Chapter 61

I saw the twins simultaneously jumped and took their helmets off, while Ben turned towards my mom.

“No way! There are AIs built into the suits?”

My mom shook her head. “They’re not built into the suits, they’re all in a server room on the deck below. Each AI will be assigned to a person, and that AI will tie into the Mark VII and VIII suits, as well as the earpieces you’ll be getting shortly. They can also tie into phones, but the ones you have aren’t sophisticated enough. We’ll probably rectify that as well, once we arrive.”

“It’s different in Jonathan’s case, as Abi is more capable than any AI. His suits are also quite a bit more durable than everyone’s, bar his sisters’, but the gap will close once we’re able to acquire a supply of Warvynium. If you go around to the back of your suits, you’ll notice that there are slots going all the way around. There is nothing in them right now, but you’ll be able to insert plates, increasing the overall durability of the suit.”

“How much protection do they offer without the plates?” Ben asked. “When I looked at my gun, it said that it would have about a thirty percent chance to get through my suit.”

“That’s a hard one to answer because there are so many different types of weapons. You’ve got particle beams and lasers, pulse and plasma weapons, and then a wide variety of more conventional weapons. For example, sharpshooters usually use gauss guns built for range, but they use all sorts of different projectiles. Some are your typical armor penetrating rounds, while others might have poison capsules or explosive tips. The AI was estimating that your pulse rifle would get through your suit with the first shot thirty percent of the time. A gauss gun would go through much more easily, but that is what the plates are for.”

“So does it work the same way as armored vests and such?” Mason asked. “Will the suit get weaker and weaker with every hit?”

“If you’re hit in the same spot repeatedly, then yes, but the armor is made in such a way that a hit in one area doesn’t compromise the armor adjacent to it. They’re made using a material similar to kevlar, but the entire suit is made using hundreds of hexagonal pieces a few inches across. They’re sewn together in such a way that if one or two of those hexagons take a hit then the ones surrounding them will still be in perfect condition. All of the plates on the outside of the suit covering the torso, arms and legs will also be swapped out for Warynvium to provide added protection. They’re just placeholders for now.”

“That’s three levels of armor, right? The outer plates, the kevlar-like stuff in the middle and then the insertable plates?”

“Precisely. How about the five of you step into your suits and I’ll go over some of the features.”

“Is it safe? The AI, I mean,” Anja asked.

“Absolutely,” Abi answered, her voice coming over the intercom. “AIs have been in use for hundreds of years, but before that people were just as worried about them rising up as humans are. A few civilizations actually banned them before they were proven to be safe. Oya and Tala both have AIs in their mechs, by the way. That is how each circuit was faster than the last when they were racing. As they ran through the forest, their AIs were working to find the best possible route. Besides, since all of the AIs are housed in a server room down below, I can monitor them at all times to make sure they’re behaving. I wrote the code though, so I know that they’ll be absolutely fine.

Neither of the twins had a reservation after that, and the five of us walked around our individual mechs before stepping inside of them. The suits didn’t close up, so we all looked up at my mom.

“There is a small throat microphone built into the collar of the suit. Just make sure that the collar is touching your throat and then say ‘close,’” she said, continuing when we had all done so. “That’s just the default command to close the suit, and it will only work for you. Later on, you can work with your AI to change it, or you can ask your AI to open and close your suits for you. Now, put on your helmets and then pick up your guns.

She stepped over to the side while she waited for us, and then had us raise our rifles to a firing position. As we did, a reticle appeared on each of our HUDs, showing exactly where our rifles were pointing.

“So there are a few things you’ll notice right away. With the Mark VII and VIII suits, you won’t need to raise your gun up to your shoulder and aim down the sights all the time. You’ll see the amount of power remaining in your current power cell, the power setting of the rifle, the current heat level and exactly how far away your target is. If you switched from your pulse rifle to a different type of weapon, some of those displays would change. For example, if you switched to your gauss pistol, the power setting would change to display the amount of ammunition remaining, while the power cell and heat level displays would remain.”

“The entirety of the HUD is also customizable. Right now if you look at me, an image of me, along with my name, race and a bunch of other details will appear on the top left-hand side of your vision. You’ll be able to move it anywhere you want, resize it and change the amount of information you want shown, among other stuff. If you don’t like the look and color of your reticle, you can change that too.”

