Knight in Shining Armor

The flight was short and uneventful. In a small cargo plane with no one but his fellow members of the Top Eight and Captain Joseph’s retinue, Wilhelm had little to do but make small talk with Mathilde and wait. As they neared a landing, Wilhelm looked down on what was to be their base of operations for the near future: the Wagner Barracks, named after some famous general, or something. Who cares? It's just a place to sleep.

From the outside, it looked little like the academy that he’d grown used to over the past two years. Within the metal-linked fence, which made the place look more like a prison, the barracks formed a nondescript, white rectangle. In the middle, he could see a tall clocktower, and even from within the plane, a loud gong sounded out as the sun fell below the horizon.

Their landing was much the same as the flight. As Wilhelm stepped off the plane, he noticed some of the captain’s men carting off large crates from the ship’s hull, using a forklift to move them. Those must be our exosuits, Wilhelm thought. As he imagined what it would be like to pilot his exosuit, tailor-made for him and no one else, a deep grin crossed his face. 

The group followed Captain Joseph, who ordered them to follow him to a strategy room within the fortress, so that they could continue their earlier discussion in-depth. As he took them through the halls, Wilhelm noted that they looked much like the academy’s: a light white, with little to distinguish one from the other. I wonder how long it’ll take for me to get lost.

Before they went to the meeting, one of the captain’s aides showed Wilhelm to his room so that he could unload his belongings. Here, too, the room looked much the same as his quarters in the academy, although it felt just a little bit bigger. More of the same...

Finally at the meeting, Wilhelm immediately sat down and readied himself for another few hours of boredom before he could take a look at the exosuits that Doctor Wolter had created. As soon as he sat down, Joseph once again turned off the lights, but this time, the room had a much larger hologram projector than the mobile one that he used before. To start with, he pulled up an image of the eastern front, centering around their current location, Berlin.

“Now that all of us are in attendance, let’s continue the discussion from before. Berlin is, currently, mostly under our control, but the NSR has unleashed a steady siege on a base closer to the Berlin Wall, Fort Ackermann. Our job is to strike the Republic’s forces on their flanks, causing chaos and giving the main force an opportunity to break them, once and for all.”

He paused for a moment, drinking something out of his canteen, and continued. “But before any of that, you all need to get accustomed to the doctor’s new suits. So, for the next few months, that’s exactly what you’ll do. If we need to act quicker, so be it, but that’s the timeline for now. Any requested squad members of yours will be here shortly, once we’ve given them the necessary security clearances, and we’ll recruit for any vacancies that you have.”

Wilhelm couldn’t stop himself, now. “Sir, can we access the cybersuits now, if possible?”

Captain Joseph shot him a bemused look. “We haven’t even finished unloading them yet, Frei. Wait till tomorrow morning, and you’ll have all the time you need to figure things out.”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

The captain continued. “That goes for all of you. I’ll send someone by to show you to the training grounds, outside the complex. Each one of you will have your own area to practice, though we’ll have joint exercises at some point or another. Now, if there are no questions…”

He looked around. Either from exhaustion or understanding, none of the group had any further queries. Wilhelm’s foot tapped relentlessly, and he was too excited to speak.

“Well, if that’s all, then I’ll let you off the hook for now. I know you’re all tired, so head on back to your quarters and familiarize yourself with the place. You’ll be here for a while.”

____________________________________________________________________________

The sun had barely risen above the eastern horizon, but Wilhelm already stood within the hangar that housed his new cybersuit. The mechanics in charge of maintenance seemed shocked when he strolled in, or perhaps, just tired; Wilhelm didn’t really care, much. Indeed, his eyes had been trained, solely, on his new partner, firmly secured by layers of harnesses.

An azure, metal man, not much larger than Wilhelm himself, stared back. Instead of the blank slate in the doctor’s lab, it now had ornamentation to it, with silver trim accentuating the joints of the suit’s limbs. Unlike many other exosuits, its viewing port appeared similar to actual eyes. For its weapons, Wilhelm had stuck with what he knew. A shining, silver sword as long as the metal man himself hung atop its back, and a light rifle on its hip. Wihelm looked at the blade with a small smile on his face. Looks like the doctor really outdid himself.

“Sir, we’ve removed the restraints. Please, go ahead to the training yard.” With that, the mechanics quickly left the area. Wilhelm scanned his identification card on the back of the exosuit, and it quickly opened for him. Crawling in and getting used to the far more comfortable inner area of his new exosuit, Wilhelm closed the back opening and flicked on the power switch. At that moment, a strange headache overtook his brain, and just as quickly, the cockpit that he had seen inside the armor disappeared. Instead, he saw the hangar, but not as if he was looking through the viewing port. It feels like… its eyes are my eyes?

He had no time to mull over it before he heard a voice.

“I see you’ve established the neural link early, Frei. Captain Joseph here,” the voice said. Unlike any other he had heard before, the voice felt as if it came from inside his head, not through his ears. On top of this, he could hear a dull, distant sound of turning gears from the mechanics’ office, among countless others in the vicinity. The throbbing headache worsened.

“What the… What the hell is going on, captain?” Wilhelm could say no more than that.

“Oh, you can speak already? Color me impressed,” the captain said. “What’s going on is exactly what the doctor must’ve told you. Your brain, and this machine, have become one, for now.”

Wilhelm took a deep breath, trying to ignore the pain. Damn it... Can't say a thing...

“You see the world as it would, and you hear sound as it would… Well, this is all secondhand. The doctor described it as a kind of virtual reality, in a sense. Anyway, take it easy for now. Being overwhelmed by this change is normal. Just try to move around a bit, Frei.”

Wilhelm’s thoughts turned to that, and the metal man marched slowly to the training yard. When he imagined lifting his right arm, the azure, clawed hand lifted up nearly immediately into his field of vision. Then, he turned his gaze to the practice dummies strewn about the yard and slowly unharnessed the blade on his back. In one motion, the metal man… no, Wilhelm himself dashed forward in a blink. His blade fell, and so too did one dummy from its post.

The captain’s voice began again. “When I saw the suit that the doctor made, I knew that you had to be an odd duck, Frei. In a normal exosuit, your focus on fighting up close wouldn't be worth much, but with this one… Keep practicing, and you may make something of yourself.”

“...Yes, sir.” Wilhelm replied. It was all he could say: all he could think, given the circumstances.

“Practice as much as you’re willing, then call it for the day. It’ll take some time to get used to it, and we’ve got a few months before it's go time, like I said. Make the best of that time, Frei.” Then, the voice petered out, this time for good. The pressure on Wilhelm's mind lessened.

With newfound clarity, Wilhelm turned his eyes back to the other dummies and took out his rifle. He heard the resulting bangs from landing the shot before he realized that his arm had even risen. Then, a wave of exhaustion came over him, forcing Wilhelm to kneel.

He returned his sword and rifle to their harnesses and, without thinking, exited the machine. He struggled to walk at first, overwhelmed by the switch back to normalcy, now alien to his mind. He struggled and stumbled back to his room, immediately falling into his bed.

This… This is gonna take a while.