Static jumped across the heads-up display as explosion hit. Captain Solomon Mercado gritted his teeth, tightened his grip, and fought the force of the blast. He could hear the power plant kick in to overdrive and feel the shudder of the stabilizers. Something popped, without checking the now glitchy HUD, he was pretty sure it was one of the gyros. Maintaining balance from here on out would be difficult.

He twisted the control stick and refocused himself. There was a slight coppery taste and electric charge rolling across his tongue. He knew the human-machine interface was on the verge of overloading but there was no way he could release the manual controls long enough to readjust anything. Pain had always been part of the job, he just hoped it wouldn't spark this time.

In front of him the smoke began to clear as a rain of blasted rock and dirt skittered across the viewport. A quick visual assessment showed him that he arms of the thirty foot tall war machine he was riding were still intact. The fact that he was still upright spoke well of the status of the legs. Swiveling the body, he turned to face the automated turret that had unleashed the volley of missiles at him. A quick squeeze of the trigger--even with the HUD barely functional--turned it into a smoldering heap of slag as a few hundred incendiary rounds flew from the vehicle's shoulder cannon.

No time to celebrate the small victory, Mercado knew there was still another two bogeys out there that needed to be eliminated before this phase of the vehicle testing was done. He did have time to readjust the neural interface plug and give the HUD a quick whack. The success rate of percussive maintenance never ceased to amaze him. Both RADAR and LIDAR displays lit up, giving him just enough time to initiate evasive maneuvers as the Predator drone flew into range.

The drone's missile struck the ground where Mercado's vehicle had been standing just moments before. The new model was at least four times more agile and responsive than the last prototype. Still no match for the radio controlled drone, but even that had a weakness. a quick flip of a switch and a focused mental command unleashed a burst of electromagnetic noise that disrupted both the drone's connection with it's control station and it's internal navigation systems.

It hit the ground just past where it's payload had detonated. Permanently grounded.

Mercado pushed the vehicle up to near its top speed. He could feel each step as the thirty tons of metal and machinery left six inch deep depressions in the ground with every step. As he moved forward, he swung the torso left and right, visually scanning the terrain for signs of his last opponent. It wasn't that he didn't trust the vehicle's sensors, at least not when they were working, he just trusted his gut more.

His radio crackled to life, "Hey Sol, tag! You're it!" And he felt the vehicle lurch forward as he was struck from behind.

"Dammit Celia, how'd you sneak up on me?"

"Practice, Sol," she said. "And a nice new stealth implementation that lets me skip around your sensor sweeps."

He spotted her about 200 yards away. She was in another prototype, but hers was much more modestly sized, just slightly larger than non-mechanized combat armor. Zooming the view, he saw her toss away a single use anti-tank launcher and dive for cover. He didn't bother wasting his ammo trying to hit her. He had a better idea.

Adjusting his course, he manually calibrated the targeting on two volleys of low-yield missiles. As the proper load rotated into place, he prepped a second spread of 50 caliber bursts from the three secondary guns mounted on the vehicle. Topping a rise in the terrain, he let everything fly.

The missile spread flew true and collapsed the small rock face Celia had hidden behind. As she rabbited, the 50 cal rounds danced around her feet with a good number tagging her armor, knocking her to the ground. The second volley of missiles struck less than 50 feet from her position, tossing her couple hundred pound suit back on the debris pile of her former cover.

With the dust still settling, Mercado's vehicle was on top of her position. He twisted the controls. The machine stopped short and hauled back with one of its arms, driving a punch forward an instant later. There was a loud crunch as it sunk the fingers of that five-foot-wide mechanical hand eighteen inches into the hard ground around Celia's armor.

"Tag," Mercado said with a smile.

"OK, Captain, you got me," Celia replied. "Now help me up and carry me back to base. I think you blew out the hydraulics in this thing."

