Convergence - Chapter 2: Maven's Target Practice

"Is it heavy?"

"Not particularly," Jayson said, moving his arms to test the way the armor moved. It glided with his motions, smooth as a second skin—nothing like the few hundred pounds of body armor it actually was. The inner lining was cool against his forearms, slick and frictionless.

"It looks heavy."

Jayson shrugged. "It's actually quite comfortable."

"You'll need to put the helmet on before the environment seals are in place and climate controls click on," Alexander Robertson explained, standing off to the side.

He was an old man with a flowing white beard and wrinkles. He walked with a cane, but experience had taught Jayson it was mostly for show and defense; the old man could certainly wield it. Alexander had been the Academy's chief engineer for longer than Jayson had been alive—one of the few people Maven trusted enough to involve in the inner circle, and one of the fewer still who spoke to her as a colleague rather than a subordinate.

"Climate controls?" Jayson asked.

Alexander nodded. "The suit will protect you against most elements and is actually quite comfortable. It is nothing compared to the tech we used to put on the Fists, but bringing it down to your size meant we had to drop some of the bulkier items."

He glanced at the other person standing with them: Maven Ophidian, the woman in charge of the Academy. They'd rarely seen her these past two years, and each time, he felt unease settle in his gut like cold water.

She wore a black robe that covered her entire body and dragged around an oxygen tank—the thing hissed and sucked with every breath she drew, a wet mechanical rhythm that made his skin prickle. A mask covered her face. The only visible part of her were her eyes, and they never blinked when they settled on him.

He'd heard stories. Everyone at the Academy had—whispered in the barracks after lights-out, traded over meals with the wary reverence people reserved for things they didn't fully understand. That the Ministry had taken her as a child—her and her twin sister, Alyssa—and done things to them that no one would describe in full. That the damage to her lungs was permanent, inflicted during a chemical interrogation when she was fourteen years old. That she had escaped, built a resistance network from nothing, and spent the years since dismantling the institution that had tried to break her. The oxygen tank was evidence that they'd partially succeeded. The Academy was evidence that they hadn't succeeded enough.

Two years they'd been here. Two years of training, combat drills, and tactical simulations—all designed by Maven, administered by Alexander, and building toward something none of them had been told. Jayson, Richard, Tricia, Bret—the four of them pulled from different corners of the rebellion and brought to Alderson with the same vague promise: that they were needed for something important. Maven hadn't elaborated. She didn't elaborate. She gave orders and expected them executed, and the few people who'd questioned her methods had been reassigned so quietly that Jayson only noticed their absence days later.

They stood in a field outside of the Academy on the planet Alderson, one of the Union's remote training worlds, on one of the nicest days of the season. The air smelled of frozen grass thawing under pale sunlight, and a breeze caught the back of his neck, carrying the metallic bite of Alderson's mountain air. He shivered, though not entirely from the cold. Winter was close, and they'd learned from experience how devastatingly cold it could get.

The testing range occupied a natural clearing between two ridgelines, the ground beaten flat by years of drills and weapons tests. Beyond the ridgelines, Alderson stretched toward a horizon of grey-blue mountains streaked with early snow. A folding table had been set up near the tree line with an array of firearms laid out in careful rows—pistols, rifles, something with a barrel thick enough to make Jayson's stomach tighten. Alexander had assured them the heavier ordnance was for reference purposes only. Jayson didn't find that reassuring.

"When do I get a suit?" Richard asked. He was big and burly with an infectious laugh. He shaved more often now—something Tricia demanded—but without his beard, his head looked too small for his body.

"This is a prototype," Alexander said. "We're testing how well the components work. It won't be ready for production for at least ten more years."

"So not anytime soon?"

"No."

"Drat."

"What else does it do?" Jayson asked, rotating his torso. The smoothness startled him—each joint rolled like oiled silk, the hydraulics carrying his weight so he moved as though lighter than without it. He bent at the knees, twisted, raised both arms overhead. The suit anticipated every movement a fraction before he completed it, the servos adjusting pressure and angle with an intelligence that felt almost organic.

