One hour write 9/1 (Patreon)

"This is a standard Seimens J-113 heavy construction arbiter," the sargent said as he gestured to the video screen.  The J-113 resembled an extremely fat man with stout, stumpy legs that happened to be ten meters tall.  The video showed it almost casually striding up the edge of an impact crater, pushing aside smaller trees as it it were wading through grass.  "So my question to all of you is... how?"

The cadets shared an uncertain look.  "What do you mean, sir?"

"I mean the J-113 is more than two hundred tons of machinery.  How is it moving faster than a crawl?  How does it take two steps without the legs sheering off?  How come it's not sinking up to its hips in the soft earth?" the sargent said, the image changing to an arbiter laying face down in a field, sunk nearly a meter into the soft earth.  "What is it that makes arbiters and kriegers actually possible?"

A half dozen hands went up, including Rin's.  The Sargent pointed at a mousy girl in the row behind Rin.  "Chio?"

"It's the bootstrap drive, sir.  Isn't it?" she asked in a faltering accent.

"Correct."  He walked over to the table and lifted up a pale gray box the side of a shoe box.  "This is a fifty ton bootstrap drive.  What does that mean, Chio?"

The brown haired girl fiddled with her glasses.  "It means that it offsets the gravitational field of fifty metric tons of matter, sir."

"Does that mean that if I turned this on I'd go flying out into space, weighing a negative forty nine tons and then some?" the sargent asked.

"No sir.  It means that your mass would be effectively zero," Chio answered in a quavering voice.

"So I go flying off into space?" he asked, and she balked.  He faced the class.  "The common misperception is that the bootstrap drive negates gravity.  Gravity is a universal force and as such it is not going away any time soon.  What the bootstrap does is displace the mass, creating a tiny distortion in the fabric of space.  So why don't I go flying off into space?"

Rin raised her hand again, and this time the sargent pointed at her.  "Because the Earth is also warping space too."

"Outstanding.  Correct.  We haven't built a bootstrap that is large enough or powerful enough to displace mass completely out of earth's gravity field.  That's why, if you're going to orbit, you need a shuttle, rocket, or use the elevators.  All of these employ outside thrust to lift them out of orbit.  That is why, even if we can displace the mass so it doesn't crush itself flat, you will always hear engineers talk about the mass."

A male cadet lifted a hand.   "What about tanks and stuff?  Why don't we just put a bootstrap in them?  Why a humanoid chassis?"  He got a number of hisses and mutters, and amended with a defensive, "Hey, piloting Kriegers is cool and all but I'm just saying!"

"It's a good question, and despite the effectiveness of Kriegers on the battlefield, you are ten times more likely to encounter a tank or apc than a Krieger.  The reason is this."  He gestured to the screen.  "This is a Mitsubishi Ronin-03VC."  The ronin stood eight meters high, looking for all purposes like a giant in metal armor.  "Now watch."

The crowd gasped as the Ronin went into action.  With the bootstrap drive, it ran with incredible ease down a street in war torn Seoul.  This was combat footage from the Korean reunification ten years ago.  The Ronin's shoulders let out flashes of plasma to stabilize it as it came to an abrupt stop at a bombed out apartment complex.  Reaching up, it gripped the roof and pulled itself up.  The feet kicked holes in the wall as a shoulder mounted gun swung into position.  The gun let out a noise like a wet fart, a cascade of brass dropping from the weapon, and getting a new snickers.

"That's a thirty millimeter chain machine gun.  Not my personal favorite," Sargent DeWolf said, crossing his arms.   The video changed to the ronin shimmying between two sky scrapers, through a gap only three meters wide.  Then it leaned out and let out another long wet fart noise as it sprayed down the street.  "As you can see, a humanoid form has significant advantages in an urban environment.

The footage changed to a forested scene.  Three Ronin's were climbing up a steep mountain side.  They employed hands and legs, as well as a pair of  shoulder mounted grappling hooks for assistance.  Slung behind them was a much longer rifle looking weapon.  The three made it all the way up the steep sixty degree slope to the top, crouching down behind the cover of pines like big game hunters in long grass.  They unslung the rifle and took aim at a highway loaded with military vehicles.  The three began to fire, the guns letting out long booms.  "One hundred and fifty millimeter rifles.  Much more my preference," he said as the trio let out about sixty shots over the tree line in less than two minutes.  As the armored vehicles began to return fire, the three dropped back down the cliff face.