Three hours later, after disembarking from the vehicle, showering, and spending some time going over the latest data with the engineers, Mecado was more than ready to go home. Trial days were always rough, but with the problems the neural interface was having, they seemed a lot longer due to the constant throbbing headache.

Of course, that wouldn't stop him from making the ten mile drive home in under five minutes. After a day of tromping around, there was a calmness to the thrum of the wheels of the Saleen Raptor as they hugged the road. A regular steering wheel and standard transmission almost felt as archaic as they did comfortable. It gave him a chance to relax.

It was during that five minute jaunt that his phone rang. Mercado slowed slightly as he took the call.

"General Andresson, how can I help you tonight?"

"How quickly can you pack and be back state-side, Captain?"

"That depends, sir, we're not quite done with testing of the Excalibur. Am I being ordered back?"

"The Professor called in a favor. He wants you."

Mercado was silent for a second, the Raptor drifted a little wide in a turn, the sound of tires on softer gravel forcing him to refocus. The speeding car juked a little to the right as he corrected its course, still doing three digit speeds. "I understand, sir. I'll inform the airfield I need priority transport ASAP. Probably won't be able to go wheels up until morning, though. They don't keep standard transports ready to go out here and I doubt we want any of the more... unusual... aircraft crossing into U.S. airspace unannounced."

"Right. Just get back on the continent. I don't even know what he wants you for."

"Yes, sir." The call ended and Mercado stared at the road as it ran beneath his headlights. Andresson may not know what The Professor wanted, but he was pretty sure he knew. He'd seen the news item that morning about the shake up at BI, seen that The Professor was heading up a new division of the company.

The description the news reported sounded innocuous enough, but if Mercado knew Mitchel Bender, there was something more than what most people would ever realize. Bender had always been about the layers and metaphors. So good that just about everyone around him just accepted him as eccentric and brilliant and didn't bother asking many questions. That let him get away with a lot, endeared him to most people he met, and greatly annoyed many of the more rigid commanders and officials he interacted with.

Mercado had never been all that good at not asking questions. That and his willingness to put his life on the line regularly is what put him in contact with Bender for the first time. Ten years ago, he only knew him as The Professor--the outside expert brought in to deal with some particularly confusing data that had been returned by a recon drone doing a flyover of the Sahara.

In the middle of that vast ocean of sand, the thing had found a high intensity magnetic field. A field so strong, it took some fancy flying by the drone operator and a boost to the control signal to get the drone back to base. At first it was suspected that the New Dawn cell had recruited some rogue Bedouins to help them set up shop in that inhospitable territory.

A few hours later, when the satellite was able to scan the area, it became very clear that it wasn't the terrorist group behind the odd magnetics. The initial data returned indicated a large metal object. Any more detailed scans were sidetracked when the satellite suddenly went offline. It would be five more days before contact with it could be reestablished. When it did come back online, everything that should have been stored from that day was wiped clean, as if it had never happened. The brains at mission control were baffled.

Mercado was called in to pilot the experimental, heavily-shielded vehicle that his superiors thought would best be able to deal with the odd electromagnetic fields that were apparently in the area.

The Professor had taught briefly at the college one of the combat engineers attended before enlisting. When the kid suggested Bender to his commanding officer, the name set off all sorts of flags with the intelligence community. Apparently he was well known in certain circles for his love--and ostensibly his understanding--of a goo number of strange phenomena. Over the years, he'd also made the connections to have the clearance to be brought in.

What was supposed to be an eight hour scouting run of the area turned into a two-day long trial by fire for all of Mercado's skills and Bender's brains. Two days that, for everyone outside of his team, never passed and, regardless, officially would never exist. Two days that left two other men dead and one broken, inside and out.

Now The Professor was asking for him specifically and calling in a favor to get him off of the Excalibur project. Mercado wasn't sure he liked that.

Stepping on the gas, he dialed the number for the airfield. As it was ringing, he wondered how Celia was going to feel about being in charge of the rest of the trials. He wondered what he'd tell her if she asked how long he'd be gone.