Chapter 5

            The sun was setting and warm orange rays radiated from the horizon as the sun moved below the water line turning the sea into a mix of reds, oranges, and blue-greens.  A pleasant breeze came through the open sliding door ruffling Gavin’s unruly hair.  It didn’t matter how many times he combed it, it did its own thing.

            Gavin was still surprised at his ‘accommodations’.  He was expecting bunks, but instead found a fully stocked apartment suite.  The sliding door opened onto his own private balcony which looked over the ocean.  The inside of the apartment was loaded with all the amenities, including wide-screen plasma TV with built-in DVD player.  Gavin drooled over the box in the corner.  It was a gaming computer ready to go, and there was a note on the monitor detailing a server and a time – Benton wanted a re-match of their first game.

            The refrigerator was small, but deep and loaded with just about anything Gavin possibly wanted to drink.  There was even a mini-bar.  He smiled and perused the contents.  Gavin found the ingredients for a Pepper Slammer, sat on the couch, drained the drink, and then dozed off.   It had been a good day.

            Masters tacked the updated roster in the briefing room.  Cassie and Breanna were in their chairs looking over performance reports.  Megumi was standing at the bulletin board looking at regulation updates and notices from command.  All three followed Masters with indirect looks.  Masters left as soon as he finished posting the roster, and the girls bolted for the wall.

            Cassie made it first and immediately ripped the roster from its pins.  “What the hell is this?” she exclaimed loudly.  “They can’t be serious.  I’m going to talk to the Commander, this is insane,” she said dropping the paper and running out of the room.

            Breanna picked up the sheet and read it over silently.

            “What does it say, Breanna-chan?” Megumi said quietly.

            “Says that the noob is our new Team Leader,” Breanna said after a moment.  “This could be bad.”

            The door thudded again.  Benton sighed, put his book down, and got up out of his reading chair.  He found Cassie, short of breath and red faced staring at him.  “Mind if I come in a moment, sir?  I have something I need to discuss with you.”

            “That was fast,” Benton said below his breath.  Cassie didn’t seem to notice.  “Of course, make yourself at home,” he said holding the door open.  “You know I’m available at any time for my pilots.”

            Cassie walked halfway into the room then whirled around, clearly upset.  “Why is the new guy the team leader?” she asked to the point and rather loudly.

            Benton sighed, and then sat in his favorite chair.  “Orders from the top.  Don’t ask me why, I don’t even know.  His scores haven’t even been completely compiled yet.”

            “Then why?  We had a good team chemistry going.  I fear he is going to ruin that!”

            “Passing judgment already?  You only met him for five minutes and you already know he won’t be able to cut it?”

            “I didn’t say that, sir.  I merely think that he won’t be able to fit in with the group-“

            “Pilot O’Shea, far be it from me to criticize, but I have to point out, he hasn’t even met the rest of the pilots.  Isn’t it a little early to assume he won’t fit in?  Or is this about something else?  Perhaps the fact that Command made him Team Lead.”

            “I thought I was doing well in the position, sir,” she said flatly.

            “Cassie,” Benton said slowly.  “I’m sure Command had its reasons, and I do know that it had nothing to do with your record as Team Leader.  But orders are orders.  Why don’t you try it out for a bit?  If it doesn’t work, I will request a team position change.”

            “Why don’t you do that now?”

            “Because I have no good reason to.  ‘Just because’ doesn’t work.”

            Cassie looked away.  There was nothing she could say.  This is going to suck.  “I understand, sir.  I apologize for my behavior.  Excuse me,” she saluted and then left the room.

            Benton sighed.  This was going to be tougher then he thought. 

            “Pilot Trainee Gavin St. Cloud please report to the D.C.C.P..  Gavin St. Cloud, please report to the D.C.C.P.”  The message was loud and seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.  Gavin cracked one eye open a bit to see it was still dark outside.  Then it came again, louder and closer to his ear making him jump up in surprise, “Gavin St. Cloud!  Get your ass on your feet and get to the D.C.C.P. NOW!!”

            Gavin jumped to his feet and spun around, disoriented.  Masters was behind the couch with a bullhorn in his hand and a wicked smile.  “No time to be sitting there looking dumbfounded!  Get yourself ready!”

