NOVEL NEXT 121: Friend Protection
Ryn
The Order’s town in the lower section of my grove actually resembled a settlement now. Barracks were set up near the main town square, which housed the transportation obelisk and three small fountains spaced out around the perimeter. Buns trotted about helping people or relaxing in huddles that I would call claustrophobic, but that they would call cosy.
My destination was the workshop, a large building that was a hive of activity for the construction crews. Anything and everything more complex than simple cutting of stone and wood was done there. In the back, however, was Bray's private smithy and workshop. Currently he shared it with Claih, which despite their constant bickering, had led to some extremely interesting breakthroughs.
Using Bray's encyclopaedic knowledge of all things metal, Claih had been able to refine some of her inventions. You could do a lot with a machine when the metal used in its construction was lighter, stronger, and more resistant to corrosion.
Rather than get in the way of the buns and humans hard at work in the main workshop, I opted to slink around the side. I had to dodge a bun whose hauling backpack was full of shingles destined to be installed in private homes, but I made it to the side door and slipped inside.
Grace was the first to notice my entrance from the firearms table, and with her attention preoccupied, she promptly missed loading a test cartridge into her gun. It dropped onto the table, rolled for half a second and then took a dive off the table. Catching it before it hit the ground, she smiled sheepishly and left her work to welcome me.
We met halfway across the shop floor, where she hugged me close. Her lips travelled the inch or so of height difference between us and pressed against mine in a kiss. For a split second, my head was emptied of all thoughts, but she pulled away quickly. We had company. Claih and Bray were busy looking every which way but at us, so I pulled out of my girlfriend's embrace and made for where the new armour stood on racks.
"I love you," Grace whispered in my ear, and I forgot which leg was meant to go next. In a room full of magical power tools, tripping over your own muddled feet was not the best idea, and if it weren't for Grace standing ready to clean up the mess she made of my coordination, my natural healing would've been quite busy.
"Having the two of you in the workshop at the same time should be a codified OSHA violation," Bray remarked with a grin, putting his own work down.
“Ha ha, very funny,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Let’s have a look at the new and improved armour, then.”
Grace gasped in excitement beside me. “Yes! Finally! Your damn secrecy about these things has been killing me!”
He laughed and put his hammer down on the table. “So, I’m calling it Expeditionary Armour until someone thinks of a better name for it.”
With a flourish, he pulled a sheet away and revealed five sets of armour. Two were obviously built to be tankier and to the boy’s sizes, while another two were lighter and more flexible. The final one deviated the furthest from what looked like the standard pattern.
The basic colour pattern had clearly taken inspiration from my current outfit—matte green-grey metal plates with silver and green highlights, and small red Camelia symbols on their shoulders. We’d been through several logo ideas for the order, but when someone had suggested the flower known for passion, desire, perfection, and healing, it’d stuck. Problem was, it’d been suggested because it reminded everyone of me. I needed to like, make some harmless but massive fuck-up, just so everyone would give up on this crap.
Anyway, the armour was almost like a mix between mediaeval plate and hardcore tactical gear, except unlike the very first iteration, it was much more complex and had mechanical components. Actually, there were all sorts of actuators and stuff hidden behind plates and inside joints. It looked almost like—
“Yup, power armour,” Bray said proudly. “Crazy magical power armour, but still power armour!”
“That is so fucking cool,” I said, awe hushing my voice.
Stepping closer to the mage-robed set, I ran my finger down the fabric of the coat. It was thick and soft, but with a toughness to it that hinted at something more robust hidden inside.
“What’s the fabric?”
Clearly proud of the work, he lifted a corner of the coat and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. “Imagine denim, but with metallic thread woven throughout it. I figured that your magic would be the brunt of your protection and anything I cooked up would be way
inadequate against enemy magic, so I went with this. It’s tough as hell, all but impervious to slashing, resistant to penetrative attacks, and the fabric is easily enchantable. You should also find empty—uh… I guess the right word is tunnels— through it.”Frowning, I bent down to inspect it up close. “Tunnels?”
“Yeah, holes or tunnels or whatever,” he said, shifting the collar to show me a tiny hole that fed into and between the layers of the fabric. “It was just an idea, but you could try growing one of your magic plants inside it. Like a crazy botanist enchantment or something.”
“Weaving fabricated items and spell-plants together,” I said, with a full fission-reactor’s worth of light bulbs going off in my head. Like a coiled viper, I leapt out to wrap him in a sideways hug. “That’s an awesome idea! Wow!”
