As usual, too long but fun I think. You can't write a power-suit story without a nod to Robert A. The astute reader will find several references to this genious and one of his best works. Hope you like it but feel free to be brutal.

                            MERCS

     Ten more seconds.  That's all it would have taken, and that weak little puke of a bartender would never have insulted another warrior. He was just lucky security was in the house and that the alcohol had taken the edge off the combat stimulants.  My coordination was off, and I missed with the first blow and crushed his larynx instead of snapping his neck.  His future insults would be voiced in a husky whisper.  He went down and I picked him up by his skinny throat and held him at arm's length.  Gee, no smart-ass comments now, I thought, watching his eyes bulge and his face turn a lovely shade of purple.

     I should have had my guard up, but like I said, I was pretty tanked at the time.  I'd seen him eyeing the satin and leather tunic as I sat down at the bar.  I saw him take a long look at the skull earring with the cloud of bones, but as long as he kept the drinks coming I thought I could tolerate his insolence, my mistake.  It was only after I'd bought the house a round in Thompson's memory that he really started to irritate me.  The combat stims still had me awake forty-eight hours after recall and they let me pick up the insults he whispered to himself as he set up the house.  He kept a running commentary of his customers, and I could hear every insult.  I was patient until he started besmirching Thompson's death. I'd been there when he died, and he'd done it with more courage and honor than this useless bartender would see in his entire lifetime.

     Hell, he'd saved my ass.

     That's how I came to have my hands wrapped around the barkeeps throat, doing my best to throttle the life out of him before security's stunner loosened my fillings.

     I woke up chained to the wall of a small cell with four guards looking nervous and pointing their stun guns at me.  They usually dealt with drunken businessmen and the rich dandies who could afford twenty-four hours in this orbiting whorehouse, not guys like me.

     The goons were massive in their skin tight uniforms, their steroid-pumped muscles straining the flat black cloth.  That was usually enough to quell the toughest they saw.  In my case, it meant nothing, and they knew it.  You could smell the fear.  One of the apes keyed his radio and informed an unseen presence that I was conscious.

     The door opened and another black suit walked in, older than the others with a touch of gray at the temples.  He turned a chair backwards and straddled it, his face inches from mine.  I glared back, ignoring the massive headache that blasted up the back of my neck.  He smiled and met my gaze, the only sign of nervousness was the tendency for his hand to creep to his luxuriant mustache.  He caught himself and forced it down, but as he talked, it started to work its way back up to tug at the corners.

     He introduced himself as the head of security.   He launched into a long-winded explanation of how the laws on Eros were minimal but that it was still illegal to throttle a bartender, no matter how insolent.   He knew that I had just returned from a difficult mission, and that the whole planet was grateful for what my Tribe had done.   If I would just promise to go quietly to the airport and wait for the next shuttle home, that the government would take care of everything, including the injured local.  He rambled on until he kind of faded to silence, and then sat there trying to look composed while frantically twisting the ends of his mustache.

     In the end I signed the papers and let the four pseudo-soldiers lead me to the airport.

     After I'd signed, I expected them to pull the cuffs but they kept me in restraints right up until it was time to rent the tube.  There was no need for that.  Like I said, I had one hell of a headache and was in a foul mood.  They uncuffed me after getting my DNA sample and I couldn't resist snatching a stunner and nailing three out of four.  I paid for it when the fourth got me before I got him, and for the second time I was unconscious on the planet Eros.  Unlike most of the other unconscious tourists here, it hadn't cost me a fortune to get that way.

     Eros is a destination planet.  It's owned by a syndicate that props up the government of the home world.  It's a cash cow that pumps credits into the government coffers and lures big spenders from all over the galaxy.  My base pay for a month wouldn't have been enough to get drunk here if not for the deal cut by my Tribe.

     What the denizens of Eros were so thankful for, was the way we quelled that little uprising on their food planet.  As the lucrative casinos and brothels had spread over the surface of this small world, they were forced to go off-planet for their food, to the planet Arco. When the company workers in the vast fields of Arco tired of going hungry while the food they grew was shipped off, they rebelled and seized the ports.  That's when we got the call.  

     "We," are the Tribes of the planet Bastille.  Mercenaries, or Mercs, if you prefer.  Contract warriors.  We do the dirty work for the highest bidder.  Save the hassle of each world maintaining a standing army.  All you need is cash, and transportation.  My Tribe had been low bidder for this little war.

     No advanced weapons, the briefing Vid had ensured us.  A bunch of backwoods primitives and farm workers should be nothing more than a tune-up.  Wrong.

     The smugglers must have penetrated the blockade around the planet Arco, as easily as they got stuff into us.  These guys had missiles, smart bombs, and a nasty anti-aircraft setup.  Thank God that the Tribe never goes into anything half-assed.  The chief had insisted on full battle suits for all us grunts, with a one hundred percent redundancy in powersats for resupply.

     The client had balked, and they finally settled on seventy-five per cent backup and resupply.  It'd been barely enough.       After it was over, the mediation committee had slapped fines and penalties on the burghers of planet Eros for misrepresentation.  Of course they bargained their way down to a few perks.  We got to keep the hand weapons and we all got a percentage bonus and free transit to and from one of their resorts. That's what had me pissed off on the planet Eros.