            Gavin jumped and ran for somewhere.  He didn’t know where.  Sleep and the night’s previous Southern Comfort were messing up the inner workings of his mind.

            “Pathetic!  You are simply pathetic!  What, did you think this was a vacation?!  Over there on your bed, where one normally sleeps, is a package.  Grab it and unwrap it you dimwitted fool!”  Masters was having a ball, and Gavin was starting to get a headache. 

            But Gavin’s head was clearing slowly and he found that there was a vacuum-sealed clear plastic package at the foot of his bed.  Inside was a body suit, similar to a wetsuit, but was thicker, and had tubes and patches running all over its surface. 

            “We call that a Minimum Field Effect Suit or a mez-suit for short,” Masters explained without the bullhorn.  “The tubes and patches that you see nullify any magnetic or electric fields that could interfere with the D.C.C.P. signals.  There is also a pair of boots and gloves in the package.  There is a trick to the thing, gloves and boots go on first, then the suit.”  Gavin returned Masters’ description with an expression of little comprehension.  Masters sighed.

            “Look, just put on the gloves and boots first, then crawl into the suit.  This isn’t rocket-science yet.  That’s after lunch.”

            Gavin fumbled with the gloves.  They were made out of a thick stretchy material, one of those strange space-age materials that could stretch and never break, but still retain its original shape.  The gloves fit snugly, but did not hinder any finger movement as the finger tips were removed.  The boots were simple enough, they were laced with Velcro.  The suit on the other hand, had one zipper in the back, and required Gavin to shimmy into it, just like a wetsuit.  But with the gloves and boots already on, he had to hop-dance around to get the boots to pop out the bottom.  Gavin would have thought this was a practical joke if Masters were laughing more, but he was busy inspecting the plasma screen TV.

            “Are you ready yet,” he called as if on queue.  Gavin finished zipping the suit into place.  It fit snug like the gloves, and also did not hinder his movement.  There was plumbing just about everywhere on the suit, and he was pretty sure he had gotten the important plumbing situated right.  Gavin also understood why the gloves and boots went on first – the suit was designed to have them tucked in, and putting them on first insured they ended up that way.

            “I’m good,” Gavin said.

            “Right, then let’s get going.  We’ll talk as we walk.”

            “Today’s operation is basic training.  You will be taken out to a training island we have about five hundred kilometers away.  You will be placed on that island, and your job will be to follow instructions given to you at that time.  The mission details are classified and will only be revealed on site,” Masters said as they reached the CMC.  He stopped and looked at his watch, “Your carry-all departs in twenty minutes.  You have that much time to hook up to your machine.  I would start running if I were you,” and Masters ducked into the CMC.

            “What?  Holy crap!” exclaimed Gavin as he began running for the D.C.C.P.  Which way was it…follow which color??  Think dammit.  Gavin thought back to yesterday when Benton was giving him the tour.  We were following…black!  Follow the black!  Gavin started running the corridors following the black strips.

            He arrived at the D.C.C.P. fifteen minutes later out of breath and wheezing.  Dr. Mari was sitting at her console staring at him.  “Your late,” she said.  “Last time you dived it took you forty-five minutes.  You have to do it in five this time, or else you’ll fail your mission before it even starts.”  She moved to Gavin and hooked the gun-injector to a special connector on the shoulder of his suit that had probably been put there for that exact reason.  Again he felt the strange sensation as the ‘nanites’ moved throughout his body.  The computer seemed to reach the green 100% faster then it had previously, and Gavin was ready for the pod to swing down.  He jumped and the pads secured him in place.  He heard the hissing noise again and….

He was in the hangar.  A large cargo jet of some sort was hovering at the far end past the open doors.  He had made it, there was still time!  “Doctor, can you hear me?”

“Gavin?!  You’ve already entered the machine?  I just started the process!  Excellent!  Please move to the carry-all and wait for instructions.”  Gavin felt the docking clamps unlock and he leaned forward into a standing position.  He walked over to the carry-all. 

“K-Konnichiwa Gavin-san.  M-my name is Megumi,” came a meek voice over the radio. 

