The Armor

I do like rules of war.

Colonies spin to provide apparent gravity. people sometimes put forth designs for flat colonies using gravitics, but you don't build civilizations on a technology with a 1,000 year MTBF. One consequence
of being inside a centrifuge is that your weight will vary with your motion. At normal velocities it is barely noticeable, but if you travel spinward you will have a higher speed relative to the Colony's center, and will be press more firmly against the outer wall/floor of the colony. Likewise traveling antispinward lowers your speed and the centrifugal force.

If you travel quickly enough antispinward, you are no longer spinning with the colony, and you will float in the air with the colony floor rushing beneath you until the moving air gives you spinward velocity, or until your antispinward velocity carries you to some distant part of the floor.

It is the latter situation I found myself in during the recent battle at Colony. My armor's reactor got hit and ruptured, I landed in a cornfield seventeen kilometers away.

I righted myself enough to land my armor on its feet. The right arm was in total failure, only one of the backup cells was online, and reactive defenses were only at 14% of capacity.

"Team 93, widget 6 is out."

I pondered getting back to one of our entry points. The suit would probably make it if nothing else failed. Realistically it would have been easier to walk myself. I'd attract less attention and I'd at least have easy access to my sidearm if I needed it.

I was about to open the cockpit when a shiny blue suit landed next to me. "You are my prisoner." It said. I had no usable weapons. I lunged at the other armor, trying to wedge some part of my armor into it's joints. The other easily pried me off, it was operating at full capacity.

I my armor jolted. He shot me. The reactive defenses had completely drained, and I wouldn't take another hit in this armor for four minutes. Even assuming the defensive matrix hadn't shattered in the hit.

"Surrender, robot."

Oh. Ok then.

I set my armor to lunge at his again, but this time I ejected. I took my gun in one hand and my knife in the other. This was going to be very hard. My armor continued to grapple, and I landed on the both of them. I fired straight down through his cockpit. That got his attention. He brought up his left arm to swat at me. That gave my armor just enough leverage to topple over the whole mess. I fell between them both and landed my armor and his cockpit. I fired where I guessed his head would be. He tried to crush me with his right arm, and my armor pushed back, and that did crush me. Just my torso. I wedged my knife into his shoulder joint, and when he fought back again there was an awful grinding noise.
I worried he might breach the limits of the knife, but no, it was probably near the limits of the armor. He wouldn't risk that.
The armor jostled again and there was very uncomfortable and slightly frightening pressure on my head, so I fired for a long time into where I thought his ears would be. He fought some more which relived the pressure on my head until my armor landed on me again, but I kept on firing until I stopped.

"Don't make this messy. I can keep doing this."
The cockpit opened.
"I surrender."

I called off my armor and ordered him out. I climbed into his armor. The interface was locked down pretty tight, so I called into Ascendancy Intelligence. They gave me a very long access code to punch in. The hatch closed and I stood up. Everything was haptic. Intuitive, but not what I was used to. After a few moments I figured out how to turn on the loudspeaker.

"You are my prisoner by section 44a of the War Treaty. You will report to the Ascendancy Prisoner Camp 23 kilometers to the north." I said, pointing, "Do you Consent?"
"Yes"
"Very well. Good day." I took off in his armor.

"Team 93, widget 6 is in, off color."

It was glorious, I couldn't close my jaw, and something was horribly horribly wrong with my left leg.