     After twelve hours here, I saw why most of the veterans had scalped their tickets to the rookies.  This hole was a money trap.  The whole place geared to separate you from your credits.  Whatever you wanted, somebody could get it, or said they could.  It was a steady stream of come-ons and cons.

     I had wandered in and out of a few bars before my little incident.  In every one, the stools next to me became mysteriously empty.  I was a leper.  I hadn't been so contemptuous when your government contracted my Tribe to keep your bellies full.  The only locals that approached me were the hookers.  They ranged from an eight foot tall Amazon who smiled and casually dragged a cavernous cleavage under my nose, to a cartoon-like woman who slipped under the bar, interested in an appendage other than my nose.  Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against a woman practicing that ancient art; back home on male dominated Bastille, it was an honored and necessary job. Here it was just another way to separate a client from his credits.  There was no respect between client and artist. I'd already had enough of the decadence and unabashed greed before I even wandered into asshole's bar.  It was my last stop, and I'd decided to bank the rest of my voucher when I realized I hadn't yet bought a round for the house to toast a tribesman's memory.  Okay, technically Thompson hadn't been a member of Tribe Havener, but he'd died well and I felt he deserved it.  The bartender must have disagreed.

     However it worked out, I recovered consciousness for the second time in under eight hours, in one of the overnight tubes at the airport.  My duffel bag shoved behind me, and thankfully, a headache only slightly worse than the first time.  I lay there, savoring the silence and the dark.  God, what a noisy place this planet was.  I found the light switch and pushed my duffel further up on the shelf.  I palmed the remote and keyed the Vid, flipping through the channels, endless ads for services for the twisted tourists.  I turned it off in disgust.  I was still hyped up, but it was twelve hours until the next shuttle.  I started repacking my duf, and was shaking the sand out of the bottom, when the Vid disc rattled onto the cot.  Thompson, had died trying to get this back to his Net, made me promise to deliver it.  Of course I said yes.  It was easy to promise a dying man anything.  I held it up to the light, watching the way the mirrored ridges reflected.  I slipped it into the slot and hit" Play." I had to smile when Thompson's face stared seriously from the small screen.   He'd been so damn determined and brave.  Stupid, but determined and brave.

     I still remember the first time I'd seen Thompson.  He'd hit Bastille aboard the regular supply shuttle, in a bubble.

     The bubble was a clear plastic pressurized structure, loaded as cargo into the hold of the unpressurized shuttle.  It usually carried livestock or plants, or something else that couldn't take vacuum.  This time it held one very scared journalist and his Vid gear.

     Let's start by saying my home is not exactly a destination planet.  A local Vid service once did a study of the life expectancy of a non-native visitor, and found it to be slightly less than the thirty-six hour day our lovely planet enjoys. Growing up there, it didn't seem that bad, dangerous if you were careless, but with it's own savage beauty.

     Bastille is a large arid planet, old and worn, everything giving in to the relentless gravity, nubs of ancient mountains poking through the sand, and short squatty bushes.  Everything on Bastille leans towards the short and squatty, including the people.  Its eccentric orbit brings it broiling close to its sun in the summer.  In the winter, the ice races down from the poles, nearly meeting at the equator.  The native flora and fauna contend for the few livable niches with unbelievable ferocity.

     It was discovered early in the first galactic expansion, but after the weather and wildlife wiped out the first three colonization attempts, it was deeded over to the Penal Authority. In their infinite wisdom, they decided that since it had a breathable atmosphere, it was suitable as a prison planet.

     The convicts, shipped off once a year, landed in a remotely guided ship, released with minimal equipment and no warning.  The first six loads of detainees disappeared without a trace.  When the eighth load hit dirt, the monitors showed a band of savages waiting for the ship.  Apparently, lucky trip number seven had survived.

     Each new male arrival was killed as he emerged terrified and confused after the long trip.  The few females were dragged from the ship and out of camera range.  For decades, the convicts continued to arrive, but over the years my ancestors changed their greeting just a bit. 

     They managed to wrestle the planet to an uneasy truce, and a rough civilization emerged.  Now, every newcomer was issued a viewer and instructional Vid, and was quarantined in the neutral zone until they'd adjusted to life on Bastille.  Many never made it out of quarantine.  Those that did, better get hooked up with one of the Tribes mighty quick, or be one bad son-of-a-bitch.  There were legends of Singles who'd left the nursery without joining a Tribe, but I've never met one.  Without a local to show you what not to do or touch, you were pretty much history.

     That's why I met Thompson at the gate.  His Net had contracted with me to bodyguard him on the Arco "police action."   The cargo handlers deflated his bubble, and I signed for him.  The teamsters snickered while he nervously gathered up his gear, and loaded it into my rig.  They shook hands on the bet with Thompson within earshot.  The stumpy one was giving two to one odds that Thompson wouldn't make seventy-two hours before they'd be putting the body bag into storage for the next shuttle. I felt pretty good.  The tote board usually showed that kind of odds on fresh meat that had been through the nursery tour.  Thompson was skipping the orientation. My job was to keep him alive through one week on Bastille, and see that he made the next contract drop.  The teamster gave him a lurid wink as we lurched away from the dock.

