BLOGS

The TVV convoy cut a straight line through a rocky desert toward Routh. Hooper and Tunnel rode in the lead vehicle.
Hooper sat in the passenger compartment caressing, squeezing and gently pulling at the SD suit with the eagerness of a child obsessed with a new toy. The suit had a spongy, rubbery feel that was almost soothing. Hard to believe so much killing power could be generated from such innocuous looking material. “You know, at first I treated this Lowtower like a threat. Now, seeing how well he acquitted himself against everything I threw at him, he’s become my opportunity.”
“Let me be the first to congratulate you, then” Tunnel said with a grudging edge in his tone. “You might be the only person to have ever taken a suit off a live SD.”
“Or a dead one.” Hooper held up a portion of the suit, closely examining it.
“I can think of a dozen major players off the top of my head who’ll pay a fortune for that suit. Your opportunity will pay off in a big way.” Tunnel leaned in. “Just remember who put you in contact with Lowtower.”
“You’ll get a bonus, Tunnel. I’ll even be generous enough
not to subtract from your cut the cost of damages Lowtower inflicted on my property. And by the way I’m not selling this suit.”
Tunnel stared gape mouthed at the crime lord. “What?”
Hooper draped the suit in the seat beside him and picked up the weapons bracelet. He hefted it, marveling at its feather lightness and turned it over in his hands. “I’m getting the best engineers my money can buy and I’m going to have this thing studied inside out. Then I’m going to have it replicated. Your major players will be buying more than one of these apiece from me.”
Unease wormed through Tunnel. “Hooper, you’ll be putting yourself in the Coalition’s crosshairs for sure if they catch wind of what you’re doing. SD armor is no trivial tech. They won’t let you proliferate it.”
“They won’t let me if they catch me.” Hooper arched a brow. “And I don’t intend to get caught.”
Tunnel shrugged. “Fine. Your mind’s made up. At least let me have Lowtower. I have a score to settle with him.”
“In due time.” Hooper sat back. “I’m going to have him studied too. I want to know all about that special steroid in his system. I might learn more from him alive than dead. When I’m done with him, he’ll be yours to deal with as you please.”
Tunnel bit down hard on his frustration. “I’ll be waiting.”

It was the largest building in Routh, reaching as high as five stories and roughly shaped like a ziggurat. Its patchwork surface indicated that the building, like the others around it was a temporary assemblage. Indeed, nothing aesthetically eye catching existed in the settlement. Everything advertised cold practicality, from drab passenger transports that rattled up and down dusty avenues to clunky fixtures affixed to buildings to provide lighting at night. Lack of decorations may have reflected the residents’ reluctance to put down permanent roots in the face of possible discovery and eviction by a Coalition patrol.
Routh was Hooper’s criminal kingdom. The ziggurat building was his seat of power, a place where his decrees were issued and the wrath of his judgment implemented. At present, it was within the dank bowels of this structure where a very special prisoner resided.
The detention area existed two basement levels below the first floor. Dern sat in the corner of a cell so small his head brushed the ceiling when standing. Neither could he fully stretch out when lying on the cell’s only furnishing: a splotched foamlike mattress nearly as hard as the corroded surface it rested upon. Interlacing metal bars covered one side of the cell. The bars proved strong enough to contain the powerful prisoner. But for good measure, Hooper posted an armored guard just outside the cell block.
In the three hours Dern had languished in this dark confinement, he replayed recent events over and over in his mind. Where did it go wrong? What could he have done to prevent Alita and her crew from being captured? He dissected every minutiae of strategy and flailed himself for his failure until his head throbbed.
Footsteps echoed from the corridor leading to his cell. Dern looked up and self-recrimination transitioned to hot, blazing hatred at the sight of Tunnel.
The hijacker stood just within arms reach of the cell bars. “Enjoying the accommodations, Lowtower?”
“Go to hell,” Dern growled.
“That’ll be your destination,” Tunnel shot back. “That’s where I’m going to send you when Hooper is done with you. For now you get a reprieve.”
“Reprieve?”
“Yes. He wants to study you and your suit.”
“Where are the others?” demanded Dern.
Tunnel glared. “Alive. Under Hooper’s custody they’re likely to remain that way. And if you cooperate, their stay here will be a tad more comfortable.”
“I’ll cooperate if it’ll keep them safe. There are some things I know about my suit’s inner workings but not all. He’ll need an SD support engineer to pump for information. But even if he did have full knowledge he doesn’t have close to the resources required to build a replica.”
“That might be the only point of agreement between us.” Tunnel shook his head. “Of course Hooper believes otherwise because he thinks any challenge can be overcome if you throw enough money at it. I say some challenges are best overcome with a flachette between the eyes.”
Tunnel’s lips parted in a malicious grin. “I have one with your name on it.” He backed away slowly, turned and departed the cellblock.

