Ex-Heroes: A Novel by Clines Peter

Author:Clines, Peter [Clines, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Horror, Comics & Graphic Novels, Superheroes
ISBN: 0804136572
Google: wWE-U977H8wC
Amazon: B00AKJFEOS
Goodreads: 8197767
Publisher: Broadway Books
Published: 2010-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

EVEN WITH THE SHORTAGE of pilots these days, we rated air travel. The rest of the team was in a passenger plane, sitting in real padded seats. I was on a bench, leaning against the interior wall of a C-130J Hercules, strapped into a five-point harness. Cerberus was broken down into over a dozen components and stored for transport. The crates were strapped to the sides of the plane, heavy Anvil cases mounted on solid wheels. With the way things were collapsing across the country, I wasn’t about to let it out of my sight.

The Cerberus Battle Armor System took five months to design and another four to build. At least six weeks of that was waiting for parts. Plenty of people had been working on exoskeletons before me. There was the Hardiman stuff the Navy tried in the sixties. Just before everything fell apart, Hugo Herr at MIT had one. UC Berkeley had their Bleex rig and the Hulc. Sarcos Incorporated had a great one. And all I had to do was flash my DARPA card and say “national security,” and I got to look at the blueprints and software for all of them, whether they liked it or not.

Then you can add in all the optional extras. The Army’s Future Force Warrior system. Interceptor body armor. The latest Taser designs. Motion-sensor targeting programs. All this technology was just sitting around, waiting for one clever woman to put it all together.

Yes, I stole from the best.

New York’s been lost. No one wants to say it, but there it is. The entire city’s gone. Boston, too. And Chicago. Washington, DC’s hanging on by a thread, but I understand the president and his cabinet were evacuated to NORAD over a week ago. The West Coast cities seem to have fared a little better, probably because they’ve got more sprawl and less concentration. One of the last decisions made by the DOD was to ship me and the suit out west. I was supposed to team up with some of the “superheroes” out there and be a visible symbol of government power, action, and safety in Los Angeles.

The rest of the Hercules was taken up by a platoon’s worth of Marines. I say “worth” because they were a patched-together group, a few surviving squads, individuals, and raw recruits out of basic that had been reorganized to make a functioning unit. I knew soldiers tended to be younger than most people thought, but seeing a bunch of kids all still in their teens drove it home. They were loud and boastful and bragging. And they were white-knuckle scared. Almost two-thirds of the current enlisted US military servicemen were dead. Half of them were still walking.

Our plane tilted and everyone shifted their feet. One of the flight crew spoke for a few minutes to the platoon sergeant, a tall, heavyset man who spent the flight checking his troops. He nodded to the airman and walked back to me.

“Little course correction,” he said. His voice was loud and brash over the roar of the engines.

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