“The suit, or helmet in particular, also does away with the need for accessories such as night vision goggles or respirators. Everything is built in, including flash eye protection, thermal imaging, nightvision, infrared and regular flashlights, making sure you’ll be able to see in all situations. Oh, and one more thing. I want each of you to say ‘plate.’”

Our vision went dark again as something formed over our faceplates. After a second we could see our surroundings again. Looking at my friends, I could see that all of them had black plates covering the entirety of the front of their helmets. There was also a small camera built into the place, which was presumably how we were able to see.

“Those plates will immediately drop down if your AI detects an explosion close to you as the face shields are the weakest part of the suit. It’s only one layer of laminated materials, and while it would probably stop a round from a gauss rifle, I wouldn’t want to test it. Especially not more than once. The plates covering your faces will help with that, but you shouldn’t use them all the time. They’re more of an emergency measure, than anything else.”

“We won’t be able to use this suit in dungeons, right?” Mason asked. “I remember the fact that we would have to level up to be able to wear some of the better suits inside of our closets.”

“I don’t think anyone has tried to wear them into a dungeon yet, but I would say no, not until you’re at least level one hundred, if not higher. We don’t know how dungeons determine what armor can be worn inside of a dungeon and what armor can’t. There have been a few situations where a dungeon will let a person in one set of armor in, while someone wearing another, better set of armor, won’t be let in. You’ll probably have to stick with the suit you’ve been using.”

Mason nodded and then we killed time while waiting for my sisters to get up to speed. Once they were, Ryx walked everyone through familiarizing ourselves with their AI. For me that was easy, as Abi would be functioning as mine. For my friends and sisters, however, that meant getting to know their AI and getting used to communicating with them. They would also have to learn everything about their suits, while Abi could download all of the relevant information right to my brain.

Once that was done, he walked us through setting up our initial loadout. To do so, we each picked up the tablet corresponding to our station, and began picking the things that Ryx told us to pick. It was mostly stuff like spare power cells, spare armor plates, tools to repair our armor in the field, explosives, rations, water and anything else we might need if we were stuck in the middle of a war. It was unlikely, but it would be better to be prepared for such an eventuality. When we were all done, he had us save our loadouts, which were temporarily named ‘Loadout 1’, and then slide the tablets into the slot at our respective stations.

“Alright, so the next time you access a station to get your suit, all of the items you just picked will be laid out on the table attached to the station. You’ll just have to get suited up, put all of your items in your suit’s dimensional storage, pick up your gun and you’re good to go.”

“You’ve had a few days off, so tomorrow I want you to spend time in the morning going through the list to see if there is anything you might need. Some stuff, like guns and explosives, will be off limits until you’ve been taught how to use them, but most of the inventory will be available to you. Now, step out of your suits and I’ll show you how to put them away, and then we’ll give the Mark VIII suits a look.”

It was pretty simple to put the suits back in dimensional storage. After walking them back over to the spot that they appeared, we stepped out of them and then went back around to the tablet. With the push of a button, the suit disappeared. With that done, Ryx had us walk back over to the wall and pulse it with mana, calling out ‘Loadout 2.’

The Mark VIII was much beefier than the Mark VII, but it definitely wouldn’t be considered a mech. It was the same height, but everything from the helmet down to the feet was much better armored. Along with the suits, everything was cleared off the table in the middle of the room, and a number of objects covered it instead. All of them looked like they attached to the suits in some way.

“You can see that the Mark VIII is a little wider and offers more protection. Along with that, it’s also got room for a number of attachments, like the ones you see on the table here. You probably won’t be using one of these suits until you’ve trained with it, which will probably be on the way back to Earth, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look now.”

“Is that a jetpack?” Mason asked, pointing to what looked like a large backpack with a thruster attached to the bottom.

Ryx laughed. “Nope, but that might not be a bad idea. It’s a plasma mortar. Once attached to the back of the suit, it allows you to act as a one man, mobile mortar team. Everything on the table is either a weapon or a tool. Hell, some of them could even be considered both.”

