Back to the Drawing Board

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

He gestured to a pair of lone chips on a far table. "Pick one. One's got a male persona, other's got a female persona." Picking up the fallen durasteel plate, he walked over to a work bench and pulled out a tube of thick, grey paste and applied it to the underside of it. Once there was enough of it on there for him to be satisfied, Ayden slid the plate back over the smaller durasteel plate and gave it a pat. "Let it sit for an hour and it'll be ready for a field test. I'll have the armor assembled and ready for you to put on by then."

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

Sarge moved over to the table, examining the two chips before him. They were about what he expected - little rectangles the size of a flash drive, a small inset circle in the middle housing the processor for the advanced artificial intelligence that lay beneath.

It also doubled as a miniature holoprojector so the AI's chosen avatar could show itself to those around it to facilitate communication. He couldn't tell which was the male and which was the female - how helpful. Hefting one, it seemed to warm and glow in his hand as if sensing that someone was there.

Sitting himself down on a workbench, legs hanging off the edge, he watched as a bunch of holographic pixels appeared in the air before him, as if assessing whether or not to reveal its shape and form. "Sergeant Major." Intoned an almost musical voice.

The man smirked a little. "So, you did see the paperwork." Black eyes locked onto the pixelated form, head tilting. "And why are you so... incoherent."

"In light of recent situations, Mr. Cater and I both believe it is in your best interest that, as a feminine personality, I maintain a distinct lack of form for the time being." Oh, but did that narrow his eyes. Inhaling sharply through his nose, he kicked his feet as he thought. "So you chose Her, did you?"

There was a pause, and the holographic image of Cira appeared before him. "I did. I was the first AI to be made by the Protectorate, and so I thought it fitting tribute to fashion myself after the first Protector." She hung her head, looking away to hide her face beneath hair made of lines of code.

"Tell me about the armor." More specifically, her role in it. "I will be compiling the information on your HUD, as well as monitoring your bio signs, ammo counts, and various other things. Ultimately my most important role will simply be to act as an adviser to you, and in that capacity.... I have advice already."

The man said nothing as he picked up a blaster pistol from the workbench and began stripping it down, needing to keep his hands busy through all this.

"First..." She begins, looking up at him. "We'll need the artifact from Elrood."

His head snapped up.

She smiled.

 

[Ayden Cater]

True to his word, an hour later and Ayden was finishing up the prep work on an assembler to help Sarge into his armor. The suit had been left out for Sarge to don on his own time while the armor plates had been placed upon a rack that would install them. He was going over some last minute prep work on the suit's internal systems and AI interface. If it all went well, then the suit would be something Sarge could wear for prolonged periods of time, weeks if necessary and barring any extended combat outside of the Protectorate's supply lines.

When Sarge finally got around to showing up, Ayden looked up from his pad and nodded. "Alright then. Suit's been assembled, diagnostics check out, and I've got no excuses to pad this out. So if you're ready, just step onto the center platform here, slide your feet into the place-mats and we'll get started." He moved to stand over by a console and started inputting physical data points for the machine, namely height and limb measurements. This would help it install the suit without leaving any plates too loose or too tight.

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

Oh, Sarge was there, and he and the AI were in a very heated discussion about possible locations for wherever the kark Cira had decided to stash away that artifact that shoved through Force through him quite violently, and in the process turned him into the beacon for the dead.

What he wouldn't give to never see another zombie ever again. He still woke up at night, drenched in sweat, mutated mynocks screeching their horrendous sounds through swamp trees as they hunted him. Them and the shambling bodies of far too many Protectorate men.

But that was neither here nor there. Stepping up onto the platform, he simply looked at Ayden and nodded. "Let's get 'er started."

 

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden looked back at the console and started it up. The body suit had a number of link-up points that the armor around use to hook onto as it was built up around him. It started from the bottom. His feet were locked into the soles of what would be his armored boots while the frame was inserted into slots and slowly bolted together. Once the frame was in place, the armor plates came next. They built onto one another, covering everything save for the joints. The frame there around the joints was reinforced, both to handle stress and keep from something being jerked off.

After several long minutes, the process was complete and the man known as Sarge was nowhere to be found. In his place, a two-and-a-half meter tall behemoth stood there, its eyes like blue fire. Its armored fist was larger than his head was. Easily three times his mass, it was hard to not be intimidated by its sheer size, and he had made the damn thing. "Alright, gonna link your AI to the suit's interface to get starting on some basic tests. Let's start off with the heads-up display. Go ahead and activate it and tell me if everything looks to be imported from your old suit's preferences."

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Sarge stood impassive as piece after piece of thick, grey armor was slotted into place over his body. Before long, he was standing in a veritable fortress of metal and the last piece was still yet to be added; the helmet. He could feel a shadow passing over his head before his vision was obscured.

A split second later, and he was in utter darkness... until blue flame ignited on the exterior optics and the HUD ran its boot up process at the same time. Images projecting themselves onto the back of his eyes, he blinked his way through multiple displays, arms still out to either side of his body, held up by thick metal arms like the kind he'd used to see on assembly lines.

This time, however, instead of a tank or a plane or a speeder, it was a human being on the line.

"So, Sergeant Major..." intoned that musical voice in his ear. "Like it?"

"Love it." He grunts, blinking the displays away until he was looking at Ayden. "Release me."

 

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden grinned and hit a release button. Cables snapped and hissed like angry snakes as their pressure explosively blew them off. A few extra plates slid into place over previously exposed ports, and then all was quiet. "Not bad." Ayden looked between the eyes of the helmet and then further down near the bottom of the neck where he knew Sarge's head to actually be. "Alright then. Give it a little walk. Test out the response time some. Get a feel for it. This is basically your home-on-the-go. It'll take this same assembly to get you out of that. Even if you eject all the armor plates. That thing is built around you and bolted in."