"The hydraulic assists are modeled on Fist servomechanics," Alexander said, watching Jayson move with the keen attention of a man observing his life's work in motion. "Scaled down, of course. A full Fist suit could punch through a bulkhead. This will let you move faster, carry more weight, and survive impacts that would kill an ordinary soldier. We're also testing a few targeting systems."

"And the cloaking," Maven chimed in, her voice raspy and deep.

Discomfort flashed across Alexander's face. "We were forced to abandon the cloaking. It is included in this prototype, but the energy expenditure is far too great. The cells overheat almost immediately—it was never practical."

She stared at him. The only sound was the tank helping her breathe. "Show me."

The words weren't a request. They never were, with Maven. Jayson had noticed that about her—the way she issued directives without raising her voice, without inflection, as though the idea that someone might refuse simply hadn't occurred to her. Not arrogance, exactly. Something colder. The absolute certainty of a person who had calculated every outcome before speaking and eliminated the ones that didn't serve her.

Alexander nodded. "Put the helmet on. It won't work unless you are sealed."

Jayson slid the helmet over his head. As soon as it locked, a whooshing sound filled the helmet as air was expelled. The smell shifted from Alderson's cold air to filtered recycled oxygen—sterile and faintly plastic, like the inside of a new ship. The visor overlaid his vision with a faint blue grid—targeting markers, a compass heading, his heart rate pulsing in the corner like a quiet metronome.

A voice spoke inside the helmet: dry, bored, that of an old and tired-sounding man. "All systems are functional. Awaiting commands."

"What was that?"

"Your onboard intelligence system. On your right palm, you'll find an indentation. Flick your thumb across it."

Jayson ran his fingers along the palm, finding the indentation. He pressed his thumb into it. Nothing happened.

"It is a practiced motion. You must do it quickly."

He swiped a few times. Finally, on a quick flick, a humming sound vibrated through the suit. The vibration started in his fingertips and radiated up through his forearm, settling into a low thrum behind his sternum that he could feel more than hear. Otherwise, nothing changed—from inside, the world looked exactly the same.

"Did it work?"

Richard's face showed shock. "It worked. You disappeared."

"What do you mean?"

"There was an outline of you, sort of, but I could see right through you." Richard circled him slowly, head cocked, one hand extended as if testing whether Jayson was still solid. His fingers brushed the armor's shoulder plate and he flinched. "That is deeply unsettling. I can feel you but I can't see you."

"It uses light absorption and image distortion," Alexander explained. "There are limitations to how we see things, and this suit takes advantage of it. Works only minimally against technology but well against people."

"That is freaking awesome," Richard said. "I want one."

"The power drain makes it useless in the field. We can't increase the capacitor without risking an errant shot causing the suit to explode." Alexander shook his head. "A dead end, unfortunately."

Maven studied Jayson and nodded. "Very well. Strip it from future prototypes entirely. What about the armor itself? Is it sturdy?"

"We have tested it in contained environments and it is rated up to—"

Maven walked to a nearby table, picked up a pistol, turned, and fired at Jayson.

The shot cracked through the field like a thunderclap. The impact slammed into his chest—not pain exactly, more like being kicked by something enormous—and he staggered back, ears ringing. No real damage—the armor absorbed most of it. But what if it hadn't?

"You shot me?" He glanced down at the torn armor. The surface shifted and molded where the bullet impacted, warm under his fingertips as it knit itself together. "What the hell is that?"

"The armor is self-repairing," Alexander explained, eyeing Maven warily. "It will continue trying to repair damage to a certain point, though occasionally raw materials will be necessary. As I was saying, the armor is bulletproof up to a certain rating, but we haven't tested anything—"

Alexander's voice had gone thin—the forced calm of a man who'd just watched someone shoot his prototype's occupant without warning. His knuckles whitened on the cane, and his eyes tracked Maven with the careful attention of a person standing near something unpredictable.

Maven ignored him. She turned back to the table and picked up a rifle. Jayson's eyes went wide and he started backing up. She turned, aimed, and fired before he could take more than a few steps.

This time, the armor didn't absorb all of the impact. He was thrown back a few meters. He landed hard and the air left his lungs in a single, brutal rush, like something had reached inside his chest and squeezed.

