Chapter 7

Scrambling behind a burned out armored vehicle Alex gulped in air into his sore lungs. He had been running for two blocks from an armored assault trooper who seemed to have lost sight of him for a moment. Alex didn't think that would last long as the Sarissan armored suit had excellent audio pickups and it was only a matter of time before it picked up his heavy breathing. Risking a glance, he peered around the left side as he lay against the back of what looked to be an armored van that had been modified for the protection to give Caris troops a fighting chance. The two sides had been fighting for years when the Alliance had fallen and its most distance worlds were ignored while the core worlds tried to pick up the pieces. Alex had been unlucky enough to be drafted into the defensive forces of Caris before the Sarissans invaded earlier that day, and so far it had been a one sided battle. The Sarrissans had made a number of advances in secret over the years and lulled Caris into a false sense of security by sending their most poorly trained and lightly equipped troops in first. Alex would have loved to face a poorly trained and troop right now.

The Sarrisan who had been chasing him appeared around the corner and seemed to be searching for him, but Alex already had a beat on him. The man pressed a button on the side of his helmet and Gregorvich immediately took aim as he was finally shown a weak spot in his enemy's armor. The solid shot hit the Sarrisan right between the eyes and he went down immediately. Making sure no surprises were waiting for him when he popped up, Alex moved in to check his kill. The man was certainly dead alright and Alex breathed a sigh of relief. Leaning on his rifle he felt exhausted and the brief respite allowed him to regain his strength. No shots could be heard nearby and Alex knew what that meant; he was likely the only Caris soldier alive within hearing distance. One thing you could be sure of, in their deadly armor and with their energy weapons Sarrisan troops didn't bypass anything. Like walking tanks they just mowed through and smashed everything in their way. By the sound of things and lack of chatter over a few combat channels sounding through his headset, they were succeeding.

"Time to turn the tables." Alex said as he did his best to clean out the gore inside the helmet.

When he was finished he managed to strip it off by finding hidden catches probably so a medic could help his comrade if he was actually hurt. This was just a guess as Alex had never actually seen a heavily armored Sarrisan wounded, let alone killed. Most of his own comrades fled at the sight of one of them. Unfortunately Alex had been the lucky one that the trooper had decided to go after because he had decided to actually fight, something he immediately began to regret as he threw everything he could at the solitary threat in front of him and it had kept coming without any hesitation. After it started firing back and made the buildings beside him into piles of rumble he decided running was a much better option. Donning the armor and picking up the energy rifle Alex tested its degree of movement. At first it was sluggish but gradually the speed and force of his movements picked up as he continued to work with suit. He quickly realized that with each new gesture and action the suit was customizing itself to him, and it felt like he was learning to use new part of his body rather than something entirely separate from him.

"Well this is nice." Alex said, satisfied that he was getting the hang of it.

Making another testing movement he crouched his body as if he were going to make a jump and heard a humming sound. Springing upward he was actually launched a good ten feet into the air. As he quickly approached the ground he felt jets at the bottom of his boots kick in to soften his landing so it barely jarred him.

"This is really nice." Alex said.

Checking the energy rifle, he tried to figure how it worked, and its features seemed pretty standard. The only real difference between it and his former weapon outside of the ammo it used was that it had a charging bar on the side which showed it was almost back to full charge, and two lights right below it, one was red and one was blue. Pressing the trigger Alex watched it hammer a hole into the pavement twenty feet away to make a sizable crater using red bolts of energy. Checking its charge he found it had only gone down a bar and that bar reappeared in a few seconds. Satisfied that he was far from defenseless, Alex headed off in search of more Sarrisans. Heading ten blocks north he heard the sounds of a firefight ahead and saw an enemy trooper pop around a corner to the right. Hurrying up he rushed around that same corner and found a bunch of Sarrisans attacking his comrades including his friend Ben Murphix. Opening up on the four enemy soldiers from behind he sprayed into them as he held down the trigger of is gun and blew their armor to shreds. Even as he started lowering his weapon Ben and the other defenders opened up on him.

Covering his face instinctively with his free hand Alex yelled out, "Ben you idiot it's me!"

The firing immediately stopped as Ben said, "Alex?"

Pressing the same button he had seen its former occupant press and revealing his eyes Alex replied, "Who else would show up to save your rotten hide?"

"Man am I glad to see you. I thought those four would be the last thing I saw in this life." Ben said indicating the four fallen Sarrisans.

"Yeah I thought pretty much the same thing before I killed the guy wearing this get up." Alex said.

"How exactly did you manage that?" Ben asked.

"I'll explain later. Right now we have plenty of work to do." Alex said.

