that the AA was limp and the upper torso was bent over to the front. The plates of the back of the AA shifted upwards, watching as each lower plated slid in place beneath that higher one. The AA lower legs shells popped open as if someone had a pushed it out from the inside. They swung to the side and wait for me to climb in. I watched as the process was
completed and the AA was fully opened. “What are you waiting for?” Cortez boomed over the warehouse’s speaker COM (that he had the volume set way too high I might add). I went cautiously to the AA and wondered how I was supposed to step in the thing. Without thinking, I moved forward for some unknown reason and had both of my feet in the “shoe” of the AA. Then the assault armor sensed my presence inside it and started to close up. I felt the assault armor adjust to my size and weight. I felt the cold metal of it adjust so it could fit my shoe. Then it proceeded more rapidly. The back of my hamstring when cold as the armor closed in a matter of seconds. I felt the plates on the back of the AA reform and reorganized like a snake moving through grass. They closed the only source of light as they danced and slithered into their places. Then I feel a series of clicking then a sense of vertigo that lasted for a second then disappeared. Then the AA visor came on-line. It bleeped the green words START UP COMPETE that disappeared to show me the warehouse. The motion sensor came online and took up residence on the lower left corner of the screen. I noticed that several images covered the visor, one showed what weapon he had out in the current moment in the lower right corner, another showing the AA in sections. All of the sections were green at the moment so I assumed that the AA was fine. “All right, I can see from here that the AA has you buckled down petty good,” said Cortez from a pair of speakers on the left and right side of the helmet. “Try to move around in it but don’t do anything stupid, we all ready have enough soldiers dying on the fronts”. Obeying Cortez’s order, I took a step and found that the suit followed my every movement precisely as my brain had given them. I paced back and forth with AA. I found that I could change the vision settings in the visor just by thinking about them. There are four setting that I could use. The first was the normal setting that I was using at this moment. The second was infrared which was useless right now. The third was night vision, which doused everything in a sickly green. The fourth and final one filled the visor with static blue that active electronic equipment as a source of light.
I flipped through all of them out of inertest but I soon started to do it out of boredom. The weapons in a not responsive state right now and all I could do were just paced back and forth. As I did, I wondered why Tiamat was so quite but it took me a second to find out. From out of nowhere I got a mental picture of me being in a cave that was the size of one of the dorms that we slept in. the cave seemed to be craved out granite rock and was smooth to the touch. I was one on side of the cave while a red sleeping dragon lay on the other. The exit was to my left let in sunlight the reflected off the walls. Tiamat slept peacefully on stone slab, occasionally, jerking her pebbled textured head to the side as if acting out some part to a play in her sleep. I looked over her with awe. She was the perfect fusion of power and beauty. It was like a hunter admiring the color of a cobra or the skin of a lion. A sharp yell from the speakers brought me back in to real world. “Jack!” Cortez yelled through the suit’s speakers “GET YOUR ASS TO THE AREA NOW!!!” he roared. Amazingly, Taimat stayed asleep through all this, which was good. I didn’t need her input at this moment. A map appeared on the visor and let me down a maze of areas. I spied the door that had the sign with AREA 1 in neon letters. The door automatically opened as I approached it and I got my look inside. The entire area was a targeting range where caters and bullet shells laid. I looked at the shell and found they were out of place here. The AA minigun fired caseless bullets so I figured they must have come from the secondly gun. “If you stop day-dreaming for a minute, we could actually get something done on time.” Cortez mutter in the mic, “I shutting the area’s door so don’t piss in your pants if you see the door closing.”
True to his words, the door started to close. I watched slowly as it moved down and quickly scanned the area once it did. The best way to describe the land that I was in was to say that it was barren. No grass, no bush, no plants of any kind. I looked up at the walls of this cage. They weren’t really walls as I thought them to be on closer inspection. They were more like doors. Static came through the speakers and Cortez’s voice followed. “ Now I going to remotely activating the AA weapons and send some holo-drones for you to shoot at” he said “go crazy with the AA and I enable a self-destruct button that I have up here”. I got the last part and waited for the weapons to come on-line. It took a second then two new icons appeared on the screen. They were located in the bottom corners of the screen and displayed the ammo that I had available. 999 rounds of continuous fire for miniguns had me impressed. The UNSC kept expanding the AA’s limit time after time but I never thought that they could pack that much ammo in to such a little machine.
Suddenly the system heard the high pitch whine of the holo-drones and opened a database comparing it to all known sounds. It found the signature sound of the drone and opened a window that showed the stats of the thing. I closed the popups windows with thought alone and will my mind to the task ahead. Three drones shot out of a vent overhead and zipped down in a circular pattern. When they reached the ground, they projected three images of andalites. One was an Aristh, while the other two were older. The younger one charged me while the other two stood back and morphed. The Aristh was fixing to swing his blade with all his might at my head, determined to crush it with one blow. I acted on instinct; the minigun on my left hand retracted and a chain saw appeared. It was a second latter before it was buzzing and humming in my hand. The andalite swung at my head in that instant. I had only a second to time the shot when I sliced his tail off. The Aristh fell on the ground, blue blood still gushing from the tail. I stood over him and looked down. The andalite looked at me with all four eyes in fear. I retracted the minigun from my left hand and replaced it with a claw. With one quick movement, I reached down, grabbed the two stalk eyes, pulled up on the stalks, and lifted the andalite’s head so I could expose his neck. I buried the saw into his neck. Bits of tendons and muscle shot out from the saw and blue blood stained the floor. Strange, older holograms never show blood or body bits… this must be the newer version. I dropped the head and turned to face the other two. One looked like Medusa with whips coming out of its head while the other looked like a tiger with a mouth too big and full of shark teeth. The AA sized up the threat and gave me a suggestion. It asked to engage platform mode, which I said yes for the hell of it. Four beams shot out of the thorax of the AA and rooted me to the ground. The miniguns flashed out in under a second. The AA entered auto-targeting and unloaded on