     We made it to the barracks without a problem.  At least he had made an attempt to be ready; he'd obviously been hitting the gym.  He was blonde and buffed and towered over me like a wall of uncoordinated muscle.  He tried to strut and be confident as he stowed his gear, but the way his eyes darted around, you could see it was all a bluff.  I think he almost wet himself when the first Stuka crashed into the windshield, by the time a dozen of the suicide birds had smashed into the glass, he'd almost quit jumping at each impact. I dropped him at the sealed barracks entrance and he barely acknowledged my wave before ducking into the safety of the hooch.  I think the poor sap was beginning to see what he was getting himself into.

     A week later he was sure of his mistake.  He made an attempt to hide his fear.  Unfortunately, the fastest way off planet was for him to make the drop with the Tribe.  He did an admirable job of keeping it together while the armorer fitted his suit and ordinance.  I didn't see any tears until he was actually sealed into his drop egg.  By then it was too late.

     The heavy munitions racks in his suit were adapted to hold his Vid gear, and it was disconcerting to see the camera on his back automatically track you whenever you walked near him.  He had the normal complement of hand weapons but as it turned out these were pretty much useless. I did everything I could to prepare him, but I think we both sensed his doom.  I told him to keep his head down, do exactly what I told him, and try to stay with me. He tried, but it was hopeless.

     We spent the twenty hours of light-plus egged in and drugged, my favorite way to travel.  When you come out of it, you're in a different part of the universe.  Your drop egg injects you with a stimulant cocktail, and you're ready to wrestle the devil.  Even Thompson was exuding confidence.  His Vid-link showed him recording the interior of the egg and every part of the troop ship his lenses could pick up through the small view port. I switched to the tactical frequency and down-loaded the mission profile.  We were dropping in the first wave of the assault.

     The scouts had dropped the previous orbit, their eggs packed with sensor defeating electronics and radar absorption gear.  Their job was to suppress the air defenses and communication system of the locals.  The massive jolt of stimulants my egg injected allowed me to take in all the data streaming on to the screen and still see Thompson's bug-eyed stare through his visor.  A second later, stars replaced the reporter's egg as the launcher fired him. It chambered my egg next, paused for a fraction of a second, and hurled me down the launch tube, the pressure lines in my suit squeezing my extremities as the force passed 7 g's.  I grayed out for several long seconds as my egg darted in and out of the cloud of chaff, confusing it's radar return with all the other crap that descended on the planet.

     I dropped another three or four thousand feet, before deceleration let some of the blood flow back to my brain.  As the red haze faded, I checked my display and saw that Thompson and I were exactly where we were should be.  We filled the center of the diamond formation, and would advance leapfrog fashion, as the squads on each side and in front cleared the way.  At least that's the way it was supposed to work.  What actually happened was that we came down in the center of a shit-storm.

     We broke through a low cloud cover at about a thousand feet just as the retro-rockets kicked in.  The egg was peeling down, shedding layers and velocity, as it sliced through the driving rain below the clouds.  When the para-sail finally popped, I saw Thompson's sail a hundred yards ahead.  I could see him fighting the shroud as he tried to turn.

     The egg had dropped him just to the wrong side of a defensive ridge that bristled with weaponry.  The only reason that he was still alive was that the hill dropped off enough that his sail hadn't deployed until he was below the ridge line. Coming in behind him, I could see the missile crews slipping in the mud, frantically trying to depress their weapons enough to get off a shot.   As I hit my arming switch, one of the ground batteries launched a missile.  It reached Thompson's sail in a fraction of a second and blasted past inches over the wing, exploding harmlessly against the hillside.

     They never saw me as they worked to reload.  I placed the red dot on the rebels' missile battery and squeezed the pickle. The sail shuddered and a pin-point of light blasted from under my butt as a hardened dart slashed through the twilight and impacted the spare missiles behind their launcher.  The tiny dart held no explosives, but was designed to penetrate and then shatter, spreading super-heated bits of metal.  It worked exactly as the engineers intended, penetrating the thin casing of the missiles a fraction of a second before the armored vehicle came apart at the seams.

     I jerked the sail hard left and triggered a busy bomb over the burning wreckage.  I could see the sparkle of small arms fire on the ridge as the Arco rebels recovered from the shock, so I triggered the two small thrust rockets and beat feet after Thompson.

     With a minute to catch my breath, I checked my helmet display, no Thompson. I picked up the green icons of the rest of the squad on either side, but where was the blue one? I scanned both sides with no luck.  It wasn't until I'd clicked the magnification up two notches that he finally registered on the screen.  The idiot must have hit his rockets at the first sign of trouble and just kept on going.  I advised the squad leader that I was going after him and hit my rockets full burn.  I saw the sail over me stiffen and reconfigure as some of the thrust bled off into it's hollow ribs, maximizing it's shape for speed.

     As trees flashed below, I saw the blue dot that was Thompson slow and then stop in my helmet display.  Good, he must have finally run out of fuel and gone to ground.  I keyed my mic and tried to raise him, but the undulating terrain masked the transmission.  I gave up and concentrated on staying as low as I could without running into anything.

