WHB6 - Chpt 10-12

War horses fans! You'll be happy to know this last week has been productive. Progress has resumed and is smooth on book 6, and that means I should have a finished first draft in the next 4 weeks, and depending on editor availability, have a release in the second half of next year.

Here are the last 3 advance chapters for the next War Horses book. Enjoy them, and thank you for your support!

Chapter 10 - The Order of Heaven

Ia Yukhar was mostly as I remembered it. The same cleric even met us in the shuttle bay, bowing and bidding us welcome to the second largest ship in the Paladin Devil’s possession, in service some 150 odd years.

“Honorable, Chevaliers! I shall endeavor to ensure your stay aboard Ia Yukhar is as pleasant as it is developmental. Unfortunately, with your training cadre and the additional teams coming aboard from our cherished joint fleet, you may find the accommodations somewhat lacking compared to our usual hospitality. The ship was, regrettably, not designed with such numbers in mind. Please, follow me.”

I sidled to the front of the line and leaned in. “Is the, erm, mistress aboard?”

I heard a few snickers from the group behind me, but I ignored them.

“Not at the moment, I’m afraid,” said the Paladin cleric. “Her honorable personage is attending a joint planning meeting for how best to deploy the Order of Heaven.”

“The order of who, now?” asked captain Torres. He was the ranking member of our detachment.

“Those chosen to be inducted into the ranks of the first generation Seraph pilots,” The cleric said without a hint of irony.

“More like those chosen to discover all the lethal design quirks,” someone else muttered. I wanted to figure out who and punch them in Duri’s defense, but I couldn’t help agreeing. First generation tech was invariably buggy and full of unforeseen issues. Often fatal ones. Ideally you want third generation, maybe fourth, which is the sweet spot when the original designers have ironed out all the wrinkles in their vision before they get fired and beancounters start cutting corners and swapping in cheaper parts. Ardennes at this point is first, second, skip third, and then fourth all the way through sixteenth generation if you look at her individual parts. A lot of widgets that should have been replaced never were, and a few parts that should have been factory original were later refurbishments.

We passed into the main passage way with the big, tiered atrium and indoor botanicals. Someone above whistled and then started barking. I felt blood rush to my face, thinking another Paladin jockey was disrespecting us, even after I’d put them in their place at the Melee. But when I turned my head upward, it was a different opponent.

“No way!” I yelled up.

Captain Tanith of the War Dogs grinned down at me, leaning over the railing. “Oy, Vandal! They roped you in on this monkey business too, yeah? Now I know we’re fucked!”

I laughed. “They couldn’t keep me away if they tried. I’ll fill you in later. Stargaze Lounge on the top deck aft when we’re free, yeah?”

Tanith cocked his head, and I realized he was probably wondering why I knew my way around a Paladin warship.

Our guide cleared his throat, and a few of the other jockeys were glaring, so I waved to Tanith and caught up with my fellow Chevaliers. It didn’t take long for the Paladin cleric to show us our rooms—the same as the ones we’d had before, only now they had rows of cots with printed foam pads to accommodate four people to a stateroom.

I snagged one whole room for me and Jacque, as well as two members of the pass-thru crew that had been selected, which I’d actually been calling them before Swift labeled them as goons. Second lieutenant Rorshach from First had gotten the callsign ‘Inkblot’ after mistakenly discharging her entire hydraulic reservoir while feeling her way through the shunt. First Lieutenant Kleiner from Sixth, or ‘Loopy’ as they started calling him after he managed to accidentally bridge every communication hierarchy and create a feedback loop of repeated radio calls on his first patrol that forced the entire formation to go radio silent while his commander sorted it out.

Jacque had met both of them already but had no idea they’d managed to crack the shunt almost to the degree I had. It drove him a little mad that he couldn’t manage it but he had also stopped trying when Swift put her foot down about the whole thing.

“What’s our schedule look like, Jacque?” I asked.

Jacque had flipped on the holoscreen on to the Chevalier itinerary, which included our introduction to the new equipment.

“We’ve got an inbrief shortly, and then we’re due for uniform fitting in forty minutes,” he said. “Equipment familiarization to follow.”

“Makes sense,” I said, shrugging my bag  onto my cot. “Last time, Duri’s test pilot had this body-glove thing with interface lugs. I’d bet that’s what we’re getting.”

“Sounds sexy,” said Inkblot. She ran one hand down her hips and the other through her short, red hair as she grinned suggestively. “Form-fitting onesie? Try to control yourself, lads. Can’t promise I’ll do the same.”

I rolled my eyes.

Loopy plopped down on his cot, which groaned alarmingly underneath him. “Hope they got plus size,” he said. He was about Stag’s weight, but big where Stag was muscular and trim. Last I heard, they were neck-and-neck for the company’s squat and deadlift records. “Will I even fit in one of these seraph things?”