Bray patted my back affectionately. “I thought you’d like that.”
“What else can the armour do?” asked Grace, walking over to the set that was her size.
“So,” Bray began, following her to the suit. “Going into this project, I knew that my friends would be counting on this stuff. It’s not just a product being pushed to a market, it’s something that will bring you all back into the grove safe and sound after a mission.”
Bending over slightly, he pointed out one of the actuators in a knee. “First off is the power part of the armour. I have what we call an empathic capacitor up in the neck that will read your intended movements and transmit it to all the various moving parts of the armour. It’ll make you faster and stronger. Nothing like a superhero, mind you, but let’s just say you’d beat any human in an arm wrestling contest.”
Next, my friend straightened and tapped one of the armour plates. “The rigid portions of the armour are the same as the cloth I talked about earlier, except tougher. Conventional steel weapons will bounce right off it.”
“Taking the paint job with it, I assume,” Grace joked, trying and failing to pick at the metal with one of her stubby fingernails.
“Wrong!” Bray replied triumphantly. “There’s no paint on this baby. I mixed some crazy binary pigment into the outermost layer of the composite plates. Not only is it impervious to egging, but with a button press from the arm control panel, the whole suit will go into blackout mode.”
He demonstrated his claim by lifting an armour plate on the left forearm to reveal a fairly slick looking set of buttons. Pressing one, he stood back and basked in the shocked reactions from my girlfriend and I.
In the space of a second, the whole armour went a sort of darkened space grey. The kind of colour that made you blend in with the night better than any full black ever would.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, impressed. Sure, I could do much more insane shit with my magic, but this was all just… mechanical. Magic was still in there, of course, but it was stable and fixed into a physical object—no mages needed.
“That is the least interesting thing about the suits,” Bray said, practically preening now. I couldn’t fault him for the bravado either. These things were awesome!
“I can’t show you without it being worn by someone,” he continued, stepping back, “But they have a deployable vacuum seal for if you somehow find yourself needing some privacy from the outside air. By that, I mean it’ll keep your whole body safe from toxic gas or even the vacuum of space for a short time. I wouldn’t go testing that functionality just yet, though. It’s not like I’ve had access to someplace to make sure it works.”
“Does that mean there’s temperature controls too?” Grace questioned, walking around the armour to poke and prod at various pieces.
“Yup, heating and cooling are built into the thighs, upper arms, and torso,” he nodded. “The helmets have flashlights too.”
“Actually… I was meaning to ask about that,” I interrupted, pointing at the remarkably familiar contraption on the forehead of the helmet. It looked like a set of extremely stubby night vision goggles.
“The visor,” he said, introducing it like a VIP. “It’s not even close to complete yet, unfortunately. I wanted to build a lot more into it, but right now you can just flip it down and operate the little focusing ring to zoom in and out. Night vision that isn’t just a green mess will have to wait, unfortunately.”
Claih chuckled from over at her workstation. “Whenever I finally figure out how to make it work.”
Her desk was littered with what I now realised were more visors in various states of disassembly. Little crystals and wires and funny glowing metal rods were everywhere, and held suspended in a jar of faintly glowing liquid, was a lens.
“Damn treatment process is being a—” she frowned, struggling with her English for a moment. “A hoofless goat.”
We all stared at her for a few seconds, trying to parse what she’d just said. Finally, Bray switched to Anve and asked, “Was that like, a translated obrec curse word?”
“Yes,” she grumbled, clearly put out. “Your language lacks good curses.”
“Speaking of language,” I said with a sly smile at Bray. “You’ve been learning. Any particular reason?”
Rolling his eyes, he picked up a bolt and threw it at me. I caught it with my mind and set it back down on the table, much to his consternation.
“Yes, I’ve had some motivation in that department,” he said, a little defensively. “I have to work with Cad a lot, since he’s the one getting the materials we need.”
I grinned. “Nobody mentioned Cad.”
“You did,” he shot back. “Not with words, but I could hear it in your voice, you damn… pestilential weed.”
“Hey!” I gasped in mock outrage. “I am not a weed! I’m a delicate and fragrant flower.”
“What’s fragrant is the mess you leave—” he started, only to yelp when the bolt from earlier very mysteriously pinged off his head. “Ow! Ungrateful little…”
Our little meeting very quickly dissolved into good natured bickering from then on, and unknown to me at the time, a little troupe of bunnies used the distraction to make off with several tools and a crate of nails.
