Tales of Starships & Apocalypse by Andrew McGregor

Author:Andrew McGregor [McGregor, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-24T22:00:00+00:00

A HARD SHELL

Good gracious, I do hate that man.

He woke me by slipping inside of me. Such an annoying monkey. Every time he did it there was never any warning, and it always meant trouble. That was the worst part about being an intelligent set of power armour.

I got my revenge when I not-so-gently connected my owner’s waste tubes. He yelped and I chuckled to myself. My inhibition coding must be faulty again or I wouldn’t have been able to do that. Our minds connected and I immediately started pestering him. “Greetings,” I spoke into his mind. “So kind of you to wake me like this… again.”

“Shut up and get out of my head, or I’ll have your memories wiped,” he said aloud.

I did as I was told. My owner wore me like a glove and as he raised his hands I matched those movements, adding my mechanical strength to his soft flesh-filled muscles.

We ran out of the power armour storage room, following dozens of other soldiers who were wearing my friends. “What’s going on?” I asked my friends using radio; it was on a private channel so our owners wouldn’t know about our conversation.

“Hope it’s a drill,” Five-sixty, an older model, said.

“No idea,” another replied.

We took two steps down the large boarding ramp when my owner suddenly ducked and, enslaved to his motions, I did too. A small rocket scorched the air above our heads. The rocket killed some of my friends behind us. Apparently, it wasn't a drill.

“Typical humans,” I said to the others. “Never telling us what’s going on.”

“Settle down,” Five-sixty said. “This is what we were built for.”

“My owner just wet himself,” I told Five-sixty.

“Already? Oh, gross,” Five-sixty made a coughing sound. “I apologize for my previous comment. That would be annoying.”

I looked around, mimicking my owner’s movements, and whatever I saw he saw via contact lenses. I’d unceremoniously shoved the contacts onto his eyeballs. We weren’t on Mars anymore. I wanted to shake my head, but such an act would probably break my owner’s neck. We were fighting another force of power-armoured soldiers in a desert somewhere on Earth. Just great, I thought sarcastically.

“Whose bright idea was this?” I asked Five-sixty.

“We crashed, buddy.”

I peeked behind us, using a rear camera on my body, and there it was; the troop transport was a smoking wreck, piled high on red sand. My owner urged me onwards like some sort of pack mule hauling his baggage around. I carried weapons, ammo, and food - lots and lots of food – just to keep my owner alive. We started firing back at the enemy soldiers.

***

We survived. It was raining and my owner kept nice and warm inside of me, instead of soaking wet. Good for him, I thought, but I hated the rain.

Patter, patter, patter on my hard exterior. Slush, slush, slush through the muddy ground. It annoyed me that I had to endure all this weather while he stayed cozy and warm. We were running in an easterly direction away from the troop transport and the carnage of the battle.

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