     The darkening forest was interrupted with the occasional road or cleared field giving definition to the terrain.  Houses squatted in the clearings, blacked out but visible if I switched to night-vision. In the gray twilight it was difficult to choose between my eyes and the enhanced view. I was flipping the selector back and forth, when a threat warning warbled in my ear.  The display changed to show something large, emitting a ton of heat, a ground vehicle of some kind.  It was moving directly along my flight path about a mile ahead.  As I got closer, fainter heat signatures started to show flanking the vehicle, probably an armored detail following Thompson's frantic flight.  I counted at least a dozen soldiers, and presumably that many more in the vehicle.  There were too many to stop and fight, but they were closing rapidly on the spot where Thompson, I hoped, was digging a very deep hole.  I throttled down to idle and let the wing puff back into its low speed configuration.  The lightly armed para-sail held one more dart and busy bomb but the road wound tightly through the close spaced trees making a clean shot difficult.  I cinched down the ejection straps and armed the two remaining weapons.

     I knew I was in trouble when I popped up over the trees.  The one large vehicle was actually two hover tractors with jury-rigged armor and a very lethal looking missile cluster, traveling next to each other.  They looked quick and deadly.  They detected me as soon as I was higher than the trees and started evasive maneuvers while the gunners turned their weapons. I targeted the nearest vehicle, loosed the dart and the busy bomb at the same time.  The dart hit too low, taking off the right front skirt of one tractor and raising a cloud of dust and debris.  The other tractor slewed around in the small clearing and brought its weapons to bear.  It got off one short burst that flashed uncomfortably close across the nose of my sail, then the busy bomb went off.  

     They'd shown us training Vids of what the thing could do, but this was the first time I'd seen one live.  While it could do little to those inside the armored cars but dazzle them with pyrotechnics, those poor grunts following were in a world of hurt.  The busy bomb was a bucket size gizmo that hit the ground with a blinding flash, an ear shattering explosion, and a hail of metal from fist-sized fragments on down.  Shrapnel spread in an umbrella configuration for a hundred yards in all directions.  The catch was that a lot of these fragments were also delay explosives, sensitive to heat, motion, or proximity.  At any rate, this area would be a very unhealthy place for the next few days.  The initial explosion cut through the trees like a scythe, and the secondary explosions started seconds later.

     I watched the damage over my shoulder and then shoved the throttles wide open again.  The para-sail shot forward and I counted to ten before punching the large red button that fired me out the bottom of the capsule.  The drastically lightened sail picked up speed and started a pre-programmed evasive flight. Hopefully it would draw pursuers away from my errant reporter and me.

     I crashed through the tree canopy and felt the suit right itself and stiffen as the retros broke my fall.  My boots sank several inches into the mud as the coolers whined, converting the energy of the landing into heat.

     I oriented myself and recalled the map overlay that showed Thompson's beacon on my screen, and set off through the woods.

     My display showed my sail maneuvering like a mad thing, staying just below the cloud ceiling, the big blue dot that was Thompson, a hundred yards ahead.  I switched over to do a quick check on my suit's systems.  The hard landing had damaged a heel jet, but all the weapon systems checked out O.K.  I heated up the rest of my weaponry while I slogged through the wet underbrush towards the last place I'd seen the reporter's beacon.

     In my display, I saw the remaining armored vehicle bite on the decoy, and turn west to follow the empty para-sail.  I was picking up an intermittent signal from Thompson's suit and set out on the bounce.

     It didn't take the rebel squad as long as I'd hoped to realize the sail was unmanned.  That and a hand-held missile from the woods that fragged the kite and anything that might have been in it kind of gave them a clue.

     I was staying low, below the treetops, taking it easy on the damaged heel jet.  Good thing or I might have missed Thompson all together.  I'd just jumped over a sluggish creek when the blue light that was Thompson flashed to full brilliance in my display and then disappeared.  I stopped and bounced back to the top of the small ridge of rock that lined the creek.  Thompson's beacon burned bright.

     I found him flat on his stomach, almost buried in the mud. His kite sputtered overhead, trying to carry out its evasive maneuvers while trapped in the top of a vine-covered tree.  I almost laughed at the scene.  The idiot had obviously punched out too low, and the ejection charge had fired him two feet into the mud.  He was face down in the bottomless muck.

     His heel jets sputtered and forced his head further up the twenty foot long trench he'd managed to blast in the creek bed.  You could hardly see him as the steaming mud mixed with the driving rain.  If the rebels had found him first, I don't know if they'd be able to stop laughing long enough to dispatch the imbecile.

     When I tapped him on the shoulder, he panicked and fired his hand weapon and his heel jets at the same time.  He succeeded in forcing his blunt helmet another dozen feet up the creek, as his blaster uprooted a small tree and lit up the surrounding landscape in a laser-flash of light.

     I pried his shoulder up and wiped the mud from his visor. His eyes were huge in his helmet, the whites showing all around as panic fought with the tranqs his suit was pumping into him.  I actually saw tears as he realized I wasn't a rebel about to fill his boots with blood.  I focused on the display in my helmet.  The rebels had to have picked up the flash and I saw all the heat signatures converging on us.  Then we caught a break.

     With a throaty roar, Thompson's kite broke free of the vines and blasted off into the rain, juking hard as it realized its mission.  It shot off into the pouring night, its unused armament blasting off at random intervals, one hell of a distraction.

