Blackburn inserted his legs into the wide, leg-shaped frames of an exosuit, then shoved his arms into the exosuit arms. When he clenched his fist, the metal mesh fingers contracted with his, and the metal frame closed around his arm, shortening so the metal joints aligned with his elbows and shoulders. Then Blackburn reached back and pulled up the metal neck of the exosuit, hooking the prong on the end of the neck into the access port of his own neck. Immediately, the rest of the exosuit mimicked the actions of the arms, contracting to fit around his body, the joints of the exoskeleton lining up with his joints. Soon, Blackburn was wearing what resembled a metal mesh frame from neck to toe.
“Right now I have forty-two times an average man’s strength.” Blackburn held his arms out to the sides, displaying the way the thin metal even encased his fingertips. “Give me a pair of goggles with infrared and night vision; some high-density steel armor with fiber-optic cloaking capability to render me invisible; maybe a ceramic, medicine-secreting vest to clot up and heal any wounds I receive; some built-in air-conditioning to regulate my body temperature; a few mechanized drones to be my scouts; some overhead satellites to be my eyes and ears; a couple rocket launchers for my arms; a distant carrier ready to launch cruise missiles at my command, and . . . well, kids, give me all that, and I become a supersoldier, the decision maker at the center of a vast nexus of automated weapons and armaments. Theoretically, one supersoldier could travel back in time and obliterate the entire Third Reich. This is the future of warfare. Now”—his gray eyes roved over them—“what is the most important thing to remember when you’re wearing these?” His gaze snapped over to Vik. “Ashwan. Guess.”
Vik blinked. “Is this the your-time-is-infinitely-valuable thing again?”
“That was rule one, Ashwan. This is rule number two.” And then Blackburn grabbed Vik in one swift movement and hoisted him over his head, causing Vik to give a startled yelp. Then, to Tom’s shock, Blackburn hurled Vik up into the air a good twenty meters.
Tom’s heart leaped as Vik’s kicking body sailed toward the ceiling and plummeted back down. Blackburn caught him easily and set him gently back on his feet.
“Care to guess now, Ashwan? What is the next rule we are going to discuss?”
“The s-strength.” Vik raised his wide eyes up toward the ceiling.
“Thatta boy, Ashwan. Superstrength. The human body is a frail, weak, easily ruptured thing. These exosuits are not. Rule number two: respect the power of these machines. Mess around in these and you will kill someone. The prototypes for these machines were around when I was a cadet. Those versions were only seventeen times an average human’s strength. I got to witness one cadet jump up as high as he could in an exosuit. Before he smashed into the ceiling, he had a head. Afterward, he had something that resembled a smashed watermelon on top of his neck.”
Tom looked up at the ceiling, intrigued. He figured if he jumped too high, he’d try to punch straight through the ceiling before his head got smashed. That would work. He was sure of it.
“That’s why I’m teaching you the old-fashioned way how to use these,” Blackburn finished, “working on muscle memory with you, not programming exosuit use into your brain. There’s a fundamental difference between a human being and a machine. Human beings think in imprecise terms. ‘A bit’ means something to a person. If I told him to jump thirteen point seven centimeters, however, he would estimate and be wildly off because precise numbers don’t mean much to the standard human brain. Machines, on the other hand, are precision instruments. They don’t understand ‘a little.’ They do understand thirteen point seven centimeters. Using an exosuit properly means learning to be precise with your movements. The sole reason you can use these exosuits safely is because your brains are already part machine, but these are only safe if you’re careful. So pick a suit, hook in, and wait for my instructions.”
After Blackburn’s intro, most trainees approached the exosuits with trepidation. Except Tom. He was excited to give it a shot. He eagerly hopped into his suit, flipped up the neck to connect it with his neural access port, and felt a thrill all over as the machine seemed to awaken around him, the metal legs and arms shrinking down to clasp around his limbs at the joining points. He stood there a beat, wondering if he should wait for everyone else, and he decided not to. He took a great, bounding step forward.
He sailed eight meters with the first leaping stride, six meters with the second, eleven meters with the third. Another couple steps, and Tom realized he was at the other side of the arena. He wanted to live in one of these.
And then he heard several loud clanks of exosuited legs pounding toward him. Before he could whirl around to see who it was, a steel-and-aluminum grip closed around the aluminum band across his collar and jerked him to a complete standstill.
“What do you think you’re doing, Raines?” Blackburn’s voice was furious.
Dread pervaded Tom. He dragged his gaze back to meet Blackburn’s.
“Didn’t you hear a word I said, trainee? These are dangerous. I didn’t give you permission to move. You could have killed someone! Now hold still.” He seized Tom’s wrists and slammed them to his sides with a mighty clang that traveled all the way up the exosuit. Blackburn leaned in close so his gray eyes bore right into Tom’s and whispered, “This is not a game.”
Then Blackburn hoisted him up by the collar plate of the exosuit and carried him step by careful step across the arena. Tom hung there, arms at his sides, the eyes of the other trainees fixed on them every clanking step of the way. He got a mental image of a cat carrying a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and the giggles and sniggers of the other trainees stung his ears and confirmed that he looked as ridiculous as he thought.
Blackburn set him down carefully, then led them through exercise after exercise, working on finely tuned control, giving specific heights to jump to, specific stride lengths to walk. By the end of the lesson, Blackburn had progressed them at that same snail’s pace to the point where they could perform some basic marches. Some made less progress than others. Wyatt was reluctant to move at all, even though when she did move, she was much smoother than people like Vik, who seemed unable to walk without flailing jerks of his limbs.
Tom tried to do the precision thing, but it made him feel awkward, the way thinking about breathing too much could make it difficult to breathe. The truth was, he found exosuiting easy. Very easy, actually—as natural as walking but a hundred times more thrilling. Since the very sound of Blackburn’s voice made him want to do something violent, Tom decided to tune him out altogether and go with his instincts whenever Blackburn was turned away. At one point, Tom glanced behind him and felt a surge of certainty he could do something awesome here. He crouched down then shoved off into a backflip.
He wasn’t sure he could’ve landed one in real life, but now he clanked back to the ground on his feet with perfect ease. Kelcy Demos and Jennifer Nguyen were both staring at him, wide-eyed.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m awesome at this.”
They rolled their eyes.
Tom was disappointed. He’d hoped they’d be more impressed. He noticed Vik struggling with his own exosuit, so Tom made sure to saunter over to him and rub in his face how good he was with it by doing a jig right in front of him.