Individualized Tactical Surface Vehicle. That was the name the Gray Armor gave to the thing that was a large green metal sphere resting atop a pair of backward bending legs. It was taller than the height of five men standing shoulder on shoulder. Projecting from its spherical portion were twin tubes, which the Gray Armor instructor referred to as being likened to muskets, only the tubes shot fire instead of solid shot.Annan and the four other captives assigned as part of his Squad watched half fearfully, half in wonder as a hatch opened beneath the sphere. They all wore brown, form fitting garments of an odd stretchy material that was utilitarian, yet more comfortable than any clothes woven by human hands. A ladder lowered from the hatch and the Gray Armor climbed into the vehicle. Seconds later, the ITSV’s sphere rotated about. A low, whirring sound emanated from the vehicle as it put one leg in front of the other.It was a good thing the Gray Armor told them ahead of time that he was going to operate the vehicle. Otherwise, any unexpected motion from this behemoth was liable to cause a panic. Of course, three of the Squad members outside of Annan had military experience, which tempered their disquiet.William Ross, the ship captain who had been briefly tortured by the drone, Ahmed, a Hausa cavalry officer, and Kofu, a full time fisherman, part time soldier. There was a woman among them named Femi. Of course she was not a warrior. Yet despite that deficiency she carried herself with as much emotional resilience as the men.Annan got on well with Ahmed and the comely young maiden. Ross was another matter. Thanks to Kofu’s briefing and Annan’s gradually resurging memory, the latter was now aware that he and the bearded white man had a history. Well, any black person who was on the big boat, before the appearance of the Light, had a history with the whites among them.The blacks naturally harbored acrimony toward those who were transporting them to slavery in another land. The whites would not have felt particularly fraternal toward these Africans who rose against them in revolt. Yet, with both groups sharing a common captivity, past grievances were grudgingly put aside.Not so, it seemed, for Ross. Hatred was etched into the former captain’s craggy features with a hammer and chisel. Though Ross was as contemptuously silent toward Annan as he was toward the other Africans, the former captain bore the latter a special animus. Not only had Annan led the shipboard revolt, but he had struggled with the captain, subsequently wresting the man’s weapon out of his grasp. That was after the captain had shot at him and missed…then the Light shone overhead. After that…nothing.Annan cut a malicious eye toward Ross. Too bad I didn’t have time to beat you to death with your own weapon.At first, Annan’s control of the ITSV was typified by stuttering fits and starts. A Gray Armor instructor was squeezed in the cockpit with him, providing sometimes impatient tutelage of the vehicle’s operation.Eventually, Annan came to understand the controls. There was a stick…the Gray Armor called it a control lever…that guided the vehicle’s motion. There was a computer that told him the ITSV’s status. There was a communicator switch that Annan could toggle to talk to other ITSV operators. There were screens below the window that showed everything that was in front, back and on the sides of the ITSV. Finally, there was a second lever with a thumb button that operated the fire weapons.It was all so simple. Soon after, Annan became proficient in piloting the vehicle.Of the operators in his Squad, Ahmed was fastest in learning to pilot the machine. In the land of the Hausa, horses figured prominently in warfare. His expert equestrianism easily carried over to an expert handling of another, radically different type of conveyance.What came as a surprise to Annan and his male Squad mates was Femi’s progress. The woman’s sex had been no hindrance to her ability to operate an ITSV as well as a man.“Your skill amazes me,” Annan praised, watching Femi descend the ladder jutting from the machine’s exit hatch. She had just completed a complex battle maneuver.Femi lowered her eyes. “I’m no more or less of an operator than the others. Well…maybe more.”The Asante’s brow arched in surprise. He broke into a grin when he realized he had been fooled by the woman’s false display of humility.Femi smiled and suddenly the sunsets Annan longed to see on Earth dimmed to dull twinkles next to her beauty. “Your turn,” she reminded. “Perhaps you can match my performance.”“Perhaps?” Annan playfully turned his nose up. It was initially strange for him, competing with a woman. But the more Annan perceived Femi as the competent operator she was training to be, the less her sex mattered to him. Eventually, men and women were going to go war. If they were to survive whatever battlefield they were plopped down in, humans, male and female, needed to fight together.Many of the men continued to be resistant to the idea of women being soldiers.The Gray Armors, of course, cared not for human ideas of gender roles. Their only concern was making sure every human they put in a war machine knew the basics of its operation.The most inveterate chauvinist had no choice but to accept this new Gray Armor-imposed reality.Annan gripped the rungs, threw a wave to Femi and climbed into the cockpit.Annan’s Squad as a whole were catching on quite a bit faster than the other Squads…which was still much too slow for Gray Armors unaccustomed to training blank slates. In many cases, those blank slates recoiled in babbling terror at the very sight of ITSVs. Some refused to board the vehicles and had to be forced into cockpits at the agonizing prodding of drone-issued light beams or Gray Armor force. It wasn’t just the machines that contributed to the humans’ angst, but the strange generality of their circumstances. It remained exceedingly difficult, despite their time on the Battle Fortress, for the humans to grasp the sheer alienness of their surroundings.The whites clung to the familiar comfort of their Christian God to help them cope with these mysteries. The blacks, too, sought solace in their medley of beliefs. Rarely a ‘night’ sailed by when prayers, songs, and all manner of spiritual invocations did not drift mournfully through the level where the humans were confined. And now, confronted with that which their minds continued to have trouble processing, the humans were required to learn skills far removed from the simplicity of their previous lives.The Gray Armors provided no indications of sympathy or understanding of the humans’ plight. All they saw was a species trailing a prodigious learning curve. They would bring these primitives up to speed on an ITSV’s technology as ordered and accept no excuses or failures.
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