     I yanked Thompson out of the mud and slapped the switch that slaved his suit to mine and jumped.  Even with the kite doing its act, a ton of heat was about to converge on this spot and I wanted us to be somewhere else.  We hit the top of the embankment and I slapped the switch again, sending us crashing into the forest.  Just for good measure we jumped twice more, and then with my wrecked heel jet screaming red in my array, I shoved Thompson head first into a thicket of thorns and burrowed in after him.

     Of course the idiot was screaming over the radio at the top of his lungs so I reached over and snapped the antenna off his backpack, and rapped his helmet hard with my open hand.  My suit amplified the blow and I might have hit him harder than I intended, but it got his attention.  I motioned for him to shut up and tried to concentrate on my helmet display.

     We were still way inside of the rebel lines, but I knew the Tribe was coming.  I picked up the light armored vehicle and squad that was still mobile.  They'd drifted east after the kite, but were making their way back to the creek bed.  We'd put a half mile behind us, but in the wrong direction.  There was no way we were going to get past that squad without being picked out, and after a quick read of Thompson's reserves, we weren't going far anyway.  His trench digging in the ditch had nearly exhausted his jump jets, and our frantic flight through the forest had left my damaged heel-jet blinking a deep crimson with barely twenty-five percent capacity.  From here on we were on foot.

     The maps showed a village just north of us.  With the patrol behind us, we needed to hole up and wait for the Tribe to come to us. We had no choice but to move toward the city.

     I leaned over and touched helmets with Thompson and outlined the plan.  Stay low, stay with me, and don't do anything else.  He nodded not trusting himself to talk, and we set off through the dripping trees.  The rain was actually a blessing.  It masked any sound we might make forcing our way through the dense underbrush.  We moved on letting the suits do the work.  We'd covered almost half the distance to the village without a word from Thompson, when I called a halt and checked his suit.

      We'd been pushing hard and it was no surprise to see that he'd used up most of his fuel and he had to have seen the warning blinking in his helmet.  I checked my own reserves and hooked up with Thompson's suit.  I fed enough ergs into his suit to shut off the warning light but we weren't going far.  We'd climbed up out of the valley and were on the outskirts of the village that perched precariously on the ridge top.  I clicked my magnification up a couple of notches and checked out the farmhouses and fields that clung to the hillside.

     In monochromatic night-vision, I could make out a smattering of rude houses and outbuildings.  Pens and corrals surrounded the main buildings, animals conspicuous by their absence.  The locals must have had plenty of warning that we were coming.  They'd removed the livestock and the women and children to safety and now there was just the militia, showing up as faint heat signatures ghosting in and out at this range.  Thompson leaned over and motioned to touch helmets.

     "There's a park at the edge of this village.  That's where I'm supposed to get extracted."

     "Yeah, eight hours from now, we're just a tiny bit early."

     "So what do we do?"

     "We wait."

     I pulled up an overlay of the town from the suit's files and tried to figure where we were.  I knew we were well out in front of the Tribe, and there wasn't a chance that we could talk a powersat down until they were within a couple of miles.  In the meantime, we had to lie low and conserve our ergs.  We'd left the first patrol behind, but my display showed a lot of activity all around us and our guys weren't visible, even at max magnification.

     The plot map of the farm in front of us detailed a main house with a scattering of outbuildings.  We sat at the edge of a plowed and muddy field and tried to orient the display with what we could make out through the driving rain.  The barn was a dark shadow, barely discernible but looking just too obvious and inviting.  The house was dark too, but there was no way I was going close enough to find out if it was vacant.  I had my eye on a dark mass that rose out of the corner of the field, some kind of shack or lean-to.  We eased toward it, crawling between the rows of the fallow field, feeling our way towards the outbuilding.

     We spent a long half hour face down in a ditch.  A motorized patrol worked its way slowly down the road, its searchlight probing its way into and out of the barn and side yard of the house.  The rain poured through the cone of light like a snowstorm.  When they pulled out, I slapped Thompson on the shoulder and we belly-crawled our way into the lean-to.

     It had been a pig sty.  **** was mixing with the mud and ran in a stream out of the shelter.  We crawled in and settled down under the sheet of tin that served as the roof.  I poked a finger through the tin roof and placed an antenna through the hole.  I keyed a pre-programmed signal for a powersat and turned both our suits down to the minimum.  The Tribe was on its way, we'd wait.

     We sat there in the excrement and the mud with the rain drumming on the tin for more than six hours without the Tribe showing up in our helmets.  They were over two hours behind the operations profile. Thompson had to be terrified.