The footage ended and the sargent put his hands on his hips.  "Now, don't think that the krieger is the end all, be all, of mechanized warfare.  You're one hundred times more likely to encounter a tank than a krieger, but just like tanks didn't make infantry obsolete, kriegers didn't make tanks obsolete.  These are highly specialized, highly efficient, highly expensive war machines.  They require very rare individuals with the neural kinetics to pilot them.  Think fighter jets rather than tanks."

Another hand from a girl.  "Didn't Kriegers use to have full crews?"

"Before the advent of neural scanning arrays, sure.  However, you don't drive a krieger.  You fight with one."  He gestured at the screen, and a diagram appeared of a transparent human with the brain and nerve system visible.  "The krieger's PNS, and go ahead and get your chuckles out now," the Sargent paused as a few boys laughed.  "The PNS scans your peripheral nerve action and translates that into motion.  You don't have to push buttons or peddles to step.  You just step.  That impulse to your motor controls is intercepted by the machine, which translates it into motion."

A red flash occured in the diagram's brain, flashed down the spinal cord, and down into the hip.  When it passed a band, the band gave a blue flash, and motes of blue followed.

He faced them with a sober look.  "Less than one one thousandth of the population has neural kinetics strong enough to be detected by the PNS.  Every one of you has that capability.  Medical tests confirm it.  What we are here to test is if you have the character, discipline, and focus to handle the responsibility of becoming a ten meter tall armored god."

Rin frowned.  "What happens if someone without strong neural Kinetics tries?"

The sargeant brought up more footage.  This time of an Krieger, but it moved at a crawl.  One step, pause, another step, pause,  another step.  Like an infant trying to get across the room, the Krieger staggered its way across a field.  Then it rotated its waist.  Stop.  Then it lifted its rifle.  Stop.   It fired once off to the side, and everyone laughed as the whole thing toppled over.

"You laugh.  That was me inside," the sargeant said, cutting off the laughter.  "Without a PNS, you have to drive a Krieger, and they're not meant to be driven.  They're not arbiters, designed for construction.  They're highly specialized machines for war.  I toppled over because when I fired, I couldn't instinctively move my leg out to brace against the recoil.  So down I went.  While it is possible to pilot without a PNS, you're a sitting target for the enemy."

Rin raised her hand.  "Um... what happens if the bootstrap drive fails?"

The sargeant didn't respond.  He just pointed at a the screen, and video of a fifteen meter tall arbiter appeared.  It staggered, as if drunk, swaying back and forth as it walked out of a hanger.  The men around it, appearing as ants, suddenly streamed away.  There was a tiny explosion from the back of the neck as a white capsule was ejected.

Then the arbiter's shoulders, hips, and feet exploded.  The whole frame collapsed, the chest crumpling like a wad of tissue.  The head snapped right off, coming apart as it rolled across the tarmac.  For a moment, the heap lay there, smoking.  The men were running for trenches dun at the edges of the tarmac.  Then the pile disappeared in a blinding white flash.

No one answered.  "What happened?" a boy asked.

"The antimatter blew," another whispered.

The sargeant nodded, opened the silver drive, and lifted out a small canister the size of his fist.  "This is the heart of the bootstrap drive.  Inside this is one gram and anti-ferrium in a magnetic bubble.  He gave it a shake, making everyone gasp and recoil, but he still smiled.  "Relax.  AM containment breaches are rare.  That detonation in Munich was the result of a faulty containment vessel.  The rare earth magnets keep it in place even if disconnected from its power supply."  His smile disappeared.  "However, you should remember what happened when the bootstrap failed.  Without it, gravity affected the arbiter just as it would any fifteen meter tall structure.  If you're not in space, you're dead.  All because this little box failed."  He said, patting the silver case.  "Any questions?"

(feel free to ask any that come to mind.  Might make for more writing prompts from me.)