“W-wolf 17,” he said. His voice was American Southern. “My favorite. You’re gonna kick some ass with this. It’s so good it can p-practically do the job by itself.”
The suit was black, long-armed, anthropoid. The helmet, horned by radio antennae, was fused seamlessly to the shoulders. Inside, Reese’s arms, legs, and body would fit into a complex web that would hold her tightly: the suit would amplify and strengthen her every move. It wasn’t entirely natural movement—she’d have to get used to having a lot more momentum in free fall than she normally did.
“F-fuckin’ great machine,” Vickers said. Reese didn’t answer.
The Wolf’s dark viewplate gleamed in the cool cabin light. There was a clean functionality to its design that made it even more fearful—nothing in its look gave the impression that it was anything but a tool for efficient murder. The white Wolf trademark shone on the matte-black body of the suit. Reese fought a memory charged with fear—Wolf made most of the cyberdrones she’d encountered on Archangel. The combat suit, free of its packing, had a smell she’d hoped she’d never scent again.
“I want to look at the manual,” she said. “And the schematics.” If her life was going to depend on this monster, she wanted to know everything there was to know about it.
He looked at her approvingly. “I’ve got them on thread in m-my cabin. The suit’s standard, except for some c-custom thread woven into the t-target-acquisition unit. Berger knows who you’re going to b-be gunning for, and he put in some specific target-identification routines. You’re gonna be h-hot.”
“That’s the plan,” Reese said. The smell of the Wolf, oil and plastic webbing and cold laminate armor, rose in her nostrils. She repressed a shiver.
Vickers was still admiring the Wolf. “One wicked son of a bitch,” he said. When talking to machines, he lost his stammer.
REESE AND THE Wolf moved as one in the void. Amber-colored target-acquisition data glowed on the interior of the black faceplate. Below them the asteroid glittered as flecks of mica and nickel reflected the relentless sun.
No way they’re not gonna know you’re coming, Berger had told her. Not with your ship’s torch coming at them. We stabilized the rock’s spin, so you can try landing on the blind side, but they’re smart enough to have put detectors out there, so we can’t count on surprise. What we’re going to have to do is armor you so heavily that no matter what they try to do to you, they can’t get through.
Great, she thought. Now the rock’s little techs, human and alien, were probably standing by the airlocks with whatever weapons they’d been able to assemble in the last weeks, just waiting for something to try booming in. All she could do was hope they weren’t ready for the Wolf.
The hissing of her circulating air was very loud in the small space of the helmet. Reese could feel sweat gathering under the Wolf’s padded harness. The rock’s short horizon scrolled below her feet. Attitudinal jets made brief adjustments, keeping Reese close to the surface. The Wolf’s suit monitors were projected, through her interface stud, in a complex multi-dimensional weave, bright columns glowing in the optical centers of her brain. She watched the little green indicators, paying little attention as long as they stayed green.
The target rolled over the near horizon in an instant—a silver-bright pattern of solar collectors, transmission aerials, dishes pointed at different parts of the sky…In the middle squatted the gleaming bulk of the freighter that had been sent to retrieve the base personnel, its docking tube still connected to the big cargo airlock.
Reese had a number of choices for gaining entry: there were two personnel airlocks, or she could go through one of the freighter locks and then through the docking tube. There were nine personnel on station, five humans and four Powers.
They can brew explosives with the stuff they’ve got on station, Berger had told her. But they can’t put anything too big around the airlock, or they’d decompress the whole habitat—and they don’t have enough stored air to repressurize. They can’t set off anything too big inside, or they’d wreck their work. It’s too small a place for them to plan anything major. We figure they’ll depend on small explosives, and maybe gas.
The base rolled closer. Reese felt her limbs moving easily in the webbing, the hum of awareness in her nerves and blood. A concrete certainty of her capabilities. All the things she had been unable to live without.
Coolant flow had increased, the suit baking in the sun. The webbing around her body was chafing her. She thought of explosive, of gas, the way the poison clouds had drifted through the tunnels on Archangel, contaminating everything, forcing her to live inside her suit for days, not even able to take a shit without risking burns on her ass…at least this was going to be quick, however it went.
Reese decided to go in through one of the small personnel airlocks—the brains inside the rock might have decided the cargo ship was expendable and packed its joints with homemade explosive. She maneuvered the Wolf in a slow somersault and dropped feet-first onto the Velcro strip by Airlock Two. Berger wanted her to get in without decompressing the place if she could—there was stuff inside he didn’t want messed up. Reese bent and punched the emergency entrance button, and to her surprise she began to feel a faint humming through her feet and the hatch began to roll up…she’d planned to open the hatch manually.
How naïve were these people? she wondered. Or was there some surprise in the airlock, waiting for her?
You’re gonna c-carry that stuff? Vickers had asked in surprise, as he noticed the pistol snugged under the armpit and the long knife strapped to her leg.
I don’t want to depend entirely on the Wolf, she’d said. If it gets immobilized somehow, I want to be able to surprise whoever did it.
There’d been an amused grin on Vickers’ face. They immobilize the Wolf, they sure as hell can immobilize you.
Adjust the webbing anyway, she’d said. Because battle machinery always went wrong sooner or later, because if the mission directive didn’t give her backup, she’d just have to be her own. Because she just didn’t like the Wolf, its streamlined design, its purposeful intent. Because even to someone accustomed to violence, the thing was obscene.
Reese knelt by the airlock, pulled a videocamera from her belt, and held it over the airlock, scanning down…and fought back a wave of bile surging into her throat, because the lock was full of dead men.
Mental indicators shifted as, with a push of her mind, she ordered her attitudinal jets to separate the Wolf from the Velcro parking strip, then drop into the lock. The dead swam in slow motion as she dropped among them. Her heart crashed in her chest.
The crew of the freighter, she thought. The rebels had put them in here, not having anyplace else. Their skins were grey, the tongues protruding and black. Some kind of poison, she thought.
“Welcome to Cuervo Gold,” she said, and laughed. Nerves.
She hit the button to cycle the airlock, found it refused to work. Incurious dead eyes gazed at her as she cranked the outer door shut manually, then planted thermocharges on the inner door locks. She drifted up to the top of the airlock again, the Wolf’s horns scratching the outer door. The dead men rose with her, bumping gently against the Wolf’s arms and legs.
Reese curled her legs under her, protecting the Wolf’s more vulnerable head and back. Adrenaline was beating a long tattoo in her pulse.
A vulture smile crossed her face. Her nerves sang a mad little song. Here’s where I take it up the ass, she thought, and pulsed through her wetware the radio code to set off the detonators.