     It had taken him over an hour to quit shaking and then he'd wanted to talk.  I was real glad I'd snapped off his antenna.  When he got too annoying I just moved far enough away that all I saw were his moving lips through his visor.  He got the hint and shut up.  After a while, bored, he pulled the remote lens from his camera and positioned it in front of his face.  He turned his helmet light up enough to barely illuminate his face and watched to see if I objected.  I shrugged my shoulders; at least he wasn't talking to me. I couldn't resist leaning close enough to hear his dialog.  He blathered on about the daring reporter deep behind enemy lines, to bring you this exclusive report.  He failed to mention that the only reason we were, "Deep behind enemy lines," was because he'd immediately panicked and ran as far and as fast as he could.  He'd screwed up in every way possible and was sitting in a pig sty waiting to be rescued.  Now that's good reporting.  He tried to turn the camera towards me until I slung a handful of muck in his direction.      We sat in the dark and every half hour I tried to get a powersat to link up and home in on my signal.  I kept getting an ACCESS DENIED icon, and watched the fuel level dropping in both our suits.  Things were getting desperate when the first vague blips of green started showing in my helmet display.  By the look on his face, I could see that Thompson had seen the same thing. I leaned over and touched helmets.

     "Don't get too excited, by the time they get here, there won't be enough power in these suits to lift a finger.  We're going to have to meet them half way."

     He nodded as if he understood and I pulled in the antenna and eased out into the open.  I checked the farm again in infra-red and found no heat signatures.  The patrol we'd seen earlier had made one more pass through the barn yard during the night, but it was as still as a grave now.  The rain had diminished to a light drizzle.  I motioned for Thompson to follow and we worked our way to the edge of the field and knelt in the ditch that lined the road.  We'd crashed through the woods to get here, but all that slogging ate energy at a rate we couldn't spare.  I planned to take our chances on the road and hope we could dive into the woods before trouble spotted us.

     I rose up and cut the three strands of wire that delineated the field and then fell back down in the ditch beside Thompson. We had to cross the open yard in front of the abandoned farm, and I pointed out to Thompson the clump of trees I wanted him to head for when I gave the signal.  I gave the whole area one last sweep with infra-red and the night vision settings and then slapped him on the back.  He exploded out of the ditch with mud flying and his head down, pounding across that open area towards the safety of the woods.  I guess I was surprised at his enthusiasm and almost smiled watching him hammer across the road towards the safety of the brush.  That's why I didn't see where the first shot came from.  All I saw was the sparks fly up from the road and Thompson's suited form diving head first into the ditch on the opposite side.  I ducked and turned back to the farm house in time to see a flash of light out of the crawl hole in the foundation.  The cool mass of the masonry had masked the heat of whoever was down there.  They had to have night vision, and maybe infra-red too, because the next burst clipped the tops of the weeds that grew waist high around me and rained down into the mud and stagnant water.  I scooted down the ditch a dozen yards and poked my head up between two clumps of the saw-edged grass.  Another burst whined off the hard surface of the road, forcing me down.  Yep, they had infra-red.  I heard them send another spray towards Thompson to keep him down, and then the clumps of grass where I'd been were shredded again. They had us pinned down and I knew they were radioing frantically for the patrol to come back.

     Normally, this would not be that big a problem.  All I'd seen so far were small projectile weapons and if they'd had anything better, they'd have used it.  Two warriors in combat suits should be able to handle a handful of guerrillas with guns, but Thompson was a reporter with nothing but hand weapons.   Our suits were so low on power that we were less than an hour away from lock-up.  If that happened, the rebels could walk up and build a fire around us like a human barbecue.  I had my blaster, but one bolt from that would put me dangerously into the red zone on power.  I did have one small missile on a Y-rack on my back, but the rock foundation of the house looked old and massive.  We still had several miles of hostile territory between us and the Tribe and I didn't want to waste munitions on a farmer with a rifle, but we couldn't afford to wait here like this.  I'd wanted to keep a low profile and sneak back to our own lines, but the choice was out of my hands.  I unfolded the launcher and set the warhead to incendiary.  I held the target designator on the darkened window of the wood frame house and squeezed the trigger.  My faceplate darkened automatically to keep the flash from blinding me and I felt the suit adjust to the recoil.  An instant later, a white-hot burst blew out all the doors and windows, the metal chimney lifted high into the air, crashing to the ground in the front yard.  The missile held a rapidly expanding gas that bonded with the oxygen in the structure to form an explosive mix.  A high-energy spark ignited the mixture after it sensed full saturation.  In seconds, the entire structure was ablaze.  The flames lit up the trees, the road, and the ditch I was standing in like a roman candle.  I didn't wait to see if anyone made it out of the basement.  I shot across the road and grabbed the stunned Thompson by the shoulder.  I shoved him down the road until he got the idea, falling three or four times as he fought the suit in his panic.  I yanked him up none to gently each time until we'd put enough distance between us and the excitement.  A gap in the trees showed a small stream and we slid off the crown of the road and splashed into a metal culvert that ran beneath.

     We stood in the dark with the water running around our knees, trying to catch our breath and waiting for our hearts to slow down to something below hummingbird levels.  When I could move, I linked up with Thompson's suit.

     "You okay, Meat?"

     He nodded.  I couldn't see his face, but could hear his breath coming in uneven rasps and see that he had a bad case of the shakes. I slaved his suit to mine and ordered his to hit him with another load of tranqs.  It came back with an error icon and I realized his medpac was dry.  I pumped enough from my suit into his to calm the poor guy down and then checked the rest of his readouts.  I was greeted by a sea of red. He wasn't going far.