He went through everything on the table, picking one item up at a time as he explained what they were, before showing us how they attached to the suit. There were retractable blades, grenade launchers, missile launchers, and arm-mounted gauss guns to name a few of the weapons. On the tool side there were plasma cutters, saws, drills, hydraulic jaws and an assortment of other tools. The tools all seemed catered around rescuing people or creating openings, which would probably be pretty useful aboard a ship or in an urban setting.

Other than being a bit bigger and able to carry a bunch of different weapons and tools, it wasn’t too different when we got inside of it. The HUD was exactly the same and other than a little added weight, it felt the same too. It was clear that the added weight added much more protection, and the fact that it had a multitude of attachments meant that it was pretty versatile. I’d probably use it over the Mark VII once cleared to use it, and I knew Mason absolutely would.

Reiterating the fact that he wanted us to get used to the Mark VII tomorrow, Ryx also said that we’d continue practicing with the gauss pistol in the afternoon. While we had originally planned to game for a few hours, it was now much too late for that. After heading to the mess for a snack, we all headed to our rooms to get some sleep.

“Hey, check this out,” Mason said, drawing our attention to where he was sitting, checking everything that was in the armory’s inventory.

We had immediately headed down to the armory after we finished eating, as we wanted to take our time going through everything. Ben had the idea that we look through and see if there was anything we would like to have if we planned on spending multiple days inside of a dungeon. There were plenty of similarities between a dungeon and a battlefield, the main ones being that we would always need to be alert, and we would need to do some cooking, unless we wanted to eat MRE-like rations all the time.

The image on Mason’s tablet was a gauss rifle, not dissimilar from what my mom was describing last night. It was huge as far as rifles go, being at least seven and a half feet long, with the majority of that being the barrel.

“I don’t think that’s going to help us inside of a dungeon, Mace,” Sonja said. “Not unless all of the floors start being like the one with the goblins and the wyvern.”

“I know, but it’s pretty damn cool. This thing fires rounds the size of .50 BMG, and I don’t mean the size of the bullet, I mean the size of the bullet and the casing. That’s insane! Especially since our new suits have a chance of stopping one of those. It’s also got something like a ten kilometer range, but I have no idea how anyone would be able to see that far, let alone hit their target. There must be some damn good scopes in here somewhere.”

“You can look at that later,” Ben replied. “You declared yourself our demolition’s expert. You’re supposed to be looking at those.”

“You’re sure we can use explosives inside of dungeons? That seems like an incredibly easy way to kill a bunch of monsters all at once. We could even take out a boss if we managed to lure it into a trap.”

“At level one hundred, yes, but we’re not just putting these loadouts together for dungeons. I’m not sure we’ll actually be participating, but we could be in a war in a few months. I’d like to have everything we might possibly need, should we have to get involved. I doubt explosives would kill a boss, though. At that level they would probably have pretty good resistances or shields to protect them from blasts.”

“Oh. Anyways, I’m done.”

“Done?”

Mason nodded. “Remember last night when Ryx said that the majority of weapons and explosives would be off limits until we learned how to use them? He was right. The only explosives I found that we can use are shaped charges and grenades. You can’t add anything to a loadout if you don’t have the right permissions. I’ve just been killing time checking out all the cool toys in here.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? We could’ve used some help sorting through all of the other stuff.”

He shrugged this time. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find things, right? I mean other than the stuff that Ryx had us add to our loadouts last night, what else do we need?”

“How about you help me find stuff for setting up camp?” Anja asked. “I already found hammocks and collapsible chairs and stuff like that, but I’ve been having trouble finding axes and shovels.”

“I get the shovels, but why bother with axes? We can just grab a few of the collapsible ones like my halberd or your daggers. If they’re good enough for killing monsters, then they’re good enough for cutting down trees, or branches. It’s not like we’re that limited on space, the suits have a dimensional storage capable of holding two hundred pounds worth of stuff. Why not just throw a chainsaw or something in there?”

Ben laughed. “Here’s a hypothetical for you, Mace. We’re trapped in a forest behind enemy lines. We need to make a shelter while we wait for rescue, but there are no fallen trees or broken branches around us. We could probably range out further to find some, but that would increase the chances of us being found, and either captured or killed. In that hypothetical, what would make it more likely that we would be discovered, an axe or a chainsaw?”