“Uh…hello?” Gavin said slowly.  Konnichiwa…is that Japanese?

“P-please don’t move, Gavin-san.”  Before Gavin could ask what she was going to do, the carry-all changed.  It split in the middle and elongated so that a crane arm was revealed.  The carry-all moved over Gavin’s head, and the crane moved downward and clamped around his middle.  He felt himself being picked up off the ground as the crane moved back into its previous position, and the two halves closed around him.  In a few brief moments, Gavin had been quickly and efficiently loaded and secured into the carry-all’s cargo bay.  

Gavin couldn’t see anything inside the cargo pod.  He looked into the darkness for a long while, but as he stared at the darkness, he was startled when the pod was filled with a green light.  He realized he had somehow activated a night-vision option that allowed him to see in the dark.  I can’t believe this crap actually works.  This is nuts.  If I were to tell anyone at home about this, they’d have me committed! 

After looking around the pod, he realized there wasn’t anything really to see. So he tried to test out what other vision options were available.  The next vision option almost made him swoon.  It allowed him to see through the pod walls.  He could see the clouds all around him, and the ocean far below.  He looked forward hoping to get a view of the pilot, but he realized that there was nothing flying the plane that was remotely human.  Like him, the pilot was jacked in from somewhere else.

“Gavin-san, we’re almost there,” came the quiet voice.

“Where is that exactly?” Gavin asked trying to get her to talk more, but no reply came.  Almost immediately after, the pod split again, and Gavin had to quickly concentrate to get his vision restored to normal.  He did a double-take at what he saw. 

The Carry-all was flying low and fast, speeding mere feet above the treetops of a lush jungle.  Gavin could see tropical birds taking off in all directions behind them.  They were going way too fast for any sort of landing.  It almost seemed as if she were about to throw him.  Gavin stopped in mid-thought.

“Hey…uh…what’s going on here?  We’re going a little fast, don’t you thin—“  Gavin was cut short as the carry-all’s nose suddenly lurched upwards bending the craft at the middle and at that apex, the clamp around Gavin’s middle released.  Like a baseball from a pitch, Gavin was sent careening away from the carry-all, through the air, over the treetops at a fantastic speed.  Gavin felt himself falling, and knew if he hit at this speed, it was going to hurt, but didn’t think on it past that realization.  Instead his mind concentrated on what he could do to get down safely.

As if in response, a parachute unfolded from his back and caught air jerking him backwards.  The triple parachute allowed him to glide down into the jungle at a safe enough speed that he was able to land standing up.  He detached the chute and took stock of his surroundings.  He was in thick jungle, and completely lost.

What the hell was that?  “Can anybody hear me?” Gavin tried to ask over what he thought was the comm. system.  Suddenly his virtual senses realized that a high-velocity shell just whizzed past his right ear.  Gavin fell to the jungle floor on pure instinct.

Holy crap!  I’m being shot out now!  What is going on here?!  The tree branch above him exploded raining particles on him.  Gavin moved into a crouched position and dashed for another tree.  Somehow he knew the rounds were being fired from the south, and that’s where he ran.  Most people would run away from such a thing, but not Gavin.  It had occurred to him that this was similar to a popular gaming map he played for the first person shooter.  Aztec.map, Gavin thought.  The map was a jungle environment that had two teams advancing on each other.  The object was to use the environment to one’s advantage and make it to the other side without getting killed.  It was the ‘without getting killed’ part that was difficult.

Gavin made his way from tree to tree.  Even though he was a massive metal machine, the jungle was thick and lush providing ample cover.  The sniper wasn’t all that skilled, the bullets whizzed behind him.  Either the sniper wasn’t leading the target, which meant amateur, or they were driving him.  Either way, Gavin was moving in the same direction.

Gavin began running headlong through the trees, he had been closing in on the attacker, and was now running parallel to the attacker’s position.  He blew out of the trees and into a clearing.  Gavin took a moment to look around, and he spotted a machine painted black hiding behind rocks up on a hill to the southeast.  The mech seemed startled to see him burst from the tree-line and attempted to quickly retreat for a better position.  Gavin had no intention of letting that happen.