      I called up my own readouts and they weren't much better. The only chance we had was to lighten the load and get as far as we could and hope we could talk a powersat down to us before suit lock-up.  I told Thompson to do what I did, and then starting stripping down.  The graphics pointed out that one pulse from the blaster would cause lock-up, so I unplugged it and let it fall into the water.  Thompson followed suit.  The medpaks were exhausted so they hit the water with a splash.  The heel-jets were next, unclipped and dumped, followed by the rest of the crap that was unnecessary.  When we were done, all that was left was the life support packs, and Thompson's camera.  I tried to talk him into dumping that, but he argued that it ran off its own sealed battery and he was keeping it.  I didn't have time to argue.

     We'd been there maybe five minutes, when we heard the high-pitched whine of a turbine, and felt the vibration as the armored tractor passed overhead.  Seconds later we heard the many-footed sounds of a patrol following the armored detail towards the front.  We waited long anxious minutes, but they didn't come back.

     Thompson was knee-deep in the stream just inside the mouth of the tunnel, watching me place the emergency transponder in some bushes at the side of the road, when we heard the second patrol approaching.  With our power so low, the threat warning was slow in sounding the alarm, and they were on top of us before we had time to react.  I froze, but Thompson tried to duck back into the culvert.  The patrol caught the movement, and a brilliant spotlight pierced the darkness, fixing the reporter in its beam.  I leaned farther into the bushes and willed myself into invisibility.

     It's hard to believe that the patrol didn't just blast the bridge with Thompson under it.  One man in a combat suit is a serious threat to a bunch of farmers with rifles and a clumsily armored tractor.  They didn't know he was just a scared reporter, but I think they figured they still had to cross the bridge.

     They pulled the tractor as far as they could to the side of the road and trained its spotlight and missile battery on one end of the culvert.  A team of soldiers armed with a hand held missile slowly entered the other side.  They forced Thompson out and marched him up the embankment to stand in the harsh glare of the spotlight.  They nearly shot him when the automatic camera on his back came to life.  It started tracking about randomly, while he was shouting that he was a non-combatant, an observer, a reporter for Christ's sake, please don't kill him.  I just hoped the fool had the good sense not to look in my direction.  I'd edged into the bushes as far as I could while they were preoccupied with Thompson, and my suit was doing its camo thing, blending into the shadows.  How long it would last I couldn't say.  The lock-up warning had blinked red for several minutes and was now a steady crimson glow.  Moving in slow-motion, I tried to get into a comfortable position that still had me hidden in the trees.  I'd triggered the transponder, and as soon as a powersat judged it safe to set down, we'd get resupplyed, until then, we were pretty much helpless.

     I guess Thompson convinced the patrol that he really was a reporter, and they decided not to kill him.  Instead, one of the rebels stood in the spotlight in front of his cameras, and read a hastily prepared statement, presenting their declaration of autonomy for "Sovereign Arco," and the reasons for the revolt. During the recording, both our suits locked up.  When they were done, Thompson explained that unless they wanted to cart him away he was going to just stand there, until they came back.  They offered to crack the suit, but even with help, it took about an hour to open an unpowered suit.  They said they really couldn't spare that much time, and reluctantly left him standing at the side of the road, assuring him they'd pick him up on their way back.  Then, with a few backward glances, they dissolved into the soggy night, on their way to a meeting with the rest of my Tribe.  I doubted they'd be rescuing Thompson any time soon.

     I lay back in the former combat suit that was now a one man prison, and watched the statue that was Thompson.  His suit had locked standing up with both arms in the air in the position of surrender he was in when flushed from the culvert. His faceplate was turned away, and I doubt that he could twist his neck enough to see me.  Without an antenna, I couldn't even talk to him on the radio.  I knew his arms had to be dying up in the air like that, all numbness and tingling as the blood drained away.  His crotch had to hurt like hell too.  With the suspenders dead, the hundred pounds of dead weight of the sensor suit pulled you to the bottom of the shell.  During training they'd taught you to get comfortable just before lock-up, Thompson had been standing up for three hours.

     In a breathable atmosphere, the vents of the suit automatically cracked open.  They let in the damp air, heavy and laden with the smell of the forest and the clean smell of the just departed storm.  The pregnant dawn felt heavy and fetid, the rain stopped but the clouds still crowded close, oppressive and looming dark among the trees.  I could just make out the figure of Thompson supplicating himself to the heavens.  It was the movement of his precious camera tracking something overhead that told me the Tribe had finally caught up with us.  Seconds later, the creek, and the road and Thompson, and the whole world glowed with the tail of fire that the powersat rode down into the clearing.  A weapons pod popped out of the top of the squatty missile and swept the clearing, while two umbilicals homed in and fed precious ergs into our suits.  In under a minute we both received enough to shuffle into the embrace of the satellite.  It pulled us in, feeling the empty places in our suits and slapping replacements into the empty sockets.  The rush was instantaneous when the med-pack slapped home and the suit fed me a jolt of stims.  I down-loaded the mission summary and rewound the last two hours, compacting it into a five minute graphic.  It showed the Tribe wiping out the two patrols that had passed Thompson and me.  This was apparently the best the planet had to offer.  If it wasn't for the smuggled-in weaponry, it would have been the tune-up the contractors had promised.  Once these were neutralized, it had been pretty much as advertised.

