"What the hell is this?" Jackson looked at the paper-thin suit of armor with disdain, holding it away from his half-naked body as though it would try to swallow him if given a chance.
Kilburn smiled again. By then, Henry knew this man only smiled when he witnessed another living being's suffering. "CMC Light Combat Armor, unpowered, can be equipped for EVA…
-But why not just use Powered suits?" That one made no sense, why use this when they had armor that could turn men into tanks and compensate for any shortcoming on the wearer's part?
"You were down on Char for a time, right?" An odd question, but Kilburn never made his point outright, preferring to give his student a chance of figuring it out on his own.
"Yeah, a few hours more than I'd liked..." This was the first time in almost two weeks he'd even mentioned his short lived service for the Marine Corps. "Why?
-Then you have firsthand combat experience, list me three shortcomings of the CMC-300."
Jackson placed the light armor back in its vacuum-meant crate and thought back to that short dip in the fire. Power had been a major issue and was the first thing he could cite off the top of his head.
"Good…" Spoke his teacher, waiting for the other two.
"Then, I had trouble pulling the pin on grenades, so, I'd say they lack dexterity.
-Yes, anyone with functional eyes could see that. And?
-And…" What else was there? The suit had saved him from an encounter with a Zergling, protected him from the heat when it became unbearable and allowed him to carry sufficient firepower, so what else could he possibly hold against it?
"No idea, sir…"
Oddly enough, that did not trigger another shower of insults, something Kilburn had proved quite fond of. The contrast between Steel and Henry's new teacher had something humorous about it, when you thought about it; Steel was a crude man, a Marine with no education to speak of, yet never once cursed or repeated the same insult twice, as though he spent all his free time reading sociopathic poetry, whereas Kilburn simply lost it and blurted out whatever crossed his augmented mind.
This time, however, he simply nodded understandingly and walked up to an armor locker, the one where Henry's CMC suit was stored. Kilburne tapped the glowing icon at eye level and the locker split open in the middle, revealing the massive exoskeleton.
"On an open battlefield," He spoke, banging a fist against the thing's front, "where the objective is to hit hard and soak up punishment, that's the best we have, you'll likely find yourself back in it on a few occasions." They had just gone over that fact on the way down from the classroom to the armory. A few details remained unclear in Jackson's mind, but he understood the important part; Marines handled most all out fighting and defence, but Navy personnel also received combat training and many combat situations required them to get mud on their boots.
The Commodore had mentioned it earlier, but only as an offhanded remark, one Henry hadn't paid much attention to. What she had meant slowly became clear, however, as his instruction progressed and he learned more about his new job.
"But you're not rank and file anymore, when you get deployed on the field, it will be to recover or fix something, interrogate someone, investigate events not deserving of a Ghost operative, you need to be mobile and adaptive, your job is to recover information then act on it…" He closed the locker, his bald skull glowing orange as he leaned on the locker, the activation key flickering an inch overhead. "This suit is made for one thing; open warfare, for anything else, it's a liability: Takes too long to start up, takes too long to shut down, makes too much noise, leaves a massive footprint for detectors to pick up, cannot fit in most driver seats…
-I get it, too big, too clumsy, hasn't anyone tried to solve those issues?
-Why? Those 'Issues', as you call them, are what makes its strength."
Finally convinced, not that it was his call to begin with, Henry donned the light armor's bodysuit, slipping in by an opening in the front. The suit had not been made for overly muscular specimens and though Henry never thought of himself as particularly big, he still had some trouble getting the zipper closed and the suit felt tighter around the chest, neck and shoulder areas, though everything else fit nicely.
Most likely, this was due to Kilburn's new and brutal teaching methods, where every wrong answer cost Jackson ten push ups, incomplete answers a single traction and lack of answer ten of both.
The Marines had been more about cardio, requiring every recruit to run until they threw up before the day had even begun. Not much use for running aboard a spaceship, so the Navy focused on upper body strength and agility instead.
Today's training would normally be spread over a whole week, but time was a luxury which the Commodore had graced Kilburn with very little, so he would teach the kid extra-vehicular activities, basic engineering and proper jetpack operation in a single lesson.
Jackson slipped the chest plate and shoulder pads, all caught in a single piece, and fastened the straps under each shoulder. Gauntlets came next; boxy and filled with electronics, a pair of optic cables had to be plugged into the pauldrons for each and it took a moment for Henry to get find the right plugs. The boots posed no problem, but the helmet, an heavy and smelly full face block of armor, proved quite complicated:
A suction hose, sticking out the back like a ponytail, had to be secured to the air filters integrated to the suit's back and, of course, securing it required Jackson to reach back, plug the hose, hold it in place and push two clamps down simultaneously, except these clamps were, as the former Marine soon put it, 'Stiff as a corpse with a boner'. Eventually, he did succeed and took a moment to stretch his now numb arms. That caused both clamps to snap up and the tube wiggled free.
"F… Are you serious?" Kilburn, for someone in such a hurry, kept any trick or advice to himself, his own suit already on and secured.
Next time went much faster and Henry remembered to twist both clamps in 'Locked' position. Plugging the handful of optic cables proved rather easy in comparison and, at last, Jackson was ready to get thrown out the airlock.
He told his teacher as much and the man just nodded, as though this was a perfectly sound idea.
And they did just that, leaving through Bay 12, where they just stepped out of the force field and unto the ship's hull, though not before loading themselves down with tools ranging from handheld fusion cutters to paint spray can.
Jackson looked out at space for the first time in almost a month, but saw only the sun, which caused his visor to polarize and anything beyond that yellow disc became obscured.
Henry looked 'down', in relation to the ship's gravity. Char was over them, acting as a blood red sky, but he was not looking at it, he looked down and saw only the vastness of space. His first time ever in vacuum, sealed shut in this tiny bubble of safety, surrounded with nothing… Nothing at all, so hot and cold, so empty, a needle-sized hole in his suit could spell his doom within forty seconds.
And then, as if this were not enough, he looked down.
This primate, latched to the side of an overglorified rock, had not evolved to understand the void, he knew there was no falling in space, but the primate didn't and the only thing holding panic at bay was a remote-triggered stimpack injection from his teacher.
All this nonsense suddenly vanished. He didn't have time to be afraid, he had a job to do.
They did not use jet packs, not yet, and Kilburn had Jackson hop from a communication dish to a turret, then from the turret to a jammed airlock, two decks above Bay 12. The battlecruiser actually had a gravity of its own, though far weaker than the artificial environment generated inside. He bump against the hull almost at arm's length of the airlock and found himself floating steadily away from the cruiser, flailing pitifully as he drifted away in silence.
"Newton's first law, Jackson…" The humor in Kilburn's voice only worsened Henry's panic. The Stimpack had worn off and popping another one now would be dangerous. He'd have to deal this on his own.
"An object in motion stays in motion!" He yelled, somehow hoping Kilburn would help him if he got it right.
"Partial answer, Crewman!
-Unless acted on by something else! Grab me, grab me!" He was now two meters away from the hull, his flailing had spun him around and he now faced the sun.
Unless acted on by an outside force… When had he last heard that?
Space construction… Vehicle? SCVs! What about them?
Three meters now… He had stopped flailing around and focused on the yellow disc, along with his dwindling O2 reserve.
At first, SCVs had been plain walkers, but they suffered balance issues when drilling through thicker materials, their fusion torches sometimes burned hard enough to knock them over, so they had been outfitted with rear thrusters to counteract that momentum… Thrusters they now used to get around faster.
Which helped him… How?