Really looking forward to this one!

I’ll have a link for this one in the next couple of days.

Here’s a quick snippet:

A thousand robotic pollinators buzzed around inside Vinny’s head as his eyes flickered open.  His helmet readout blinked too-bright green text in front of his eyes.  Warning alarms slowly became audible as the buzzing died down to background noise.

ATTENTION! 

ATTENTION!

SYSTEM FAILURE DETECTED!

SYSTEM FAILURE DETECTED!

SUIT INTEGRITY: 65%

COMMUNICATIONS:  OFFLINE

EXTERNAL SENSORS:  OFFLINE

NEURO-MECHANICAL:  OFFLINE

BATTERY: 20%

LIFE SUPPORT: 25%

DEPLOY EMERGENCY BEACON? 

NO RESPONSE IN 300 SECONDS

DEPLOY EMERGENCY BEACON?

NO RESPONSE IN 300 SECONDS

AUTO DEPLOY EMERGENCY BEACON IN 3….2….1….0

EMERGENCY BEACON:  OFFLINE

AWAIT INPUT

NO RESPONSE IN 300 SECONDS

AWAIT INPUT

NO RESPONSE IN 300 SECONDS

AWAIT INPUT

Vinny tried to move his extremities, but none of the joints in his suit responded.  He was able to feel his right toes and all his fingers wiggle against their padding, so at least he knew something still worked. His left leg was devoid of all feeling.

“Crap,” he mumbled.  A futile attempt to shake his head and clear away some of the cobwebs showed that the joints in his neck armor were just as immobile as those in his arms and legs. 

“Moira,” he croaked through a too-dry throat, “system diagnostic.”  Perhaps he could find the fault and correct it.

“Voice input received,” a pleasant female voice responded.  “Biometric identification not functional.  Please state name, rank, designation, and passcode to enter diagnostic mode.”  At least his suit’s AI still worked.

It took him a moment to remember his passcode.  It was one of those pieces of information only used in emergencies, so it was rarely used.  He tongued the water tube between his lips, bit down to open the valve, and sucked down a couple mouthfuls of cold water to clear the taste of copper from his mouth.

“Vincent Allan Renfield, Corporal, V369K,  FLAMING MONKEYS”  That last came out as almost a battle cry.

“Input received.  Remote authentication not possible at this time. Using cached authentication data.”

Vinny’s  head swam for a moment as the text in front of his eyes started to scroll faster than he could read.  The speakers built into his helmet popped and whined as their circuits and code were checked. This just made the buzzing in his head even louder.

“Diagnostic mode will require a full system reboot.  OK to proceed?” Moira asked.  The same message popped up in the center of his vision and flashed at him in red.

“OK,” Vinny replied.  “Just do it.” 

Moira’s voice did not return, but the helmet output started scrolling again. 

Vinny felt another wave of vertigo break against his brain.  The red characters racing in front of his nose faded, but looked all right after he blinked a couple of times.  What had been dizziness started to bloom into a sharp, throbbing headache.

“Come on, come on,” Vinny growled.  “Let’s go, already.” 

The screen in front of him went black.  The background hiss of the speakers disappeared as well. Vinny was left with no sensory inputs except for the buzzing in his head.  An involuntary fear of being buried alive threatened to overwhelm his self control. 

“Easy,” he muttered.  “It’ll come back in a minute.”

Except it did not.  Vinny waited for what felt like a long time before he started feeling panic welling up.  He counted a hundred throbs of his headache, which was getting worse by the second, and still his suit was dead.

“MOIRA?” he shouted into the blackness.  “EMERGENCY!  RESPOND!”

The pitch black helmet interior gave no response.

Vinny could hear his heartbeat hammering away now, and the sound of his breath was the roar of an ocean against the beach.  He struggled to move his arms and head, but got nowhere.  Just as the pounding in his head reached a crescendo, even that disappeared. 

Corporal Vincent Renfield lost consciousness, slipping into a nothingness that was only different from his conscious reality by a matter of degree. Unconsciousness was only marginally better than complete isolation, but at least the headache was gone.