     Thompson and I never even so much as saw the enemy again until the very end.  With our magazines full and the drugs pumping through our veins, it was a piece of cake staying with the Tribe as we swept into the village, wiping up the pockets of resistance effortlessly.  He did another Vid report, wrapping up the mission and reaching his conclusions.  He had his reporter face on and looked earnestly into the camera, talking to the tribesmen milling around at the extraction point.  Hell, I even threw a few quotes the kid's way. 

     Thompson met his contact in the park and they swapped stories while I filed my mission debrief.  I watched the two reporters laugh and cross the street to a combination bar and restaurant that we'd liberated from the rebels.  I had to confess in my report that I'd been caught in a suit lock-up, and that was embarrassing enough that I really wasn't paying attention. Besides, the battle was over.

     I had my helmet open, engrossed in my report, so I never saw what happened until I watched Thompson's Vid.  His automated camera caught the whole thing.

     That damn camera of his was still on and it automatically tracked the molotov cocktail.  In the vid, I saw that classic weapon of the oppressed, thrown with uncanny precision; describe a perfect arc with me at the end.  Then suddenly the perspective changed.  In the audio you could hear Thompson's shouted warning.

     I've watched this bit of tape countless times at normal speed and slow-mo and I still cringe every time I see my suited figure turning too slowly, relaxed and careless, my guard down. It would have been a prize winning shot if Thompson had gotten it back to his Net.  It was perfectly composed.  The jar, with the wick burning was center frame, with the intended victim, me, frozen in shock, my eyes unbelievably wide.  The camera appeared to zoom in on the fireball, just before impact a suited hand appeared on-screen and the Vid dissolved into a wash of vivid orange flames.  That was the end of the Vid, but I knew how the rest went, I'd been there.

     The movement of the camera had to have alerted Thompson and he must have reacted instantly.  By the time his shouted warning reached me, it was too late.  Thompson hadn't just shouted though.  He'd jumped and jumped hard.  A combat suit amplifies input in direct proportion to effort and he'd flat launched himself.  It wasn't the camera zooming in on the molotov cocktail, it was Thompson flying across the street, and it was his hand that appeared in the last seconds of the Vid.  He deflected the bomb and crashed into me, a half a ton of suit and reporter sending me flying.  By the time I picked myself up, it was too late.

     The molotov cocktail had fumbled off the tip of his outstretched fingers and impacted against the neck ring of his suit.  It flooded the flammable liquid down inside the suit and ignited.  The fire suppression units fired instantly and squelched the fire from the neck down.  The open helmet jets fired and sent a burst of suppressant up the back of Thompson's neck while the flames burned a wicked trough over his face and scalp.   His gulping breath drew the searing flame deep into his lungs.

     The same miscreant that got Thompson, heaved a second bomb.  Distracted by the spectacular effects of his first effort, it splashed harmlessly against the street. My blaster was in my hand and fired before I had a chance to think, and the teenage rebel was a pile of burning rags, immolated by the rest of his bombs.

      By the time I reached him, Thompson was as good as dead. His colleague had extinguished the flames but we all knew it was too late.  His breath came in bloody bubbles and he attempted to talk between the gruesome coughs.  He pressed a copy of the disc into my hand and made me promise that if his partner didn't make it, I'd see that he didn't die in vain.  I looked at the other reporter, and he shrugged like there wasn't a chance he wouldn't make it, so I promised Thompson I'd do it.

                             ....

     Now, 48 hours later, I sit in the tube, and scan the half-dozen news channels, looking for even a mention of the skirmish on the planet that supplied this toilet with sustenance.  Even the search engines could find nothing on a major battle that took place on an imperial sub-planet.  Interestingly enough, I did find mention of an asteroid holing a civilian liner just as it entered its jump.  It made news, because it was a more than million to one chance.  All aboard died, the only passenger of note being a famous war correspondent returning from vacation.

     I flipped the disc Thompson had given me back into the machine, and watched the rebel spokesman give his little speech in that clearing in front of that ludicrous tank.  In the glare of the spotlight, you could see the gaunt hollows of malnutrition in his face, and the ragged clothes of the militia in the shadows.  They milled about, armed with farm utensils and their grandfathers antique percussion weapons.  I compared it with the fat and twisted residents of this sad planet.  I rewound and watched Thompson give his breathless introduction just before the drop, and then searched the myriad of stations for even a mention.  It was like it never happened.

      I repacked my duf with the disc in the null pocket, highly illegal, but undetectable at customs.  It had cost a week's pay to have it installed, but it let me take the hand weapon home, and the curious disc.  I'd have normally thrown the disc away, along with the rest of the end of campaign detritus in my bag, but I think I'd actually come to like Thompson.  He'd tried to be ready in his clumsy buffed up way, and when everything had gone to ****, he hadn't gone to pieces.  Sure he'd been scared, but he'd done what was necessary. In his dying breath, he made me promise to finish his mission.

     I took one last look at the disc before I sealed it into the pocket and activated the lock, rendering it invisible to customs. I'm not sure why this mission upsets me, but it does.  I think it's because those people were merely hungry, and I've been hungry a few times myself.  I have some questions I want to ask the rest of the Tribe.  Questions that damn fool Thompson left.  I think they need answering.