The Starship Theseus

9. Nothing to worry about except for death from above.

"So we’re really just going to knock on the front door and ask to speak with him?" Nathan asked, glancing between his crew mates and the holographic projection of the capitol building.

"Assuming that we get that far, that’s the plan, yes," Lucy said, shrugging. "I’m guessing they’re going to start shooting at us somewhere between five to seven seconds after we phase down into their streets."

"And it’ll be civilians doing the shooting," Nathan groaned, "Which means nonlethal response if possible. Technically, since they haven’t invited us to the planet’s surface, they’re within their rights to use lethal force to repel us by both their laws and ours."

"Correct," Lucy agreed, yawning. "Fortunately their lethal force won’t even scratch or scorch our armors with the personal shields up. With our capacitors fully charged, we’ll be safe for fifteen hours before we’ll even have to worry about their weapons fire. It is also fortunate that the Jurassian body is fairly durable, which gives us some leeway in what constitutes ‘nonlethal.’ We’ll be using primarily kinetic foam rounds and static discharge weapons to stun and incapacitate, although we will retain some lethal measures for anti-vehicle and anti-emplacement. We have already switched out the ammunition in your powered exoskeleton."

"Wonderful. Please tell me that you at least used anesthetic while you were neutering Steve," Nathan complained.

"You call your suit Steve?" Simon asked. He was not actually in the room; he was part of the support team, a noncombatant. The ground team was in the tactical room of the armory where Katherine was going over the plan, such as it was.

"What’s wrong with calling him Steve?" Nathan asked defensively.

"For one thing, it’s a male name. That means you’re inside a guy. I thought you were straight."

"Oh for – it’s a fucking exoskeleton, Simon," Nathan cried. "It doesn’t matter what I call it."

"Getting back on topic," Katherine said impatiently, "Nathan will lead the team of heavies. The PMT relay will openly head into place for initial insertion. Heavy team will go in first, followed by a fleet of drones at these locations. Canine Commandos will go in last here, here, and here to provide logistical support to heavy team. We will return fire only, and we will return fire with the minimum amount of force required to neutralize the threat. The zone is filled with civilians, so everyone be on their best behavior. Any questions?"

"Yes. Who invented liquid soap and why?"

"Athena, mute user Simon," Katherine said impatiently. A faint tone indicated that the supercomputer network had heard her.

"So, I, Lucy, Tony, and the old man will be acting as bait, while everyone else runs around the city just … what exactly?" Nathan inquired.

"That depends on the Horthian response. The drones and commandos may be forced to disable vehicles as they respond to the situation caused by Heavy team, or create secondary distractions while Heavy team assaults the capitol building. Or they may be on standby. Standby is optimal. The optimal outcome of the operation is for Horthus to invite us inside his palace slash capitol building without a single weapon fired on either side," Katherine explained.

"Not fucking likely," Tony snorted. "It won’t be us that shoots first, but there is no way we walk inside that building unopposed. I recommend an overwhelming show of force. Nonlethal as much as possible, but maximum Hollywood effects in terms of explosions and destruction of nonessential public property."

"Your recommendation is noted," The old man said sternly. "Escalation of force will be my decision. Stick to the foam bullets and stun lances until you are ordered otherwise."

"Yes, Mom," Tony said, licking his paw.

"Suit up. Heavy team PMT insertion begins in one hour," the old man said seriously. The canine commandos filtered out of the tactical room first. They wore the least gear, but the automation that equipped them required them to dress in groups of four, which meant that their three teams would take the longest to prepare.

"You know, I’ve never actually worn Steve in a live combat situation," Nathan admitted to Tony as they followed the uplifted canines into the armory itself. Nathan was already wearing the jumpsuit he would wear beneath the powered exoskeleton, which he could just slip into and out of in five minutes, so he was in no rush. Tony was unable to equip himself without the help of the Theseus’s armory robots or a team of armory technicians, and although Nathan was certain that Athena’s safety checks would be sufficient, he would feel better if he went over his friend’s gear himself once he was wearing it.

"You’ve never been in a live combat situation at all, have you?" Tony inquired.

"I suppose I haven’t. Yet the Old Man expects me to … I don’t know, save the galaxy or something."

"I don’t think he expects you to do it with a jarhead coffin," Tony informed him. "Do not worry about this mission. I have reviewed what we know of Jurassian ground capabilities. Unless they start shooting at their own city from orbit, we will be in no danger."