Admiring his work one last time, Ayden moved off to a point further in the lab to start setting up the firing range to test out the suit's various armaments. Standard soft targets, targets in typical combat gear, light vehicles, heavy vehicles, reinforced doors. He liked testing the suit's full range of capabilities, and the vast testing facilities within the Spirit would let him do just that. Tapping the comlink in one ear, Ayden spoke to Sarge. "Whenever the princess is done admiring her new dress, I've got some targets for her to blow to bits."

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"Ever been karked by 180 kilograms of metal, boss?" The man asks with what amounted to a verbal sneer, although he was certainly more amused than annoyed. "Cause I think the answer is 'no, please don't hurt me.'" There was a bit of a glare from one corner of his screen, which must have been the AI giving him a stern reminder to play nice.

A pause stretched into pregnant silence before a thundering impact of boot on metal echoed through the testing room. Another crash of thunder followed and the armor audibly hissed and groaned, moving for the first time in it's life. Beautiful.

Flexing his gauntleted hands, he extended his arms in front of him and rotated them, one at a time, getting a feel for just where the barrels of his weapons sat. Moving into a crouch, he pistoned himself upward with speed that startled him and sent him crashing towards the ground before he caught himself.

"Sweet mother of kark that's some good stuff." Pushing himself up to a standing position, he crashed his fists together and cracked his neck as best he could inside the suit. "Now... I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." He intones with a humorless chuckle.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

"Easy there, Oppenheimer," Ayden quipped with an overt tone of amusement in his voice. "You won't be destroying any worlds with that, though you will make some poor man's day very, very bad with it." He looked down at a pad that was streaming live data from the suit for him to monitor. So far everything looked good. "Like I said, get over here and let's get some basic weapon testing done. After that, I've got some live-fire exercises with some droids to give you some actual combat practice in the suit before you head out into the field with it."

He turned and started moving targets into position for Sarge to shoot at once he finished taking his sweet time in getting there. "I shouldn't have to remind you that that suit is expensive and a prototype, so let's try not to wreck it on the first mission if at all possible. Eventually I'll get around to securing a larger amount of beskar to give it more complete protection and I'll see about developing a slimmer version of the suit's augmentations. Speed and power. But that's for another time. Now I need you to start shooting things so I can get some more readings."

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"On it boss." He retorts, pounding his way with a heavy gait for the firing range. There would be no stalls here, just wide open space and a really impressive suit with some hopefully impressive guns. Sweet, sweet guns. "Which to shoot first..."

Normally he'd ask Ayden how he wanted to proceed, but he really wasn't in a patient mood. A small ammo counter popped up onto his display, likely counted up by the AI for the bolter. Lifting his left arm, he eyed the various dumbies set up - some in civvies, some in armor.

Some droids.

Some tanks.

He blew apart the first target, unarmored, in a shower of flame and exploded parts. The second fared little better, the plasteel warping from the impact of what amounted to a grenade. "So, droids, sir?" He asks, squat head turning slowly to regard the man.

The suit was, so far, a little bit stiff... but it was also new. Not broken in. Just like any good pair of boots, it needed a little wear and tear before it was good to go, truly.

 

[Ayden Cater]

Ayden just kept his nose buried his the pad while reading the data. The unarmored and infantry targets blew apart with little fanfare. He'd never expected them to do anything other than be turned into grease stains on the deck. But that wasn't the true test. Accuracy and suit feedback were. All the power in the galaxy didn't mean squat if you couldn't hit a target with it. Every time Sarge fired, it meant more data for Ayden to use to fine tune the suit before Sarge ran off with it to parts unknown. There was a limited window to get it all right, and Ayden intended to meet that deadline.

"Congratulations, you picked the wings of a space fly. Let's try something a little bigger, hm?" Ayden remotely opened a door and gestured for Sarge to go running through while Ayden opted to take a smaller door. What he wasn't gonna tell his erstwhile companion was that that particular hallway had numerous anti-infantry turrets set up in the walls, a few flamethrowers and a light speeder at the end of the hallway. Sarge liked surprises. Ayden just watched the vid-feed and chuckled.

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"So what's behind door number one...." He muses, grinning faintly under the helmet, body moving fluidly despite the awkward nature of the gauntlets. With every pull of the trigger, the ammo count had steadily decreased, no doubt a numeral maintained by the ever vigilant AI in his suit.

Then he hit a surprise. How he hated surprises. Especially of the violent variety. But that was the only surprise he ever got, so he had to make due. He wasn't even into the hallway before he was rocked back by repeated impacts from mixed slugthrowers and blasters - all automated turrets.

All deadly in their own right.

Bringing his right arm up in a shield over his head, he hefted the bolter and clipped the first one off the wall before charging down the hall, speeder at the end the least of his concerns as flamethrowers engulfed him in heat. He was going to bake, but he simply decided to test the armor.

Which was the purpose of this.

His arms lifted, bolter and launcher barking as the defenses were cleared away one at a time and in hurried procession, the suit practically moving to the next target before he was done with the first. It was the practiced movements of a man who knew just how much damage these things took before being crippled.

A split second later and it was him and the speeder... and a laser cannon blast to the chest that knocked him on his ass. Reloading the missile launcher, he put two missiles into the speeder, smoking and dented armor obscuring observation cameras as he rose back to his feet.

"Can we not do that again?" He was sweating inside the armor already, chest and shoulders heaving from exertions. "We'll have to increase your caloric and protein intake by a combined 57.8 percent in order to allow your body to keep up with what the suit is capable of."

"...you're kidding me."

"I am. It's only 53.1."