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How far down was the testing facility? John and the other Spartans had been confined to a freightelevator for fifteen minutes, and the entire time it had been rapidly descending into the depths of ChiCeti 4.
The last place John wanted to be was in another confined space.
The doors finally slid open, and they emerged in what appeared to be a well-lit hangar. The far end hadan obstacle course set up with walls, trenches, dummy targets, and barbed wire.
Three technicians and at least a dozen AI figures were busy in the center of the room. John had seen AIsbefore—one at a time. Déjà had once told the Spartans that there were technical reasons why AIscouldn’t be in the same place at the same time, but here were many ghostly figures: a mermaid, asamurai warrior, and one made entirely of bright light with comets trailing in her wake.
Dr. Halsey cleared her throat. The technicians turned—the AIs vanished.
John had been so focused on the holograms that he hadn’t noticed the forty Plexiglas mannequins set upin rows. On each was a suit of armor.
The armor reminded John of the exoskeletons he had seen during training, but much less bulky, morecompact. He stepped closer to one and saw that the suit actually had many layers; the outer layerreflected the overhead lights with a faint green-gold iridescence. It covered the groin, outer thighs,knees, shins, chest, shoulders, and forearms. There was a helmet and an integrated power pack—muchsmaller than standard Marine “battery sacks.” Underneath were intermeshed layers of matte-black metal.
“Project MJOLNIR,” Dr. Halsey said. She snapped her fingers and an exploded holographic schematicof the armor appeared next to her.
“The armor’s shell is a multilayer alloy of remarkable strength. We recently added a refractive coating todisperse incoming energy weapon attacks—to counter our new enemies.” She pointed inside theschematic. “Each battlesuit also has a gel-filled layer to regulate temperature; this layer can reactivelychange in density. Against the skin of the operator, there is a moisture-absorbing cloth suit, andbiomonitors that constantly adjust the suit’s temperature and fit. There’s also an onboard computer that
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interfaces with your standard-issue neural implant.”
She gestured and the schematic collapsed so that it only displayed the outer layers. As the imagechanged, John glimpsed veinlike microcapillaries, a dense sandwich of optical crystal, a circulatingpump, even what looked like a miniature fusion cell in the backpack.
“Most importantly,” Dr. Halsey said, “the armor’s inner structure is composed of a new reactive metalliquid crystal. It is amorphous, yet fractally scales and amplifies force. In simplified terms, the armordoubles the wearer’s strength, and enhances the reaction speed of a normal human by a factor of five.”
She waved her hand through the hologram. “There is one problem, however. This system is so reactivethat our previous tests with unaugmented volunteers ended in—” She searched for right word. “—failure.” She nodded to one of the technicians.