Free MERCS: Crimson Worlds Successors by Jay Allan Page A

General.”
    The AI’s voice was calm, almost human-sounding, but not quite.  He had a passing memory of Hector, his father’s AI.  Hector had accompanied the elder Cain during most of his career.  Darius could remember his father’s stories, liberally laced with complaints about the poor attitude the AI had developed.  It had all been part of a program implemented by the Corps, an elaborate experiment with enhanced personality AIs designed to adapt to their individual officers to lower stress and improve interaction.  Darius didn’t know if it had been a success, but he suspected it had been, at least to a greater extent than his father had ever admitted.  Erik complained about Hector, but he’d also brought the AI with him when he retired, and he spent the next fifteen years sparring with it about one thing or another, as the computer presence went about the mundane tasks of running the Cain household.
    “Very well, begin power up sequence.”  Darius’ AI had substantially less personality than Hector.  When he’d had the Mark VIII units put into production, he hadn’t worried about esoteric details like customized AIs.  His suits’ systems served their purposes and did their jobs, without excess banter with their wearers.
    Cain backed into the suit, pushing himself upwards and into place.  “Close,” he said, and he prepared himself for the inevitable pain as the suit shut and a series of probes and intravenous connections jabbed into him.  The Mark VIII suits were the ultimate union between man and machine, but the interface that made all that possible was not a gentle one.
    “All systems activated.  Neural interface established and functioning.”
    No shit, it’s established.   The neural connection was the worst part of suiting up—a thick probe that drove into the top of the spinal column.  It was something new in the Mark VIII armor, an innovation that no one but the Eagles had, at least to the best of Cain’s knowledge.  It allowed direct communication between the wearer’s thoughts and the artificial intelligence controlling the armor.  It came close to allowing an Eagle trooper to control the mechanicals of his suit the way he moved an arm or a leg—or took a deep breath.  But it hurt like a motherfucker going in.
    “Let’s go,” he snapped to the AI.  An instant later he felt the suit moving down the track toward the launch tubes.  Landing was one area where the Mark VIII suits were a step ahead of the Mark VII’s his father and the Marines had worn.  The “eights” as they were called, were capable of individual orbital insertion, while the Mark VII’s had been designed for use with landing craft.
    Darius could feel himself moving down the launch prep track.  He knew the procedure so well, he could imagine every step of it as he stood silently inside his suit.  First, the disposable thrust pack would be bolted to one of his armor’s multi-use hardpoints.  Then, the three braking parachute modules would be attached, after which he would be encased in a thin metal launch pod.  The cocoon would then be force-filled with expanding, heat-resistant foam before he was placed in the electro-magnetic launch tube.
    A Black Eagle ready for launch was almost like a bullet in a gun, ready to be blasted out of the ship into the upper atmosphere of the target world.  It was a streamlined system, requiring far less tonnage of support materials than the old Gordon and Liggett landers the Marines had used.  It allowed Cain to carry almost twice as many soldiers per ton on his transports, a huge advantage in the leaner times that had come upon mankind.
    He felt the pod moving to a horizontal position as it fed into the catapult.  He was not only in the first wave, he was in the initial group of that wave.  He knew his people were going to have a tough fight on their hands on Lysandria.  There was nothing he could do about that.  But he could damned sure be on the front lines