Free The Valhalla Call (Warrior's Wings) by Evan Currie

their books if the pricey toys they paid for actually got used, otherwise why were they purchased in the first place?
    That said, she didn’t much like the idea of the desk work she’d have to fill out if she dropped the damned thing and stomped on it.
    “Most of the rest are updates on items you’ll be familiar with,” Graves said. “However, over this way you’ll see that we’ve saved the best for last.”
    He led her over to a familiar, yet distinctly different, shape. She smiled slowly and walked around the item, taking it in from all sides.
    “I like.”
    “I suspected that you would.”
    Graves watched impassively as Sorilla walked around the new issue operator class armor, designed to replace her previous kit with something that had a little more kick to it. The new suit had an angled face plate, replacing the flat black slate of the original OPCOM suit, giving the impression of a knight in matte black armor. Sorilla reached up and broke the magnetic seal, opening the armor up, then glanced back.
    “May I, sir?”
    “This is your suit, Lieutenant. Feel free to get acquainted.”
    Sorilla nodded, reaching in and running her hand along the inside of the armor. “I don’t see gel dispensers.”
    “The gel is in a porous membrane, still there and you get the benefits, but no more mess when you get out.” Graves shrugged. “Unless you get yourself shot up.”
    Sorilla smirked crookedly. “Pity. It was always fun to watch men squirm when I wiped it off.”
    Graves, probably wisely, refrained from commenting. There were some subjects that were, if not taboo, then at least risky for a man to enter into, even if he was a general. Along those same lines, he had to steel himself to keep from turning aside as she methodically stripped down. He refused to look away from her when he wouldn’t even consider looking away from one of the men under his command, but the lieutenant did make it…difficult.
    She was perhaps not a beautiful woman, but she was certainly striking and very attractive in her own way. Her skin was pulled tight over ropes of thickly twisted muscles that moved and rippled with every motion she made. She wasn’t muscular on the order of a body builder, but there was probably an unhealthy lack of fat on her body.
    Sorilla paid him little mind as she climbed into the armor.
    It wasn’t difficult to suit up, but it did present its own challenges. From the knees down was closed, and she had to squeeze her feet down into the pointed toes of the armor, squirming slightly as the cool gel-filled material compressed around her to fit as snugly as possible.
    The arms were the same, leaving her hanging in the suit like she’d been crucified. Sorilla lay her head back into the helmet, making contact with the NFC receiver at the base of the neck. She nudged the suit awake and waited for the boot sequence to complete before the suit was ready to activate. After that, it just took a thought to close it around her.
    The upper legs and arms went first, sealing easily. The chest was a one-piece slab that closed from right to left, and then the helmet slid shut over her face. For a moment she hung there in darkness, her implants syncing with the armor, and then the HUDS came online.
    “New interface,” she said, noting instantly by the hollow echo that the com wasn’t on yet. She nudged the armor mentally and instantly the noise cancellation activated along with her mic, so she repeated herself, “New interface, same command line though.”
    “There are a few new commands in the command line, I believe you’ll find,” Graves said. “But yes, the software has been updated.”
    She nudged the help menu while the General was speaking, spotting the new commands in the list that followed.
    Nothing spectacular here…no, wait, what’s this?
    “Active camouflage, sir?”
    “This suit is invisible to most wavelengths used for detection on Earth,” he said. “Microwaves, radio waves, infrared, a few others.