Recruit by Jonathan Brazee (best historical fiction books of all time .txt) 📖

pack.  Throwing the cover lever should do it.  Without even thinking, he crawled up on the back of the PICS and pulled on the lever.  It barely budged.  In the armory, the loader mechanically opened and closed the lever.  Ryck’s muscles did not match that power.  Mindless of the battle raging around him, he stood up on top of his PICS, reached down to grasp the lever, and heaved up with his legs.  Grudgingly, the lever moved—one millimeter, two millimeters, three—before suddenly giving way.  The weapons pack was free.  Ryck had to kick it up and over the PICS helmet before it fell to the dirt.

He scrambled back to it, pushing it over so it “faced” up.  The battery was just under the left shoulder.  It seemed fine.  Ryck pushed the purple test button, and the test lights lit up the armorer’s panel in the correct sequence and all green.  The weapons pack was undamaged.  Throw it on another PICS, and it would be good to go.  But Ryck didn’t have another PICS. 

The question was how he could get the rockets or grenades to fire.  The targeting system was in the PICS, not the pack, and his PICS was out of the equation.  The firing signal was also generated from the PICS.  Ryck couldn’t figure out a way to target a weapons pack alone, but he could bypass the firing signal.

He worried out one of his longjohns’ control wires, the interface between his body and the PICS.  For all the high-tech aspects of the longjohns, the controller was essentially a copper wire.  He pulled off the connector, revealing the bright bare metal.  Taking out his combat knife, he cut the wire in two.  An explosion less than five meters away erupted beside him, showering him with dirt, but he ignored that as he twisted one end of one wire around the HCL firing input positive, and the other around the common ground in the female connector in the pack.  All the prongs were color-coded, and because of his work in the armory, he knew which prong was which.

He had to “fool” the pack into thinking a signal was coming from the PICS to fire.  But the only power was from the pack’s own battery.  Using his combat knife, he dug through the silicon coating of the battery to reveal the terminals.  He had to be careful.  One slip, and the battery would short.  He ended up making a small slit on the outside of both terminals.  Stripping two more wires from his longjohns, he slid them into the two slits he’d made, trusting the silicon’s elasticity to keep the ends of the wires in contact.  He took the negative wire and twisted it around the wire that went into the firing input negative.  All he would have to do, he figured, was touch the positive from the battery to the positive of the firing input, and the HTC should launch. 

“Should,” being the operative word.

The power from the battery was not the same as the power from the PICS.  Ryck didn’t know if the small output from the battery would be enough to activate the trigger mechanism.

All of this had taken a surprisingly short amount of time, maybe a minute at most.  Ryck looked up in time to see a PICS off in the distance go down.  One of the BAAAs was down as well, but there were three still in action.  They were stationary targets, and Ryck didn’t understand why the Marines were having issues with them, or why Marine or Navy Air couldn’t take them out.  He couldn’t affect any of that, though.

Ryck had to get the weapons pack up and aimed somehow.  The logical step would be to wear the pack, just as if it was on a PICS.  The pack alone, with ammo, weighed in at a good 160 kg.  That was a pretty hefty load, and Ryck wasn’t sure he could manage it, especially with a frozen butt.  He turned it around so it was facing down and slid his body in.  His head went through the opening easily.  Too easily.  The pack was designed to sit around the collar and on the shoulders of a PICS.  Ryck’s shoulders were not nearly as wide, and the collar ring of the pack came down right on the edge of this shoulders.  There wasn’t much he could do about that, though.

Ryck gathered his feet under him and tried to stand up.  He actually lifted the pack off the ground before he fell forward, his neck slamming into the hard edge of the pack.  Simply standing up was not going to work.  He had to get his feet under him.  That was easier said than done.  It took some maneuvering and using his PICS hulk as an anchor, but he finally got it done.  Taking a deep breath, he stood up.

In the gym, he’d squatted more than that before.  But that was on a pad with the weight being a barbell.  In this case, he was standing in the dirt of Luminosity, a battle was going full tilt around him, his right butt cheek and leg were numb, and the edge of the weapons pack was digging into his shoulders.  With a grunt, he did it, though.  He stood up.

He expected the B-Triple A in front of him to swing in his direction and let loose.  He was surprised, but quite relieved, when it seemed to ignore him.  The AIs or targeting computers evidently were not particularly discerning.