A month went by. When Dern was not idling in his cell feeling himself go to rot, he was in what passed for a clinic on the other side of the settlement, being poked and prodded by quacks posing as physicians. Hooper put out the call on whatever illicit network he used to communicate with his criminal peers. He needed doctors with far more advanced backgrounds than the ones currently in his employ. Doctors who were qualified researchers, but lacking moral scruples. They would, after all, be conducting their research on an unwilling patient.
Word came to Hooper from various sources that several such doctors were on the way, as well as a couple of engineers specializing in anthropomorphic armor technology. Six to eight months was the estimated time of their arrival.
Hooper told Dern this and the latter scoffed. “Bring all the specialists you want. The SD suit is the pinnacle of armor development. It took a decade to create it, four or five years to refine it using the most advanced facilities the Coalition had to offer. All I can say to you is good luck.”
All Hooper could do in rebuttal was offer a scathing clenched-jaw stare before ordering the prisoner out of his sight.

“You don’t need him alive,” Tunnel had tried to convince Hooper at another time. “You already have enough blood samples from him to fill a vat.
“Perhaps not,” said Hooper. “But it’s likely the doctors I sent for will need a live subject to work on. I want to know what makes Lowtower tick. Whether he’s alive and kicking or being sliced apart on an operating table, I will know that answer!”
Detecting a whiff of something in Hooper that Tunnel strongly suspected was madness, he decided not to press the issue.

In the meantime, Hooper’s quack doctors continued to take blood samples from Dern. On occasion, they ran him through a battery of tests, assessing his strength, speed and agility. One day a volunteer from Dern’s militia drank a vial of Flare extracted from Dern’s blood. The man keeled over and became instantly comatose. He died a week later.

Two months later the medical scientists arrived. Two from Coalition space. The first, a disgruntled lecturer from a first class university, lured to Routh by the prospect of getting more pay in a year than he would have earned in a decade of thankless toil at his previous position. The second, a fugitive, on the run for developing and selling dangerous narcotics. The third doctor came from the Periphery Worlds Compact, a Coalition rival. Hooper didn’t know if the Periphery doctor accepted his offer out of personal greed or on behalf of a government deeply interested in what a close examination of a rival power’s super soldier would yield.
Frankly he didn’t care. He put the doctors to work immediately.
“I want Lowtower analyzed down to his atoms,” he told them emphatically. “I want the secret of his biology unlocked!