I pursed my lips. “They kind of fit around you. They got this pocket that sort of squeezes and conforms to whatever’s inside it.”

“I got something similar,” said Inkblot as she elbowed Loopy’s shoulder. Loopy coughed and turned red.

I pulled a balled-up shirt out of my bag and threw it at Inkblot, who shrieked and laughed and just grinned harder. I don’t know where she got her taste for dirty jokes, but she’d have fit in great on the maintenance crews with Athena and the gang.

                            *

“Vandal, I take it all back. This is not sexy!”

Inkblot shuffled out of the fitting area with her arms at right angles like a scarecrow in a holo-film. Her lips were turned up in an expression of pure disgust that I, frankly, shared.

“Maybe you get used to it,” I said, pacing in my own.

“I’m going to need ten showers after this,” said Loopy.

“I find it rather refreshing, actually,” said Jacque.

We all looked at him.

“Cool and slick. Like being in a pool, no?”

“What the fuck kind of pools do they have in French Catalan?” demanded Inkblot.

Other members of the Chevaliers were sitting, pacing, and grimacing as they moved about in the new threads.

What I hadn’t known when I’d seen Yusef in one of these suits was that there was nothing underneath except a layer of weird, slimy gel. It made the whole process of getting into the body-glove akin to pulling an over-lubricated condom on over your entire body. It was, in a word, one of the most viscerally revolting tactile sensations I’d ever experienced. And that was including the shunt feedback from the Hapthor gaussing device.

But while my roommates were busy being grossed out by Jacque, they weren’t currently remembering who had gotten them into the situation, for which I was extremely grateful.

One of the hatches slid open and a cleric walked into the compartment with her hand over her eyes. “Is everyone decent?” she asked. After about five seconds she dropped her hand, and I recognized her as one of Duri’s engineers. She scanned the room with a look of relief. “Oh, good. The fitting went faster than planned. I’m Dr. Ilhan. I can begin the brief early and then get you over to begin familiarization. You may sit or remain standing.”

I eyed the row of metal chairs in front of the holoscreen with some mistrust. It felt as though I’d slide right off if I tried to sit down, though the exterior of the body-suit was a high-friction polymer. I suppose it felt more like I would slide to the bottom of the suit. Ugh. It looked like the majority of the present company agreed because only a few people shuffled over to the seats.

Dr. Ilhan brought her datapad up and flicked her presentation to the main screen, which brought up a digram of the body-glove. “I apologize for the discomfort you’re feeling. I know first-hand the multi-purpose compound can be unpleasant until you get used to it.”

“You mean the five kilos of fucking lube?” asked Captain Torres.

Ilhan cleared her throat. “Lubrication and anti-chafing is only one of its functions. It also acts as a moisturizer, neutralizes sweat and oils from the skin, acts as a disinfectant and coagulant in the event of an injury, and regulates body temperature. But its primary function is an electrolytic bridge to allow the nodes on the outside of your new jumpsuit to translate the trace electric impulses generated by muscle flexion to the inside of the Seraphs.”

“What’s the point of that?” someone asked. “I thought these things were shunt-controlled.”

“It’s to ensure the suit moves with you, rather than the shunt exclusively controlling actuation. Most of you have trained for years to keep your legs mostly still while operating an upright. That habit could cause injury if you were to fight the machine. I can promise you, the Seraph would win.”

I still didn’t like it. But I’d deal with it. And then take a long, long shower.

Chapter 11 - Suit Up

The Seraphs hadn’t changed a great deal from when I saw Duri’s prototype. They were still humanoid torsos on three-jointed legs, with high-mounted guns and small actuated arms sticking out the front like little T-Rex limbs. The hangar had been cleared of Paladin uprights, and walking into it, I could see a row of the Seraph Mark I’s, along with a maintenance gantry, an obstacle course, and a doorway that was marked Firing Range along the far side. There were more Seraphs than Chevaliers present, which made me wonder…

“Doc Ilhan,” I began, “How big is the Order of Heaven?”

“The first generation of Seraphs is comprised of two-hundred units, to be crewed by majority private security—neither the Twelve nor the Templars wanted the other to gain direct wide access, so this was the compromise. If you’ll all proceed to your assigned vehicles, we can begin the familiarization.

I walked up to the row of Seraphs and ran my hand along the exterior of one chassis. Stenciled under the cockpit was the name Loopy.

“Hey Loop, I found yours,” I said. The other Chevaliers began looking for their names on the cockpits. I found mine in the front row, and hauled myself into it with the overhead canopy handles the way Yusef had shown me. The rest of the crew began to follow suit. I pulled on the goggles and stuck my arms through the metal sleeves, reaching up to lever the canopy down with the motor assisted joints.

