Free Revolution by Dale Brown

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    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou’re more than an hour late.”
    â€œIt took a while to get across the border.”
    The woman’s answer was cut short by a scream and the sound of gunfire back near the road.
    Stoner scooped up his rifle. The woman already had her gun and was running. He aimed at her, then realized she was running toward the field.
    â€œThis way!” she yelled. “Come on!”
    Before he could answer, a hail of bullets rang out from the woods, whizzing over his head.
    Dreamland
1434
    A NNIE K LONDIKE BENT OVER Z EN AS HE FINISHED HIS checks. He was sitting on a folding metal stool, which had been pressed into service as a kind of launching pad so he didn’t have to start by sitting on the ground. His wheelchair was unsuitable, and the standard suits were always used standing up.
    â€œNow listen, Jeff, no kidding,” said Annie in her sternest voice. “We’ve done a lot today. If you’re the least bit tired—”
    â€œI’m fine,” he told her, pulling on his Whiplash smart helmet, equipped with full communications gear and a video display in the visor. He reached back near his ear to the small set of controls embedded in the base, activating the integral communications set.
    Danny Freah was standing a few feet away, wearing his own exoskeleton test unit. The Exo3 was fully integrated with a battle suit; its bulletproof armor was twice as thick as the regular units used by the Whiplash troopers, enough to prevent penetration by 35mm cannon rounds, though a round that large was likely to cause considerable internal damage since the suit wasn’t big enough to diffuse all of the shell’s kinetic energy. Some facets of the suit had not yet been implemented; it would eventually be equipped with LED technology to make its wearer invisible in the sky. But otherwise it was very similar to MESSKIT. Danny had taken it for over a dozen flights already.
    â€œHelmet on,” he said.
    Zen could tell he was getting a kick out of playing pilot. “Hat’s on,” he replied.
    â€œGo to ten percent,” Danny told him.
    Zen looked down at his right hand, then pushed the button he was holding with his thumb. The microjet engines in the back of the MESSKIT powered to life. They were relatively quiet, making a sound similar to a vacuum cleaner at about fifty paces.
    Zen slowly twisted the control, moving the engines carefully to five percent total output, then to seven, and finally to ten. As the number 10 flashed in his visor indicator, his wings tugged him gently off the stool.
    â€œYou’re looking good,” said Danny. “Let’s go to seventeen.”
    As he said that, Danny pushed his throttle and held out his arms. He rose abruptly. Zen tried the same thing, but without Danny’s experience, he started moving backward rather than up. He pitched both hands down, as he’d practiced in the gym. This brought him forward abruptly, but he was able to back off into a hover without too much difficulty.
    The designers had worked hard to make the unit and its controls as intuitive as possible, but the feel of flying still took some getting used to. Zen slipped his power up two degrees and found that pushing his head forward helped him stay in place as he rose.
    His helmet’s visor projected an altitude reading in the lower right corner, showing that he was 4.112 meters off the ground.
    â€œHow’s it feel?” asked Danny.
    â€œLike I’m on an amusement park ride.”
    Danny laughed.
    The sensation also reminded Zen of the zero gravity exercises he’d gone through early in the Flighthawk program, when the developers were trying to get a handle on how difficult it would be for someone in a plane maneuvering at high speed to control the Flighthawks. He didn’t feel exactly weightless, but the exoskeleton relieved what would have felt like a great deal of pressure on his shoulder muscles. He thought about