‘You’re all business, aren’t you? I quite like that in a-’
‘Tell me why you are here!’ The Iyr aimed down the scope of their phaser.
‘OK!’ I replied, putting my hands up in the air to express my defeat. ‘OK. I’ll tell you.’
I took a breath.
‘Do I need to have my hands up in the air? It’s just I get pins and needles if I leave them up too long, and that’s uncomfortable, and-’
The Iyr guard bashed me in the face with the butt of their rifle.
I fell to the floor - and tried to catch myself. My right hand slipped on the fresh patch of blood that my now-broken nose had so recently created. In a daze, I tried to blink my vision back into focus.
‘What the…’
‘I will not take any more of this from you. Tell me why you are here!’ the Iyr screamed.
‘I’m here to cast more of them aspersions, I guess,’ I muttered, blood splattering from my mouth.
Now that my arms were no longer held in the air to signal my innocence, I - as subtly as I could - pulled back my right sleeve and prepared to activate my EMP.
‘You think you are going to convince me that we, the Iyr, are in the wrong, here?’
‘Wait, what? What are you talking about? What might you be in the-’ I began, only to be interrupted by a roar erupting from the next room.
Te’rnu jumped out at the Head of Guard, swinging a long, metal pipe above his head.
Te’rnu brought his weapon crashing down with a crack into the Head of Guard’s head. Sparks flew from the damaged helmet, causing the Iyr to cry with pain, before dropping to the floor. He looked up at me with wide, terrified eyes.
‘Thanks, Te’rnu.’
He remained frozen, looking down at the Iyr and then at the pipe in his hands.
‘It’s OK, Te’rnu, it’s OK,’ I reassured him, holding my hand to my bleeding nose. ‘You just did what you had to.’
He gulped, looking up at me, and realised I was injured. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah,’ I told him, trying to sound convincing, ‘Just a broken nose. Nothing a med-sonar can’t fix in two minutes.’
Te’rnu looked on at me as I held my jacket against my nose, trying to stop the bleeding.
‘You are sure?’ he asked.
I nodded, and Te’rnu instead turned his attention to the guard, nudging them. ‘Do you think they are alive?’
‘I don’t know if we should stick around to find out.’
Te’rnu nodded, and we hurried up the hallway in search of the armoury - and the prized mechsuits.
‘You can be very annoying when you want to be,’ Te’rnu commented as we searched.
‘Thanks,’ I replied, voice muffled by the cloth across my face, ‘I pride myself on it.’
We soon came across a room that housed three of the suits. It didn’t feel like an armoury. In fact - between the desk and chair - it actually felt more like an office. I noticed an electronic frame on the desk and picked it up.
In the display was a family photo; two Iyr with their arms around one another, gazing at the camera. The couple each wore a mechsuit, so it was hard to tell exactly what was going on in the pictures, but it felt to me like a tender moment. The Iyr on the left, I noticed, had that same red stripe on their helmet - it was the Head of Guard.
I prayed that we hadn’t killed them, that we hadn’t deprived someone of their partner. I couldn’t handle that kind of guilt.
Putting the frame back down on the desk, I turned to face Te’rnu. He had wasted no time in getting into one of the suits. Each mechanical limb hung loosely around his body, like a kid in their father’s top.
‘Doesn’t look like it’s fitting you very well, huh?’
Te’rnu frowned, looked down at the suit, and tried to move his legs. He had no such luck.
‘I believe it is switched off,’ he clarified, before pressing the very obvious red rectangular button on the chest area - one that I had been itching to press since the moment I had noticed it, all of half a second ago.
The suit jumped into life, adapting in size to fit Te’rnu’s form with all the wondrous whizzes and whooshes that you would expect from a powered mechsuit. Once the helmet attached itself to Te’rnu’s head, I could see that same red stripe marking this suit too. Either this was one of the Head of Guard’s spares, or that decoration wasn’t so rare as I had initially thought.
‘How is it?’ I asked Te’rnu.
He wiggled his limbs about, trying to get a better feel for the suit.
‘Surprisingly comfortable,’ he replied.
‘Can it do anything fun?’ I asked, remembering that the guidebook had told me that these suits were often upgraded with interesting features.
‘There is a button on the viewscreen called “instant kill”. Should I activate it?’
‘No!’ I replied instantly. ‘At least… definitely not while I’m standing in front of you, thank you very much.’
‘What about “incapacitate”?’
‘Are you serious?’ I asked. ‘Are you trying to hurt me, Te’rnu?’
I heard a snickering from inside the suit. ‘I am joking, Syl. I have noticed you like jokes. Was I wrong?’
I smiled, shook my head. ‘No… you’re not wrong. But maybe we need to work on your sense of humour. Is there a button for that in there?’
A pause.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
A longer pause.
‘Oh,’ Te’rnu murmured when he realised that I was not being entirely serious.
I flashed him a grin, nodded, and then tried to get into one of the mechsuits myself.
Instant kill? Incapacitate? This was going to be bloody amazing.
I slipped into the suit as Te’rnu had, and keenly pressed at the button.
Nothing happened.
‘What is going on?’ Te’rnu asked. ‘Is it broken?’
‘I don’t know.’
I pressed the button again.
A voice from inside the suit announced, ‘Incompatible biology detected.’
Damn.
‘I guess it doesn’t take Terrans,’ I said, after a deep sigh.
‘What are we going