The Seraph came to life immediately, and the inner membrane pressed up against me. I said Earlier that I could feel Duri in the cockpit design of Surah. But in the Seraph? It was like having her warm body pressed up against me on every side. This cockpit had been built for me. Built to protect me. This perfect fit, more than anything up to this point, convinced me that Duri reciprocated my feelings for her.

Not everyone saw it that way. My hud was active and my threat index spiked. The computer identified it as human screaming, and I activated the external speakers as I turned my head. Two of the techs were at the side of a Seraph in the second row, who was flailing its arms and clawing at its own canopy. They were trying to approach it to activate the release, but couldn’t risk getting smashed by the motorized arms.

I hadn’t gone through the startup process in the sim. But I flicked my eyes around the HUD until I found the sequence and drew my micro-reactor up to power. My legs loosened, and I stood up straight. I twisted, bringing the rows of Seraphs into better view. A few of the Chevaliers who hadn’t gotten their cockpits closed yet were frozen, unsure what to do. I moved over, sidling between the rows until I reached the one in distress. I reached out and gripped the two arms, holding them still as I activated my own external speaker.

“Get it open!” I yelled down at the techs. One of them rushed in and cranked the manual release. With a hiss of hydraulics, the canopy lifted, revealing a marine I recognized as being from Fourth. Her face was red and flushed, her eyes wild. She stared around, and then yanked her arms out, pulled herself over the edge of the canopy, and flopped onto the floor where she curled into a ball and sobbed.

“What the fuck did it do to her?” I demanded.

Doc Ilhan made a note on her datapad. “Extreme claustrophobia. There seems to be at least one in every training group.”

“You didn’t think to warn us?” I asked as the two techs coaxed our marine to sit up so she could be moved.

Ilhan adjusted her holo-specs and peered up at me. “You managed to get it started and mobile on your own? That’s highly…” she glanced down at the name stenciled below the canopy. “Ahh, Mr. Vandal. I thought I recognized you.” she seemed to catch herself. “Unfortunately, this extreme phobia manifests even in those who have shown no prior dispensation for tight spaces. There is simply no way to know in whom it will arise until they’re in the cradle.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Lieutenant from 6th pull himself back out of his cockpit and drop to the floor. “I’m out. Fuck this.”

“Get back in your Seraph, Walton,” said Torres, who had managed to get his external speakers working.

Walton gave the two-finger salute and stomped after the techs. He started undoing his body-glove, and I half-expected him to strip naked right in the hangar bay. But just like that, we were already down two potential Seraph pilots.

And most of us hadn’t even managed to turn them on.

The rest of the afternoon was mostly dedicated to teaching people how to spin up the reactor and work the various primary systems involving locomotion. Only me and the pass-thru crew made it to the obstacle course. I figured it would be a breeze, what with having bounded around without issues in the sim. But navigating the real thing proved to be quite a challenge, and it was only then that I found out the sim version had been on a training mode that improved the vehicle’s balance and lowered its center of gravity.

I huffed and puffed as I circled around to make my fifth circuit through a course that would have been child’s play on my feet, but seemed an insurmountable obstacle for my new, 3-meter body. It’s not that the Seraphs were clunky or difficult to manage. The grace was there. But it would take time and muscle memory to access it. If this was going to be the Order of Heaven, we were still stuck banging on the pearly gates.

When you’re piloting an upright, your body is mostly still. Your shunt tells you that you’re getting tired because you’re working inexhaustible muscles constantly. But in a Seraph, you get assailed with fatigue from your machine and your entire body moving. Loopy was recovering himself, his Seraph slumped in the most undignified way against the starting barrier. Inkblot was making her seventh circuit. I watched her vault over the two-meter hurdles with short, neat bursts of her counter-grav generator.

“I hate her,” I said over the open comms. “It’s like she was born in the thing.”

“Hot-mic,” she said. She extended her hooks and used them to swing a tight-turn to keep her momentum into the straight-way, and started pumping legs to really build up speed. I’d stumbled on that corner twice and fallen completely over on the third. Her balance never wavered.

“I know.” I replied.

“She was a gymnast,” gasped Loopy. “Shit, Vandal. I hate cardio. Uprights are supposed to walk themselves.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get her on the range.”

Just before dinner chow, Doc Ilhan had us return the Seraphs to their original position so they could be serviced and our pilot habits analyzed by data collectors. I was curious what mine would say, but more than anything I was just beat from the physical exertion of piloting the real deal.

But, after heading back to the staterooms to shower off the disgusting gel residue from the inside of the body-condom, I received a ping on my commpad that made it all worth it.

Chapter 12 - Private Consult

“How did it compare?” asked Duri.