He staggered forward a few steps and stopped.  The pack was digging unmercifully into his shoulders.  The edge of the pack came down within a couple of centimeters from the edge of this shoulder, so a lot of weight was being supported by only a little of Ryck.  And that hurt.

Fifteen meters or 10 meters wouldn’t make much difference, so he stopped his advance.  The bulk of the grenade launcher was in the pack itself, but the muzzle was normally “worn” on the gauntlet of the PICS.  Ryck didn’t have the PICS there, so he simply jammed his right hand into the dangling muzzle, then strained to lift it up.  A gauntlet was much bigger than a naked hand, so the fit was not right, but at least he could still reach the thumb trigger.  The firing trigger itself was electronic, but the switch to open the circuit was the mechanical trigger.   With his left hand, he would have to reach to the loose wire to bring it to the other one, closing the circuit and (hopefully) firing the launcher.  As he raised the weapon, though, with his right arm aiming and his left trying to reach back under the pack, his shoulders narrowed, and the pack almost slipped off.  He had to tense up his left shoulder, keeping it in place as his fingers quested for the wire.  He should have made them longer.

He couldn’t really aim, so he simply pointed the HTC at the BAAA, hoping that it was on target.  With his right arm trembling to hold the muzzle steady while keeping the thumb trigger depressed, he felt the wire and quickly yanked it and touched the end of the wire going into the firing controls.

The grenade launched, nearly ripping Ryck’s right arm off, spinning him around and to the ground.  The big PICS had the mass to withstand the recoil, but Ryck’s 85 kg did not, especially when he had not been prepared for it.  He should have been prepared for the recoil, but he hadn’t considered that.

Ryck struggled to get up, looking back at the BAAA.  The gun had stopped firing, and its movement seemed jerky.  But it was still very much alive and very dangerous.  Ryck managed to get up, moving toward the rear of the gun, where its armor was not as imposing.  Whoever or whatever was controlling the BAAA finally figured out that there was a threat near it.  The big gun turned to Ryck, but the cutout that kept the gun from firing back toward the center of the camp also kept it from hitting Ryck, who was not ten meters to the rear.  The turtle hatch provided the gun with some cover from the rear, but it wasn’t enough. 

Ryck leaned forward, bracing himself.  Carefully, he touched the wires again while depressing the thumb trigger.  The recoil still felt like a mule kick, but Ryck stayed on his feet. 

The BAAA started firing, the rounds whipping by five meters to Ryck’s front.  They couldn’t reach him.  Ryck fired again.  And again.

After the fourth round, the BAAA canted up and to the left.  The armor-piercing grenades had hit something vital.  The BAAA was dead.

There wasn’t a huge explosion, which was all well and good.  Standing a mere 10 meters away and without armor, that could have messed up Ryck’s day.  To be honest, Ryck thought the kill had been somewhat anticlimactic.  He had expected something more dramatic.  But he’d done it.  Without his PICS, he’d accomplished his mission.

No rest for the weary, though.  Two more BAAAs were still hammering away.  The nearest active gun was a good 100 meters from Ryck’s kill.  Ryck tried to shrug the pack into a better position, which was more of a “less horrible” than a “better,” and staggered down the perimeter, hoping that no one would notice him.  A simple rebel sniper farther inside the perimeter would have no problem taking Ryck out.

It took a good three minutes to advance just 50 meters, and Ryck was exhausted.  He had to make sure that he could hit the gun ahead, so he limped forward another 10 meters, coming up on a wooden obstacle of some kind.  Ryck knew a functional PICS could simply smash it down, but to him in his present state, it was pretty impressive.  It did, however, give him something he could use as a support.  He gratefully leaned on it, taking some of the weight off of him.  He laid the muzzle of the HCL across one of the logs, then fired.  Pain lanced through his shoulder.  He was pretty sure that he had dislocated it when firing at the first BAAA.

The grenade arched up and over the BAAA.  He’d have to fire again.

Explosions started saturating the area.  The rebels must have finally figured out that he was there and a threat, but for some unfathomable reason, they didn’t seem to be able to pinpoint him.  This puzzled Ryck, but he was not about to question his good luck.

He fired again, scoring a direct hit, but not taking the gun out.  He sighed and touched the wires again.  Nothing happened.  There was a faint click, but the HTC did not fire.  Evidently, the battery, which was not made for activating a