Larry Denton sat down, pulled out his personal Thorlinthian data processing unit in his hotel room, and sighed. “Alright,” he said, pulling out the small data drive Terira had delivered the previous day. “Let’s see what you’ve got for me.” What he found baffled him completely.
There was nothing on the drive. In fact, he found upon further inspection, there wasn’t even any empty space on the drive. It was completely blank, yet it was completely full. Thinking on it, Larry decided it must be using an encryption protocol of some sort that his DPU wasn’t equipped to handle. He turned off the device.
Immediately after the device had completely powered off and just before Larry was going to remove the data drive, the screen lit up with a dim, red message in Thorlinthian. Njota di drigarmr frodlikr. The message translated to a simple “for use in Drigarmr processors.” Confused, Larry removed the data drive. The screen turned off.
He walked to the bathroom and locked the door. Moving across the small room, he lifted the secret lever on the back of the toilet. The wall in front of him opened to a small hatch, which he entered, climbing onto the ladder inside the secret compartment. He worked his way down two floors, where he found a small room with a lift in it. He took the lift all the way down to the drainage system under the hotel, where a small pulse car was hiding behind a fake wall.
Larry slid open the fake wall and opened the trunk of the pulse car. There, he had a set of Peacekeeper armor for public affairs as the Lieutenant and a metal lockbox roughly the size of a suitcase. Larry pulled a small chain out from under his shirt, his dogtags from an age now past dangling from the chain beside a small key, which he used to open the lockbox.
There, awaiting any need for emergency missions, was a full set of Thorlinthian Drigarmr that had been pulled from a Dragon 52F’s cargo shelf during the destruction of the TAS Fhit. Larry pulled it out and truly inspected it for the first time.
The Drigarmr was not entirely different from other Thorlinthian battle armors, except that it was composed of the most effective armoring material available, commonly known as Drigarmr. Technically, the official name for the outfit was the Dragon Rider Battle-Ready Dress Uniform, but it was known fairly universally by the armoring material’s name instead because its actual name just took too long to say.
Of the few features that did distinguish Drigarmr from other Thorlinthian armors, the most apparent was the kilt and sash, which were commonly only found on Armadian formal wear. However, since Dragon Riders were always expected to be ready for battle situations, they wore the armor all day, every day, meaning they wore it to formal occasions, too. The kilt and sash gave the armor a much more dignified look.
Another distinguishing feature was the unique structure of the helmet. It was capable of being completely opened and retracting entirely into its bottom rings, which sealed the neck guards for vacuum. When removed or disabled, the helmet had the appearance of a simple, if very thick and heavy, collar. When fully enabled, the helmet closed around the wearer, displaying the usual HUD in addition to a fully functioning, specialized DPU interface built into the armor.
The DPU itself was contained between the life support system and the cargo unit on the backplate of the armor. It was completely sealed off and connected to the suit’s main power supply, a small fusion reactor that was centered inside the life support unit. Its interfaces were in the side of the torso, immediately beside the area where the floating rib sits. In order to use the DPU, Larry would have to put on the armor.
Whilst donning the armor, Larry realized multiple times that he had performed a step in the wrong order and had to remove everything, starting over again. After several failed attempts spanning almost an hour’s time, he found that the correct order was skinarmr, a gel-like, skintight undergarment that covered the whole body; then backplate, which had thick slings that went over the shoulders; then legs, which locked into the backplate in their top; then arm sleeves, which locked in using a clockwise motion to bring the shoulder guards over the actual shoulder; then torso, which locked first into the top of the legpiece, then slid into a lock under the shoulder guards; then belt, which was rather self-explanatory but ended up being much more difficult than Larry had expected since the belt was designed not to have any excess length and instead expanded to fit any waist and locked into a series of slots between the backplate/torso portion and the legs portion of the armor, forming a tight seal but requiring about the strength needed to fully draw an English longbow; then the boots, which had shinguards that twisted into place and locked onto the legs; and finally, the helmet collar, which just came down over the head and twisted into place. The kilt and sash, themselves, were actually integrated into the leg and torso portions of the armor and didn’t require themselves to be put on seperately.
Once he had the armor on completely, Larry slowly raised his wrist into view and activated the power. Immediately, Larry recognized the benefit of the skinarmr, which cooled almost instantly to an ideal ambient temperature based on synaptic responses the armor detected through a constant scan of Larry’s
brain stem. The armor itself, which weighed somewhere around two hundred fifty pounds altogether, began to act as a supportive exoskeleton, the integrated artificial muscles adding to Larry’s own strength instead of having the armor’s weight detract from it.
After getting used to the feel of the armor, Larry activated the helmet. He was amazed at the additional information provided by the suit’s DPU. It was constantly processing all sorts of inputs Larry would never have thought of and making them available onscreen. With a flick of his eye, Larry could summon up an atmospheric analysis program, which utilized samples that the wearer had to obtain and place into a port in the gauntlet’s wrist. With another flick, he could enhance any of his senses or block another one out. The suit was even capable of transferring minor haptic input to the wearer’s skin, though this was heavily monitored to ensure no painful sensations were pointlessly transferred to the wearer.
Once he had grown fully accustomed to wearing the armor and using the DPU, Larry pulled out the data drive, which he had been keeping in the pocket of his pants in the pulse-car’s trunk. With a flick of the eye, he opened the small hatch on the side of his armor that exposed the DPU interface ports. There, he inserted the data drive. Again, however, nothing happened. The DPU recognized that it was a data drive but showed no data and no empty space. Then, remembering what had happened up in his room, Larry set the DPU to reset.
When the DPU was powering off, the HUD was momentarily set to the same that Larry was accustomed to seeing in his Peacekeeper armor, which must have simply been what the helmet processed on its own. Then, when the power came back on, the entire interface changed. Displays disappeared and were replaced with simple icons. Every piece of electrical equipment in view seemed to light up, along with every weapon and every tool. Entire paragraphs of programming code were streaming by in a small window at the top right of the HUD.
Then, suddenly, the window disappeared, and the lights dimmed. Larry’s view cycled through a series of extra-visible spectrum scans before returning to the standard visible, with ranges, temperatures, power levels, and ammunition counts beside every relevant item in view and a few slightly out of view. Just as Larry started to comprehend what he thought was happening, he was proven wrong as he heard, “Greetings. I am Sjau. My dark drive appears to have been utilized as a support unit in wearable armor. Please verify.” Larry’s jaw dropped silently before his mouth formed an understanding grin. This was a very good day.