Flicking a switch activating the blue setting and sent a testing shot into one of the dead bodies laying on the ground. His comrades all jumped back as evidence around them clearly showed they didn't want to be anywhere near the blast radius. All but Alex were surprised when it did not destroy the armor, but instead only jolts one of the dead men with a measurable impact.

"What the hell was that?" Ben asked, his dark hair covered by a shiny combat helmet like Alex had been forced to wear before switching.

A light combat vest protected the Caris troops, but it didn't protect their legs and arms. Against the enemy's energy weapons the armor was totally inadequate as it couldn't take much more than a glancing blow.

"It looks like it's the stun setting." Alex answered.

Checking another hunch he called up enemy positions with a thought and all Sarrisans nearby showed up on a heads up display in front of his eyes on the inside of the visor as it snapped closed. Focusing in on the nearest group he tries to find their coordinates in relationship to him. A new blip appears in the display showing that he is only three blocks away from them.

"Stay here I'll be right back." Alex said and prepared to jump onto a low lying building to his left.

"Are you sure you don't need help?" Ben asked in a worried voice.

Looking at his friend Alex smiled his face hidden inside of his helm and said, "Trust me."

Making the jump he lands on the rooftop without trouble. On the hop he makes his way across rooftops to give him a better firing position and the element of surprise. Even if the enemy somehow noticed his approach, he was wearing one of their armors suits and they might think he was a friendly. With one final leap he braked on a building looking down on the battle scarred city streets below where the enemy troopers were patrolling. Taking aim he started firing on them two go down before the third soldier knew what was happening. Turning around in time to see Alex firing another barrage, he is hit two times in the shoulder and the chest. Hurrying back to his fellows, Alex leads them to the downed enemy soldiers and finds them where he left them.

"Our side is signaling a general retreat, the capital seems to be lost." Ben said as they removed the enemy armor from the unconscious men.

"But now we have a chance at winning in a counterattack. Let's get these suits back behind our lines." Alex said.

"What about the POW's?" Ben asked.

"I'll take one of them and we'll leave the rest. We need to get out of the city quickly." Alex said.

Picking up one of the prisoners Alex carried him without trouble thanks to the suit and they managed to get out with only a few close calls where patrols came close enough to them that they might have been noticed, instead they moved on for some reason and all the defenders let out a breath they hadn't realized they had been holding. When they reached the safety of their lines, Alex was able to convince his superiors that the suits needed to be scanned and researched. They readily agreed and Alex and Ben took them back to the science institute where they had been working twenty miles away from the capital. What the Caris people lacked in military know how they made up for as engineers and scientists. Descended from deep space explorers as opposed to the Sarrisans who descended from deep space marines the explorer's descendants were generally peaceful and had thus counted on defensive measures such as space mines and a planetary shield to protect them. Now both were gone in this newest attack as the enemy concentrated on their homeworld instead of their outlying colonies like before.

As they traveled back to the lab Alex took stock of what had brought him to this point in that particular time period. He had gone to school to become proficient in the technology of the day and had done quite well for himself; in fact that was how he and Ben had met. Working together as lab partners they had earned some of the highest scores in their class, with Alex near the end becoming the top student of their university while Ben came in third. Working hard they had searched for an science institute that would allow them to research and to the Ocami Science Institute which agreed to take them both. Alex had felt little interest in working at the capital and facing stringent protocols and annoying office politics without his friend. The two worked well together and Alex wouldn't have changed a thing. He liked the freedom they had at Ocami. As long as they produced excellent results then their bosses let them research whatever they wanted. In the four years he had worked their Alex had learned a treasure trove of knowledge about metallurgy, physics, space, and medicine.

When they arrived at the still functioning Ocami, they headed immediately to their lab. Placing the armor on the scanning table he watched a blue light sweep over it from top to bottom. Seconds later a hologram came to life showing a virtual image of the armor right in front of him. In the small lab room Ben stood on the other side of the exam table and both men were viewing the holo.

"Give me a part by part break down of the armor computer." Alex said.

Silently the computer followed his instructions and even gave him a technical readout of what each part was made out of. Going through every part Alex and Ben were able to understand its construction, and when Ben put it on they were able to see how it worked as the computer ran another scan while his friend was using it. Out of the two of them they noticed that the suit seemed to work better for Alex, which was interesting.

"Why do you suppose that is?" Ben said as he removed the helmet, his hair a mess.

Shrugging Alex asked the computer, "Computer can you explain why Subject B is having an easier time using the suit than Subject A?"

In a response the computer showed an image comparing their brain patterns, and before their eyes the saw the reason: Alex's brain waves more readily adapted to the suit than Ben's brain did. When he wanted to do something his brain was able to put out a higher output and thus the suit responded better.