"That’s reassuring. No, really. Nothing to worry about except for death from above."

"If it makes you feel better, Simon will be monitoring for such activities and will be prepared to minimize and preempt them."

"So our lives are in the hands of the guy who absolutely hates me for some reason. Honestly, do you have any idea what his beef is with me? He’s not like that with the other humans in the crew."

"Perhaps you remind him of someone or something unpleasant? I don’t know, Nathan, I am not a primate. You think much more like he does than I do."

Although the combat team was deemed ‘Heavy,’ Tony would in fact be wearing his light armor. Light in that was not a perfect enclosure, which rendered it useless in vacuum or bio-hazardous situations, but they were not expecting that. His paws would be uncovered, allowing him maximum mobility, while still protecting them against various forms of kinetic and energy weapons and increasing Tony’s traction with the fields generated by the armor in his hocks and elbows.

The armor itself weighed approximately one hundred fifty kilos unpowered. Part of its power source could be fed into an anti-gravity mechanism to reduce its weight – Tony could in fact use the armor to extend his leaps beyond his unarmored capability – but antigrav would eat into its operational period. Kinetic, conduction, and heat ablative ceramics covered the rest of the uplifted tiger, decorated with Tony’s stripes as accurately as possible. On top of the protection the physical material provided, a generator in the small of his back created the same intense fields of EM and gravitic diversion used to protect high velocity spacecraft from micrometeorites.

Under Tony’s chest was a static discharge weapon. On his left shoulder was a .50cal multi-munition rifle, presumably loaded with foam rounds. On his right was a variable form plasma lance. He was also equipped with a mortar for indirect fire up to six hundred meters. With a HUD directly uploaded into his visual cortex, Tony was able to control them directly and independently with his mind.

And in the event he ran out of ammunition, he still had his claws and his teeth.

The automation did a perfect job of securing the armor to Tony’s body, but Nathan insisted on checking the interlocks until the murder-kitty growled at him. "Go check your own suit, human. Don’t think I don’t know you haven’t been neglecting your maintenance."

Nathan could only grunt in acknowledgment. Touching a thumb to his brainjack, he checked the operational clock. Helping Tony gear up had taken almost ten minutes. He would go through the pre-operation checklist on Steve quickly before loading himself in, after which he expected he would still have ten to fifteen minutes to wait for insertion.

Nathan’s armor was both simpler and far more complex than Tony’s light armor. Nine feet tall, the exoskeleton encased him completely, with interchangeable weapons mounted on each shoulder, pectoral, hip, forearm, and the small of his back. The suit had all of the defensive capabilities of Tony’s armor, except seventeen times the energy reserves for the shields and an extra hundred kilos in ablative ceramics. Capable of lifting a small shuttle in two times gravity, it was called the jarhead coffin because it was impossible to remove it’s occupant by force, and if the power ran out ... But between its super-capacitor reserves and six hydrogen fuel cells, it could operate in the field for six weeks under most conditions.

It was an all-environment, all situation armor, to be customized to the mission at hand. It was the premier example of military tech available to the Earth Space Force, iconic. One of Earth’s few remaining technological exports. It’s only military export except for trained personnel. And it belonged not to the ESF. Not to the UEOSC. But to Nathan, personally. A parting gift from the ESF to help convince him to take the old man’s offer to join Yosca.

Goddammit, how the hell had the old man ever kept him in the dark that something was going on behind the scenes?

The diagnostic check came back green. Just like it had the last seven times he’d run it in the first two weeks after it had been transferred onto the Theseus. Tony had given him grief about neglecting maintenance, but what exactly could he do when Steve had been on mothballs? There was no maintenance to do until he could run an after-action diagnostic checklist.

The modular weapons were similar to Tony’s equipment, with a plasma lance on his left forearm, a kinetic rifle with foam rounds on his right, static discharge weapons on his pectorals which gave Steve the unfortunate appearance of having breasts, and a .50cal rifle on the right shoulder. The .50cal was actually loaded with anti-vehicle munitions, he was surprised to see, but accepted it without question. For indirect fire, he had a pod filled with multipurpose missiles on the left shoulder and a mortar on module connected to his back.

He was confident that he was ready for whatever the Horthians were planning on throwing at him. Which is, of course, exactly why everything would go to hell the moment the operation began.

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