“Straight to business, then?” I asked. Her personal stateroom on Ia Yukhar wasn’t much smaller than her lab, and boasted a discrete table that slid out of the wall, with a rotating plate similar to the one in the grand dining hall where I’d met her uncle and cousin. The ship’s head cook personally arranged her dinner on it before lighting a pair of candles and pouring drinks. I felt a little awkward throughout the whole affair. But once he left, it was just like the first time we’d met at the skin-joint, absent the pumping bass and hanging machinery. The music she had chosen was a soft, electronic beat, so I think she might have been reminiscing about the same event.

I never treated Duri like she was some princess to be coddled the way her employees did. Our companionship was close and casual, though hints of intimacy showed through in the way her eyes lingered on my hands or traced up and down my face as she smiled.

“Always,” she said. “Tell me.”

Duri also never tried to convince me that she saw me as if I was her equal, since I unequivocally was not. Her family’s power stretched across more territory than the Chevaliers had traveled in the last two-hundred years, and now her technology designs were the keystone of a two-pronged spear driving deep into Wyking territory.

I leaned back and took a deep breath, trying to ignore the screaming muscles. “There’s something they lack compared to true uprights. Each upright tank has individual quirks and charms that tend to come out after a while. Maybe I’m just not used to piloting factory-fresh tech on the bleeding edge. Oh, and where do I even start on those disgusting slip-and-slide suits?”

Duri covered her mouth with the back of her hand and tried not to spit dinner as she giggled. She managed to swallow and then allowed herself a laugh. “Yes, the sensation is quite alien, at first. You get used to it, but the ‘ick’ factor of putting them on never completely goes away. And when taking them off, of course.”

I should have known Duri had suited up and driven them, probably as much or more than Yusef. She was a skilled upright pilot in her own right—even if she was too valuable to ever put on an active combat roster. MBUs were her family’s tradition and had been for generations. I tried not to laugh as I thought of her grimacing while squeezing into the lubricated one-piece. Though, when I pictured her taking off the getup, milk coffee-colored skin slick and glistening from the gel, my face began to heat.

Duri likely knew exactly what I was thinking, as she reached out beneath the table and ran her foot up the inside of my calf, which only made me blush harder. I took my mind off it by focusing on the familiarization session.

“The interface is super intuitive. You’ve made a few changes since I ran the sims that are closer to how Catalan vehicle UI’s are set up. But they’re still heavy. Have you thought about using a leg pattern like the Blades of Damascus use? Might shave off a hundred kilos or so.”

Duri nodded. “The Blades designs need a lower center of gravity due to inherent instability of those bladed legs. That’s why their guns are mounted lower than typical. You need firm footing to dig in with the Cicadas on the Seraphs.

“Fair enough. And I caught the butt-plate for small arms. I’m sure that will come in handy against the Wykings.”

Duri couched her chin and regarded me. “When I first met you, neither of us knew the hell you were about to walk into on Xenotia. While I held no particular animosity for the Wykings at the time, I can’t ever forgive them for almost taking you from me.”

I took a sip of my water. “Well I hate to break it to you, but that’s a growing list of people you can never forgive. And your cousin is on it.”

Duri rolled her eyes. “The Grande Melee was not the same as the Bloodletting.”

I looked down at my food. “No. No, it was not. Fair point. Barun is off the hook.” I narrowed my eyes. “For now…”

Duri covered her mouth and laughed again, pulling back her foot just to kick me playfully under the table. “Hush! Heed me, now, my Vandal. This is what the Seraphs were designed for. Though, I confess, I did not know it at the time. When the Emira Istanbul approached the Paladin Devils to spearhead the Sunstone Imperative, it all became clear.”

“Even with your uncle leading the charge, this is far from a sure thing,” I said.

“I’m well aware.”

Leaning back in the chair, I considered. It’s not uncommon in the Heracles Gulf to fight alongside your bitter enemy. Lines of loyalty between factions, contractors, and subcontractors tends to resemble a nest of torn-out data cables. The Paladin Devils would be the tip of the lance. And Chevaliers would be going to war in Paladin tech—both the Seraphs and the two jabaar I’d taken off the decorated Sword Captain Al’Barun. It seemed like the two organizations, once thrust at odds, were becoming strangely intertwined.

Well, you know what they say. It’s better to be the right hand of the devil…

I stood and cleared the plates, seeing as Duri’s chef had been dismissed early on, and took them to the coffee mess in her stateroom. As I rinsed them, I felt her hands circle my waist, and her body press against mine. She ran her hands up my chest and squeezed me close. My breath caught, and I relaxed as she melted into me. Her head tucked against my shoulder, and I felt her lips peck at the corner of my neck. Her hair brushed against my cheek, and I reached back and ran my hand through it.

“How does it feel?” she murmured, sliding her hands down.

“Like you fit even closer than the Seraph,” I said.

She lifted on her toes to nibble at my earlobe.

“Good answer,” she whispered through her teeth.