It had been sixty years since the first practical suit had been developed. In the intervening time some improvements had been made, notably to endurance and coordination, without substantially changing the layout and structure of the suit.
Hamilton inspected digitally, visually and physically. "You're getting a subnominal reading on your left femoral forward pluscle, Laurie. Have the armorer check it after the exercise." He checked in part by having Hodge have her suit do certain things—"Eyes left . . . Eyes right . . . good . . . Deep knee bends . . . good . . . Left arm pushup . . . good . . . Right arm pushup . . . good . . . Jump . . . Jump . . . Jump . . . good . . . Run in place . . . good . . . good . . . hmmm . . . Have the armorer calibrate the gyro . . . seems a little off . . . ." Beyond that, he ran an analysis cable from his own suit, already checked by the platoon leader for the exercise, to hers.
"I feel more like I'm dressed for a funeral, and wearing the coffin," Hodge said.
"Coffin" was a pretty apt description, and not your cheap pine coffin, either. No, no; this coffin was the deluxe solid bronze job. All told, between the exoskeleton itself (one hundred and forty-seven pounds, including plastic musculature, or pluscle), the armor (one hundred and twenty-three pounds), power and control pack (sixty- two pounds), weapons, ammunition, communications gear, imaging gear, sensors . . . all in all, it came to just about a quarter of a ton. Add in the one hundred and fifteen pound woman (from eating upwards of ten-thousand calories a day she'd put back most of the twenty-five pounds she'd lost in Ranger School by this time, and even managed to reinflate her breasts) and it amounted to quite a weight. Fortunately, the suit was modular and no single piece (except for the Exo, itself, which could be moved by attaching oneself to it) was so heavy that two fit women couldn't lift and attach it.
And that was for a size small suit. Hamilton's weighed almost a hundred pounds more, having larger pluscles and power pack, and more, but not thicker, armor.
Hamilton checked one last item on his heads-up display and announced, "You can inflate now, Laurie."
Hodge nodded, then made herself go stock still as she said, "Suit . . . inflate shock cushions." From a pump in the back with the power pack the suit began to fill up—to overpressurize, actually—several sets of inflatable cushions. These came in two types and served two purposes. One was to cushion against the shock on direct fire hits, shrapnel and concussion. These were the ones inflating now. The others, however, had already been inflated. It was changes to the pressure in these "cushions" that, once detected by the computer, caused it to apply power to the exoskeletal pluscles that made some of them contract until pressure was equalized. After many different attempts, this had been found to be the most practical for military purposes.
"I read inflation as good," Hamilton announced, thinking and that's not even counting your tits, "annnd . . . you're up."
Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 13 Duh'l-Qa'dah,
1530 AH (10 November, 2106)
Petra recited from a children's book Besma had saved:
" . . . I is for Infidel, burning in Hellfire.
"J is for Jew . . . Besma, what's a Jew?"
The Moslem girl shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know. Demons, I guess. I think there aren't any, anymore. Or at least none near here."
"Okay.
"J is for Jew, whom even the rocks hate.
"K is for Kaffir, enslaved in the jihad.
"L is for liar . . ."
Petra suddenly stopped reading. Her face grew very sad. "That's what the man said who took me from my family, that I was enslaved under jihad since my father couldn't pay the tax that allowed us to be dhimmis."
"That's just so wrong. I'm sorry, Petra."
"It's all right. It wasn't your fault."
"Let's start over at the beginning," Besma suggested, thinking to get Petra's mind away from thoughts of jihad and slavery.
The girl thumbed the pages back and started over:
"A is for Americans, devils incarnate . . . Why are the Americans devils, Petra?"
Besma shuddered. "Because they tried to exterminate us."
Private Rodger W. Young Range, Fort Benning, Georgia,
10 November, 2106
"Kill 'em quick, before they get away!"
Hamilton didn't know whose voice it had been, shouting over the comm system. He thought it sounded like Hodge but, if so, her voice had never been quite so full of passion, not even in bed. He checked his heads-up display to find her position, then looked over to where she stood above a trench, pouring fire down into it. The bullets, all tracers, looked like some alien weapon from a movie about the future.