He lurched into a run, his legs thumping the ground like pistons making the trees sway to the rhythm.  He decided he had built up enough speed and kicked down hard on the last step propelling him upward.  He soared above the attacker and landed right in front of the machine.  Gavin quickly changed his momentum and charged at the target, lowering his right shoulder. 

He caught the mech in the middle propelling it back down the hill.  The force of the impact knocked a large tree over and created a small ravine as the other machine slid across the grass.  Gavin felt the impact jar his parts, and he knew something had popped loose in the shoulder.  He also felt the crunch of metal as the midsection of the black machine had compacted like a beer can, smashing all the electronics and hardware inside.

            Gavin stood over his fallen enemy, panting.  Gavin didn’t think about it, but a machine panting was quite an odd site.  He stared at the machine, looking at the damage he had done to it.  Sparks and loose cables fell from the broken midsection.  There was no way it was getting back up again.  Gavin wondered if there was a pilot, but didn’t get the chance to think on it further as the hill exploded around him.  He was sent flying forward onto the crushed machine.  Dirt and debris rained on him, blown from the new crater. 

            Gavin put his hand down to steady himself but it slipped on something metallic.  When he looked at the object, he found it was the sniper rifle that had been used against him earlier.  He grabbed it up and ran for the tree line.  Again, the ground exploded near him sending up dust clouds, and he jinked to the left changing his course slightly.  The next explosion was to his right, and he moved to his right so that the next fell on his left.  He varied the pattern, and continued it right up until he made the trees.  He ducked inside the jungle forest and took cover.  The grenades snagged on trees and exploded harmlessly far above his head. 

            Gavin took a look at the sniper rifle.  He realized he somehow knew how the damned thing worked.  He popped the release mechanism dropping the magazine.  He then pulled the cocking lever ejecting the chambered round.  He put the round back in the magazine bringing it to a grand total of four shots.  He snapped the magazine back into place, and drew the cocking lever. 

            He moved into a prone position, and started to crawl towards the tree line again.  Something was definitely wrong in his shoulder; he couldn’t move it past his head, so crawling was difficult at best.  As he crawled, he realized the grenades weren’t falling and it was eerily quiet.  He heard himself moving along the floor though, loud and grating. 

            After what seemed an eternity to Gavin, he made it to a good position at the tree line.  He looked out over the grass field trying to see his opponent, but he saw nothing.  He concentrated on his vision, and was startled a moment when the view became magnified.  He realized he could change vision modes and set magnification on his view.  Cool, he thought.  He quickly reset the view mode and then heard an ominous ‘click’ behind and above him.

            “Aw crap,” Gavin said before quickly rolling to his right.  He got a quick look at another black mech wielding twin guns of the automatic variety and then the ground as Gavin decided it would be a good idea to keep rolling.  He rolled himself down the embankment on his right, shells razing the ground all about him.  Gavin rolled himself to his feet and began running for more cover.  He made it about three steps and then the trees just above his head exploded knocking him to the ground.

            Gavin crawled through the underbrush trying to put some distance between him and his enemy.  Gunfire ripped through the plants around him, and grenades exploded above him.  It took him a moment to notice that both attacks were coming at the same time, and both were coming from different directions which meant that he had not one, but two attackers.

            He got to his feet and started to run, slightly crouched over.  He changed his direction, making a circle and ended up bringing his attacker with the dual guns in front of him.  The aggressor had been expecting this and was waiting with guns held high, but Gavin also expected this.  At this point there was no difference between his present situation, and hundreds of other situations he had willingly played in his games.  With the ease of moving his mouse, he brought his sniper rifle barrel up and fired from the waist.  The opponent’s head disappeared in a cloud of sparks, smoke, and shrapnel.  The body sagged to the ground uselessly firing the guns into the ground a few times as the machine processed the last command from the head.

            For Gavin, his aim had been greatly assisted by a targeting reticule that had appeared over his enemy.  It moved with the barrel, and he knew exactly where it was pointed, making the hip-shot easy.  Gavin was amazed at all the abilities he didn’t know the machine possessed, but made themselves accessible when he needed them, almost as if the machine knew what he was thinking.  Then it occurred to Gavin that it wasn’t the machine thinking, it was him thinking, and so of course he knew exactly what he wanted.  His thinking was stopped short as something small and metallic bounced off his head and fell to the jungle floor by his foot.  Gavin couldn’t see it, but knew what it was and immediately jumped to the side as far as he could go.  His flight was aided by the shockwave from the grenade as it exploded. 