After returning to his cell, Dern collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. Hooper had supplied the doctors with the high tech laboratory equipment they requested. The machinery was not as advanced as they were accustomed to, but it served their purpose. Dern knew the equipment intimately, having been exposed daily to a range of bio-scanners, sample extractors, and chemical injectors. The doctors never spoke a civil word to him. Among themselves they chattered frequently about him in their complex scientific jargon as if he were no more than a spare fixture in their makeshift lab.
Today they gave him a sedative and ran him through a serious of drills to measure his body’s performance in less than optimum condition.
The sedative had not entirely worn off by the time he entered his cell. On the contrary it seemed to have soaked into his bones and turned to stone. That’s how heavy with fatigue his limbs felt. He rolled onto his mat and started to drift off, when a scuff snapped his eyes open.
Alita stood outside his cell, dressed in coveralls that looked to be made of worn sackcloth.
Dern blinked and rose to his feet so quickly his head swam. He shook away wisps of disorientation and gazed at her. Except for drawn eyes and a grim expression, she appeared healthy enough…
“Dern…I asked Hooper to let me see you.” Alita’s mouth twitched in a hopeless attempt at a smile. “I guess he was feeling generous.”
“How are you and the others doing?” asked Dern.
Alita glanced partially behind her. Dern’s armored minder was out of sight, but close enough around the corner for her words to carry. She lowered her voice. “We’re as well as can be under the circumstances. He’s not mistreating us.”
As long as I play my role as a compliant guinea pig, Dern thought bitterly.
“How about you?” Alita asked.
Dern walked over to the bars. “As well as can be. So where is he keeping you?”
The guard stepped into view, filling the narrow corridor. “Time’s up.”
Alita’s eyes hardened to flint. “We’ll get out of this somehow,” she whispered and walked away.
Dern watched her leave and dropped his head. “Somehow.” He gripped a bar and squeezed until the metal’s squared edges left deep, crimson impressions in the palms of his hands.

The guard arrived the next morning, rapping on the bars with an armored forearm to wake Dern up. But Dern wasn’t asleep. He moaned irritably, feigning annoyance at the guard’s racket.
“Rise and shine, Lowtower,” the guard announced with cruel mockery. “You don’t wanna miss your doctor’s appointment.”
Dern hoisted himself to his feet, rubbing fake sleep from his eyes. “What time is it?” He queried with fake grogginess.
Laughter exploded like a crack of thunder from the guard’s voice projector. “It’s whatever time you’re suppose to be up. What? You were planning to sleep in? Perhaps you’d like breakfast in bed, a media tablet to peruse while you’re eating?”
Dern managed a fake smile. “That would be nice. Perhaps you can arrange that for me?”
The unamused guard thumbed a button on the cell door. The lock mechanism clicked, springing the door a sliver. The guard pulled the door fully open, stepped back and leveled his Tanner on Dern. “Let’s go, Comedian.”
Dern had spent most of his time in captivity studying the guards’ armor, eventually discovering a possible chink.
Typical modern armor was sealed at the joints by malleable, yet super impervious smart coagulants. Old armor like the guard’s Series A5 used latches or magnetic interlocks.
Dern guessed simple latches for the Series A5. Taking on the guard in direct combat would have been a kiss of death for Dern. In his suit, the guard possessed ten times the prisoner’s Flare-enhanced strength.
However…
As soon as he stepped outside the cell, Dern knocked the guard’s weapon aside, wrapped both arms around the latter’s helmet and twisted. Cracks and pops echoed off the walls followed by the seething hiss of releasing air. The helmet was off before the guard could overcome enough shock to offer struggle. But it was too late. His mobility stiffened. Without his helmet, the armor lost its buoyancy, and its full dead weight pressed down on the guard like a bull riding his back. His legs buckled, Tanner dropping from a weakened grasp.
The guard started to topple forward. Dern tossed the helmet aside and caught the man before he split his head on the floor. He turned the guard over, noting how so vulnerably human he looked when not hiding behind a black faceplate.
Eyes ablaze with fright the guard stammered. “Pl…pl…please…”
Dern reached down and picked up the guard’s blaster. His muscles strained from the weapon’s weight.
“Come on, Man! Please! I was just doing my job…nothing personal!”
Dern let the weapon’s muzzle hover over the man’s forehead, his finger softly caressing the trigger. “Well this is very personal for me. Tell me where your boss is keeping his prisoners and you may yet live to serve me that breakfast.”