He lay there, staring up at the pale sky. The clouds were thin and white and impossibly far away—the washed-out blue that Alderson wore in late autumn, a thin, fragile color that looked as if it might tear apart if you stared at it too long. Every breath scraped like swallowing gravel. Richard appeared above him, shouting something with a concerned expression, but his own heartbeat hammered through his skull, drowning everything else.

The suit's intelligence spoke in his ear, clinical and unhurried: "Structural integrity at sixty-two percent. Repair sequence initiated. Recommend immediate medical attention for the wearer." He almost laughed. Even the machine recognized the absurdity—repairing itself while its operator bled inside it.

After a few minutes, the cold grass prickling against the back of his neck through the suit's joints, his breathing steadied and the world sharpened back into focus. Richard helped him sit.

"You all right?"

He shook his head. "No." His chest was in agony, and he was bleeding. The pain had a texture—sharp at the center, radiating outward in dull waves.

Richard plucked the shell out of his chest. "Didn't really make it through. Another centimeter, though..."

The shell was the size of Jayson's fist, flattened against the armor.

They all turned and looked at Maven, still holding the rifle. She set it back on the table.

"It works," she said, nodding at Alexander. "Let me know when we can make more."

She turned and strode off toward the Academy without another word. Her gait was rigid, purposeful—no hesitation, no backward glance. The oxygen tank rattled against her hip with each step, the sound receding across the frozen field until it was just another noise the wind carried away. Whatever she'd wanted to prove, she'd proven it.

She left. Jayson's chest still throbbed. He wanted to be furious. But the armor had held against a rifle round at close range, and some cold, practical part of him understood the logic: wherever Maven was sending them next, it would be worse than this.

***

"She's crazy," Richard said once she was gone.

"Maybe," Alexander agreed, weary. "But in my experience, most people with her power usually are. And if they aren't, they become that way."

"That hurt like hell," Jayson said, trying to stand. They helped him up. "When you asked if I wanted to test new armor..."

"When she brought guns, I assumed they were for you to shoot to see the armor in action. I would have preferred that test on the empty suit."

They spent the next few minutes stripping the armor off and checking his chest. The suit came off in segments—chest plate first, then the arm guards, then the leg pieces that detached with soft clicks. Each piece was surprisingly light once removed, as if the suit's intelligence had been carrying some of its own weight while worn. Alexander collected the components on a hovercart, handling each one with the care of a man who saw not metal but years of work. The self-repair had already closed the rifle's entry wound in the chest plate, the surface smooth and warm where minutes ago it had been torn open.

He had a huge welt at the bottom of his ribs—probably a couple cracked. But all in all, not terrible. He'd be fine in a couple of weeks.

"Do I get to keep the armor?"

Alexander smiled sadly. "Not yet. We still need to work out some kinks before it is field ready."

"Damn. Any word on when we're being sent out?"

"Nothing. But don't worry, I'm sure Maven has something large in store for you."

He nodded at them both and headed back to the Academy.

Jayson glanced at Richard. An equally worried expression stared back at him.

But beneath the worry, something steadier held. The chemical tang of the evacuation ships came back to him—it always did, at moments like this. The press of too many bodies in too small a hold. His mother's hand gripping his so tight the bones ground together. The view through the porthole as their homeworld shrank: fires in the agricultural districts, Republic cruisers hanging overhead like carrion birds waiting for the corpse to stop twitching.

His chest throbbed where the rifle round had hit. He pressed his palm against the bruise and heat pulsed through his shirt, the armor's ghost still wrapped around his ribs. Maven had shot him. Had looked at him—not at him, through him, the way she looked at everything, measuring its usefulness—and pulled the trigger without hesitation. And then she'd walked away.

His father would never walk away. His father was still out there, fighting a war he couldn't win with the tools he'd been given, because the Republic had made sure no one could win against them. Not with principles. Not with courage. Not with anything short of the kind of ruthless, terrifying calculation that could shoot a man in the chest just to prove the armor held.

Jayson rubbed the bruise again, pressing harder. The pain sharpened and clarified, and he didn't flinch.

"Maven having something planned for us is what worries me."