            He landed face-first into a pool of stagnant water.  Of course, the pool was only big enough to cover his upper torso.  So the mech came to a stop in a very indefensible position with its hind-end sticking up into the air.  Gavin tried desperately to get himself loose, but the mud held him tight.  He heard a strange sound that reminded him almost of someone laughing. 

             Gavin began to thrash his legs using their momentum to wrench himself loose from the mud.  He moved to a sitting position and tried to wipe the mud from his vision.  He was so busy he hadn’t realized the explosions had stopped. 

            Gavin finally cleared his vision, and looked around.  Everything was silent, except for the slight whirring noise made by the servos as he moved his head.  There was nothing, no sound, no movement in any visual spectrum, nothing.  It was if his opponent had just disappeared.

            Gavin brought himself to his feet coming to a crouched position.  He moved two steps and thought he saw a movement in the jungle, and fired two blind shots from his rifle.  He stood up a little to take a better look, but without moving after firing, and then standing up was a bad idea, because the instant he moved above a crouch, a loud  *crack* was heard followed by a massive shock of pain traveling up his right arm.  Gavin yelled out in surprise and agony and looked down to see loose, sparking cables.  He had just lost his right arm, and felt it happen.  He tried to move his arm, his physical arm, any arm but couldn’t move it, either.  It was as if he really had lost his arm, and Gavin started to lose it.

            Gavin panicked, and began to run.  He didn’t take heed of direction, just bolted.  He blew through fields and jungle marshes.  The explosions started up again, right behind him.  It took him a moment of delirious panicked thought to realize they weren’t explosions, just large shells blowing pieces of jungle to shreds.  Gavin kept running.

            He ran through creepers, jumped over fallen mammoth trees, and forced his way through the jungle.  His pursuer right behind and not letting up the barrage.  The shells coming closer and closer, and then Gavin felt another shockwave of pain ripple from his left leg, it too now gone.  Gavin fell to the ground, panting and sweating.  His mind blanked with fear, all he could do was crawl.  He crawled a few meters and then was forcibly stopped.  Gavin flipped over and looked up to stare right into the barrel of a very large weapon reminiscent of a shotgun.  The mech holding it was all black just like the previous two units, but had two large canisters mounted on the back pointing up.  Grenade launchers, the weapon type came to Gavin’s frightened mind unbidden. 

            “Tag, newb, you lose,” a definitely recognizable female voice came to his ‘ears’. 

            “Alright, the exam is over.  Not bad Gavin, two out of three, and she wasn’t playing fair,” Gavin heard Benton over the comm..

            “Exam…?” Gavin mumbled incoherently.

            “Yes, this was a test Gavin.  All-in-all, not too shabby on the scores.  I think you passed.”

            “But…my arm…and my leg…”

            “Residual Feedback.  With the actual components gone, your mind does not know what to do with the signals that aren’t being received.  The brain interprets this with a feeling of pain and numbness,” Jenna said.  “You will get your feeling back when you return to your body.  That was part of the test as well, because there may be a time where you will get damaged, and you will need to know what to do.”

            “Uh, Dr. Mari,” Gavin said slowly, the fear receding and allowing him to think things through a little, “what happens if my head is destroyed?”

            “We have Limiters in place that will automatically pull you out of the dive in that case.  If you’re not pulled out within a few seconds, you will go brain dead.  Besides the Limiters, each pilot is assigned a Mechanic that constantly monitors the machine’s ‘health’ as it were.  This includes the pilots’ brain functions.”

            “Mechanic…who…?”

            “Oh, your mechanic is ET.  Have you met her yet?”

            “No, I…really haven’t met anybody yet…”

            “When you get back, I will introduce you myself, Gavin,” Benton put in.  “But for now, let’s bring you guys home.  Meg, please fetch our trainee.”

            “H-Hai, Benton-sama,” Megumi said in her quiet voice.

