She only passed one person on her way down to the units. Tucked behind the lowest of the docking bays, the corridor had a lovely view of the sweet fuck all that was space. For a moment, she paused by the window, looking out. The abyss called to her, the siren’s call of nothingness to ease her wounded soul a temptation she knew to ignore.
Pushing off from the wall, she walked along the row of storage units. Each was marked with an alphanumeric painted on the door with a retinal scanner in the wall beside it.
She walked three-quarters of the way down the line and stopped in front of unit 74B-9. After staring the door down for a few moments, she triggered the scanner and picked the option for a retinal scan rather than an access code.
“Welcome, Chief Archer,” the computer welcomed her as the door clamps released to swing open.
The lights snapped on as she stepped over the threshold, working their way down to the back. One of the larger units, it was big enough to contain a small land vehicle, but the hulking figure standing by the back wall wasn’t anything so mundane.
Instead, it was one of the most dangerous weapons in earth history—an armored tank suit.
Her tank suit.
“Hey, old girl,” Eris murmured in a low voice, walking toward it.
She ran a gentle hand down the arm, over the battered paint and metal. Her fingers traced the lettering on the breastplate.
Archer, E. Sgt. “Freya.” AIU: 31
She’d found it in a surplus store a few months ago, in pieces and being sold for parts. After months of scouring the net for any mention of armored suits, she’d hardly dared to believe it. She’d expected it to be something else… part of an actual tank or a loading exoskeleton with plates welded to it being passed off as a Scorperio. As soon as she’d seen the shrouded shape, though, she’d known.
It was a shadow of its former self. When she’d found it, it had been little more than the torso cage and left leg. The arms and shoulder laser arrays were gone, but the left machine gun was still in place. It had been decommissioned, badly, but nothing an experienced suit operator/mechanic couldn’t fix easily. Remarkably, the shielding was all still there, even for parts that were missing, and as far as she could work out from her brief suit-up, none of the power cells were corrupt.
She’d rebuilt it in here, sourcing the missing parts online. She hadn’t been able to see something so glorious left to rack and ruin, even if she couldn’t use it now. Not only could her body not take the neural load, but there were no mobile-tank units anymore. She had no idea what she was going to do with it when it was complete… donate it to a museum eventually, she guessed. But, for now, at times like these, she needed the comfort of an old friend.
Turning around, she slid to the floor with her back to one of the legs. Reaching in her pocket, she liberated her hip flask and unscrewed the top. She lifted it and toasted the hulking monolith behind her.
“Here’s to us, old girl. We did our best but got left behind. Didn’t we? At least we still got each other for the moment.”
❖
“Please tell me you’ve done this before,” Zero said, eyeing the medical equipment as Talent set it up around him.
It looked a lot more complicated than anything he’d used on himself in the past. It was all wires and tubes as Talent connected the auto-diagnostic bed to the console on the other side of the room.
“Don’t you need to have qualified as a healer to use all this?” he asked nervously, trying to slide off the bed without Talent spotting him. A sharp look from the tall Lathar pinned him in place.
“Not for these systems, no.” Talent’s hands moved confidently as he made sense of all the wires and plugged them in. “This is an auto-system so it doesn’t need a neural link. Still, it’s far in advance of the old scanners you guys were using. I can’t believe you still had it boxed up in storage.”
Zero shrugged. “None of us could make heads nor tails of it. You’d think they’d come with instructions or something.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you steal stuff.” A smile curved Talent’s lips as he knelt to put the last few connectors in place. “Yes, I’m well aware this unit was destined for the healer’s hall on Yxaniixos Seven.”
Zero blinked. “How do you know that?” Even he hadn’t known that, and he’d been the one to boost the container from its shipment.
“Auto-units aren’t that common. When one goes missing, the healer’s hall on Lathar Prime is informed. I was tasked with shipping a replacement unit out to them.”
“Ahh.”
That made sense. Medical units were expensive, but then again, so were imperial healers… and there was always the risk of falling out of favor with the empire and being barred, which was the reason they’d decided to “acquire” a unit. None of them had realized that simply setting one up required several decades of medical knowledge, a note from the lord healer, and a minor miracle.
“Okay… we should be good to go.” Talent stood, slapping the side of the unit in satisfaction as he moved to stand behind the console. “Just lie as still as you can, no fidgeting. It’ll help me get a good initial scan.”
Zero grunted in reply and went still. With absolute control over his body, no one could go as still as a cyborg. Well, as still as him because as far as he knew… he was the only one of his kind
