That said, she put the ball of her thumb against his left eyelid and pressed down hard on the hidden eyeball. Gabhart’s legs jerked, and his arms thrashed. His head came up from the floor, his mouth open, gasping. The colonel didn’t have the strength to keep his head up. Dean caught the back of it as it dropped, keeping it from hitting the floor.
Mildred leaned right into his face and said, “Colonel, you’ve got to stay awake. You’ve got to answer Ryan’s questions.”
Gabhart’s eyes opened. There was something wrong with them. They seemed to focus in midair. It wasn’t clear if he could still see. “Ryan?” he croaked through cracked, bleeding lips.
The one-eyed man took his hand and squeezed it hard. “I’m here, Colonel. We need to know more about the battlesuits. It’s vital.”
“Okay,” Gabhart said, and his eyelids closed.
“Is it true that the EM shields only deflect things that are made of metal?” Ryan said.
“No. Things have to be subsonic, too. They’ll deflect laser beams, coming at the speed of light.”
“Colonel, we need a weak point. You’ve got to give us something to attack.”
“Power supply,” Gabhart said, grimacing. “The suits use the same kind of nuke fuel as the wags. Without fuel, there’s no EM pulse, no combat arrays, no com link. Without fuel, a battlesuit is just so much light armor. It will stop conventional bullets, particularly where the plates overlap, but they will dent it, and if fire is poured on top of fire, the slugs will eventually penetrate. Unenergized, it will not deflect laser pulses, either. The fuel is highly concentrated and highly radioactive. It has to be shielded from the suit-wearer’s body.”
“How is the fuel stored?” Mildred said.
“Each suit has a fuel reservoir.”
“Where is it?” Ryan said.
Gabhart’s eyelids fluttered shut and his face went slack. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth and down his jawline to his ear.
Mildred gouged him again, pressing her thumb into his eye socket. Again the colonel came violently awake, moaning pitifully at the pain.
“You’ve got to try to stay with us,” Mildred said. “Try to concentrate.” Her face was starting to look drained in the eerie greenish light.
“Where is the fuel reservoir?” Ryan repeated.
“In the crotch of the suit,” the colonel said. “Fuel and shielding are both heavy. For balance they need to be as low to the ground as possible and spread out.”
“What’s the reservoir made of?” Mildred asked.
“The reservoir is a flat, hourglass-shaped bladder sandwiched between sections of armor,” Gabhart said. “The bladder itself is very flexible. It has to be to allow full range of leg and hip movement. Nuke power is transferred through the crystalline structure of the battlesuit. It is has its own inorganic circulatory system.”
“How do we drain the reservoirs?” Ryan said. “Colonel?”
Gabhart was out cold again.
“His breathing is getting worse,” Mildred said. “His lungs are starting to fill with blood.”
“Do it,” Ryan said.
Mildred had tears in her eyes as she awakened the colonel for the third time.
When the man stopped groaning, Ryan repeated his question.
Gabhart seemed to gather himself. His eyes focused on Ryan’s face. “Once the suits are fueled,” he said, clearly but with tremendous effort, “they can’t be touched with energy or lead, or metallic hand weapons. There’s a nipple for draining the used-up fuel and pumping in fresh. If you lift up the edge of the crotch plate the nipple is on, it will move about an eighth of an inch. The gap exposes one end of the bladder.”
“Can they be punctured?” Mildred said.
“They are made of plastisteel but they can be cut with a sharp point, so long as it isn’t metal.”
“Dean, give me your blade,” Ryan said.
The boy pulled his bone knife from his boot.
Ryan showed the colonel the serrated tip of the catfish spine. “Will this cut them?”
“Probably. The fuel is very dangerous, though.”
“Explosive?”
“Not under normal conditions. But it’s toxic. Don’t get any of it on bare skin. If it gets on your clothes, strip them off at once. It is fairly viscous. Drips slow unless it is pumped hydraulically…which is how the reservoir is normally drained and filled.”