            The Carry-All’s shadow preceded the arm that grabbed Gavin by the middle and loaded him into the cargo area next to what could only have been Cassie’s machine.  The launchers on the back gave it away.  Also in the racks were the two others that Gavin had destroyed.  He had time to think on the ride back as it was quiet, and he looked over the other machines.  He activated the night-vision and examined Cassie’s machine.  What was it about her machine that made it so he couldn’t find her?  She cheated?  Then as he looked over the machine, he saw it.  A hole probably the size of his physical torso, was blown in the upper left chest panel.  Loose cables hung from the opening.  HAH!  Gavin felt a little better after that.  Benton knew it too, he said she had cheated.

            The flight back was quiet and uneventful.  After landing, Gavin ‘racked’ himself, and exited his dive without incident.  From there, Benton explained that the whole test was to see how he could deal with pressure.  To see if he could think straight, if he would freeze up, what his tendencies would be.  According to Jenna, he had blood pumping, but never achieved any true maximum-stress levels.  He had also managed to take down two thirds of his opposition, which had never been done before, and this test had been performed with almost every pilot.

            Gavin followed Benton out to the hangar from the D.C.C.P. and they looked at his broken mech from ground level.  The machine was large and bulky.  It didn’t look anything like what Cassie had been piloting when she made her spectacular landing the day before.  Gavin also noticed that each limb had a ring of spikes like a bracelet.  Benton explained that the rings recorded and transmitted information from the mech to the central database. 

            “This is a test bed model,” Benton explained.  “It’s fully-functional, but not made out of combat-grade materials, making it more fragile then the real models.  We use it primarily for testing new components and for the test of course. “

            “And so you blew the hell out of it,” came a female voice from behind them.  Gavin turned and saw a woman wearing bright orange coveralls covered in oil and tool belts and pouches, and a hardhat.  Beneath the helmet, she had a cute face, or at least would be, if it wasn’t smeared with oil.

            “Commander, how many times have I asked that you make the test easier?  The X-70 model isn’t designed for full combat.  And you, did you have to lose two limbs?”  What is with this place? Gavin thought.  All these cute chicks and everybody hates me.

            “I tried my best…” Gavin started.

            “Yeah whatever,” she waved him off, then looked him over, her eyes running from face to feet, then back again.  She decided something, pulled out a large crescent wrench from her back tool pouch and leveled it at Gavin like some sort of sword.  “You do this shit to the S-40 and I’ll break you.”

            Gavin backed off a step, caught off guard by the threat, and Benton moved into his place.  “Now, now, ET, I brought Gavin out here to meet you, and you threaten him?  That’s not very nice; you’ve been spending too much time with Darwin.”

            ET looked at Benton a moment with an obvious ‘but…’ on her lips, but changed her mind before speaking and then put the wrench away, wiping her hand off on her coveralls before extending it out to Gavin.  “Nice to meet you.  My real name is Mikagami Mai.  But everyone calls me ET.”

            Gavin accepted her hand, but followed it up with a question he immediately regretted.  “Why do they call you ET?  Nothing to do with the movie, right?”  Gavin’s chuckle ended as he suddenly felt a strong pressure on his fingers.   Gavin felt one of them pop before ET dropped his hand. 

            “No, it’s short for Engineer Trainee.  Has nothing to do with that movie,” she said flatly.  She walked around a stunned Gavin and flipped open a panel on the rack next to the foot of the mech.  She hit a button, and a large rumbling preceded the whole gantry sinking into the floor.  As the elevator took the test model down below the floor, Gavin watched ET stare at him.

            “Great.  Someone else hates me.  What did I do to make everyone so pissed off at me?”

            “Nothing.  They call this an ‘adjustment’ period.  They’ll get over you being here in a few days,” Benton said as his pager went off.  He took it out, looked at the display and then put it away.  “In the mean time, you might experience some hazing.  I’d be on the lookout for some practical jokes if I were you.  Good luck, Pilot,” Benton said as he walked off.

            “Are you kidding?  Practical jokes?!  What the hell?” Gavin shouted to Benton’s quickly retreating back.  He didn’t get a response.  “Now what am I supposed to do?”