Okay, sitrep, I'm 60% done SpecOps. I had to do a rewrite of the current story, which threw me off. I'm hopefully back on track.
On to the snippet!
Chapter 2
Jethro checked in with his old friend, Warrant 1 Ox in
the vast Armory, or Toybox as some called it. Ox was a Tauren, at one point the
seemingly last of his species in Pyrax. All of that had of course changed when
he met other Taurens in Antigua some time ago.
Unlike Jethro, Ox had remained in the Marines as their
premier suit armorer for some time. He had eventually found his way over to
Antigua and when the Cadre had started up he'd been tapped to work on finding a
way to copy Jethro's suit to make more of them.
That had been a problem for a long time; Jethro's
inherited suit was a recon suit, designed to cloak and spy on the enemy. Worse,
it was designed for a Neocat. They'd had to adapt it to the various suit needs
for the assorted species, and then the various missions they would be tasked to
perform.
They'd hit upon the idea of using Jethro's suit as an
engine. By removing parts and then having Bast replace them, they'd built up a
stockpile of components. Letanga had been one of the first to get a new suit
since he was a leopard and cousin to Jethro. His A.I. had zeroed the nanites
within the components and then adapted the suit to his size and needs.
From there they had built on their success to build
suits for the others. Along the way they'd learned to adapt the design and
eventually alter it to create a heavy weapon suit and a basic shooter suit.
They all shared engineering DNA with Jethro's first suit however.
It had taken a bit of time experimentation, but Ox had
been up to the task and in his glory. He had worked out command suits,
different heavy weapon mixes, and then further ways to modify the suits.
Colonel Lyon had eventually entered him into the rolls of the Cadre. He'd gone
through the training and implant upgrades, accepting an A.I. Minotaur as his
partner.
He was constantly tinkering and innovating though,
even when he'd been in recovery he'd been dreaming up new suits. His own suit
was a marvel of engineering, designed as the first engineering suit.
Admiral Irons and others had pointed out that the old
Cadre hadn't had so many specialists, but Ox had pointed out that was then and
this was now. The Admiral had been amused and had let things go from there.
He had a point though, creating so many specialist
suits had created a few problems, for instance ammunition cross over and
unbalanced power demands. Mars and Minotaur had worked with Ox to streamline
such concerns however.
Every user had their own input over time. Sometimes
their A.I. could manage minor tweaks. Ox was usually brought in for a big mod.
Recently they had frozen any further development on new designs in favor of
refining what they had. Ox had grumbled but had agreed. He'd finally admitted
he'd had enough on his plate for some time to come.
He wasn't the only armorer of the Cadre anymore
though; he had an understudy, Warrant Officer Jim 'Jimbo' Henrick. The human
warrant had become a legend in the Marine vehicle community before getting
bored with it and moving on to suits. He'd finally found his way through the
Reapers to the Cadre and was soaking it all up like a sponge.
Jethro looked at a heavy weapon suit; this one had
plasma guns on the forearms. Another suit had angel wings; the wings were
attached to a rocket pack and had small rockets on the fin like wings. He
winced though.
"I've worked out the bugs," Ox insisted.
"I'll take your word for it," he said dryly,
remembering his own misadventure with Ox's earlier design.
"I have."
"Okay, gotcha," he said with a nod. He
looked over to the Iron Spider mod, where arms were attached to the back. The
Iron Spider had smaller arms but had 3 or 4 of them that could flank the torso
or go over the shoulders. The War Machine design was his favorite, one or two
guns were mounted on arms over the shoulders.
Those suits were particularly popular with the few
Veraxin and T'clock in their ranks.
"How are we on timeline?" he asked.
"All green. All suits are up and running, all
tested. We'll be ready to ship out when we get the final word," Ox stated
as he studied a circuit.
Jethro nodded and flicked his ears slightly.
He always loved touring the engineering spaces. It was
like Christmas, the closest to Santa's workshop they had. From the look of it
Ox was working on one of the droids. No, he corrected himself as he noted the
circuit being carefully inserted by Waldos into a flying drone. A recon drone.
"I haven't been able to miniaturize the cloaking
ability of your suit for these babies. Smart skin is the best I can come up
with. But signal traffic can localize them for the enemy as well as the suit if
you aren't careful," Ox warned.
Jethro nodded. That was the downside of the droids and
drones, they sent and received information that the enemy could pick up and
track. It was all encrypted so he had no fear of the enemy hacking into the
data stream but he still worried that someone would figure out how to pinpoint
them. "Any progress with the lasers?"
"Hit or miss. Literally," Ox replied.
"Ah," Jethro said with a nod.
Every suit had 6 drones. Most had a balance, 3 rolling
drones and 3 flying ones. The flying ones were saucers about the size of a
dinner plate. The rolling ones were about the size of a baseball. A few were
even smaller, though there was a limit on how small they could get before they
had trouble with getting around.
The flying drones helped to expand their sight on the
battlefield. They could be addictive. Properly handled they could be landed
somewhere to conserve their power and switched to observation mode.
"I've got the pterosaur and bird drones running
again. Minor glitch," Ox said. "Well, Minotaur figured it out,"
he admitted.
"Good to know," Jethro said. The bird and
pterosaur designs were ISR units. They were designed to go high and linger over
a battlefield while looking like native wildlife. "Have you considered a
condor skin?"
"Yes. Minotaur looked into birds on Horath. We
need more research there," Ox reported absently. "If you'll excuse
me, this is delicate work," he said by way of dismissal.
"Don't let me stop you," Jethro said quietly
as he took himself off to other haunts.
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Letanga worked on blind sniping using remote drone
feeds. It was an advanced sniper technique, one of the hardest to perfect.
"It's harder than it looks," he muttered as his A.I. Satet fed him
the angles.
He squeezed the trigger and grimaced, ears flat when
he missed.
"High and to the right," Satet stated,
acting as his spotter. "Come down a degree and shift to the left a
hair," she said.
"See what I mean?" he growled. "I'd
rather do this on a moon or in space," he said, making the adjustments.
"Practice makes perfect," Tikaani stated.
"Better to practice now than under fire."
"Right," Letanga said, lining up the shot
once more.
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