Gravity Well

[Unseelie]

A reactor and heatsink sat on its back like a large beetle with its wings open, the wings gleaming semicircles of reflective black, heat shimmer spreading behind them. They were, like much of the rest of her, coated in layers of ablative plating, laserdamp, and heatdispensing weaves, for a coherent protection against ballistic, plasma, and light weaponry. its helm continued the beetle motif, with large black eye domes bugging out from her face, and its breather and airtubes covered by stylized duralloy mandibles.

The suit itself contrasted sharply from the beetle head and back, accentuating the female form in swoops and curves, packing motors and extensors, pressure equipment into regions rather than spreading them out, giving the appearance of an eight foot tall, beetle headed goddess, accentuating a wide bust and waspishly hourglass waist, hiding all the legs but the soles of heavy combat boots behind the veil of a tight armour skirt...just loose enough for the battlesuit to jog in. For any real speed, it would use jetboosters.

Its weapon was half shotgun, half sword, smoothed to a razor's edge inches above and below the barrel, gleaming from the same heatshimmer as the wings. It was belt-feed at the base, from a looped chain of what looked like pearls.

Behind the helm, the battle was slow, as processes were sped up by the suit, the mind bathed in amphetamines and nutrients, vision overlayed with maps, layouts, gun descriptions...The world was green, vectors and directions, the computer laying out the clearest path, a thick green line which bounced in places, curved...was written with meanings fed to the brain by senses other than vision. The body knew it would jump there, tumble here. That a curl was required, that next, its arms would swing out, its back curved toward the floor, its palms touch, its gun reach just so, squeeze...and then there was gore, all around it..

A man lay on the ground, dead, with a handprint through his chest. Another, his entire head blackened like a burnt roast, three more with limbs flayed to the bone...plasma burns cratered the deck in long streaks, and behind it, there was a roar.

The suit had only just stepped out of the landing craft. The fight had been three point four two seconds long, and the alaurms hadn't yet gone off. The LNS-Overlord was boarded, and the bears roared again as their cables came loose, and they charged out into the bay, gleaming with nerve toxin alerts in the suit's vision.

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