Post by Colodie on May 24, 2010 23:19:19 GMT -5
Maethius:
The air barely stirred the dust of the Plains of Muroa, enough only to briefly rustle the arid brush daring to compromise the naked landscape as it rolled away to the distant Starfall Sea beyond the western horizon. Plains. So long had it been that the legendary disaster had ravaged the world of Zi that there were only writings to remind the scattered and scratching populous of what had once been. Of what was gone forever.
Captain Jirair narrowed his eyes, the dark flesh framing them creasing with recesses gouged from the heavy burdens of his post, timeless and seemingly without end. The aches of his spine and shoulder where mere shades at the very edge of his perception; the trophies of mere flashes of valor that he now carried in perpetuity. He glanced away from the distant glow of the setting sun to his right, to the single pane of armored canopy with a notably darker tint. It was held in by heavily welded plates of rough industrial steel, the distressed and reset composite frame about the pane still shrugging free the paint attempting to conceal the wounds of the past.
He smiled.
Jirair had patrolled the borders of his tribe’s hereditary lands for more than five decades and the vast majority of those within the armored skull of this very machine. His Godos was a front line trooper of the Helic Republic some centuries ago, or so his father had told him. It had gone so many refits, so many customizations as components aged and failed, that it was merely a shadow of its former self. It was the second heaviest Zoid in the tribe; of the twelve mechanical beasts in their military, only Major Nolan’s Desert Fox was more powerful.
With a long sigh, Jirair frowned at the softly glowing displays cluttering the roll cage before him. Sweeps of light representing both passive sensors and active scanners illuminated their screens in their own times, the effect causing a gently surging and receding aurora to play over his features like moonlight playing through a crystal pool.
“Let’s make the Far Ridge,” Jirair said in a gravely, conversational voice.
He slowly pressed the drive pedals forward with his dusty, well worn boots and the Godos drew a huge foot from the dust and crushing it heavily down two meters ahead. The lurching machine picked up speed, hunching over as it slammed across the Plains, its side weapon pods rotating to match pitch with the torso as the head lowered slightly toward the ground.
“Unit North Two calling Ridgespine. Proceeding on course two-three-zero, speed nine clicks, waypoint is Delta, E.T.A. mark in ten,” Jirair droned automatically.
“Ridgespine to Unit North Two; course and speed confirmed,” crackled a younger man’s voice from the cabin speaker. “Any situation to report?”
“Negative, Ridgespine,” the captain returned. “Just sayin’ goodnight to Taimi.”
There was a pregnant pause from the com, then the voice responded again in a slow, burdened tone. “Understood.”
No, he didn’t. Jirair knew that the corporal’s heart was in the right place, but understanding was far beyond him. It was his most fervent wish that none of his tribesmen would know the pain that rent him. That was why he was out here. That was why he placed twice as many hours in a cockpit as any other Zoidrider of his tribe. Why he lived more at the barracks and the hanger than in his small hovel in the Northeast Quarter.
Even a kilometer out from his waypoint, Captain Jirair could see Taimi’s silhouette against the burning orange of the dying sunlight. He instinctively drew his Godos around to the left, leaning against the torn padding of his command seat even as he wrenched it around and snapped it upward to its full height. Jirair waited for the dust to waft away on the breeze and stroked the chipped yellow switch just within his reach to the left of the compass. With a slight groan of protest and an almost reptilian hiss, the tinted canopy shell rose upward, letting the bright, unfiltered rays of the sun fall across his pocked and weathered face.
Jirair took a deep breath of the still warm night air and pulled his helmet from his head, letting thick, wet coils of salt-and-pepper scratch across his brow. He absently brushed his unkempt hair aside and stared intently at Taimi’s marker with eyes the color of rusting iron.
It was hardly the tombstone she deserved; the stripped and torn femur of an Imperial Merda he had recovered from its smoldering hulk after he had hammered it full of holes with his quartet of 35mm cyclic cannons. After it had rent her Elephander to pieces with a salvo of rockets and repeated bursts from its massive 50mm cannon. There was no body to recover. No face to kiss. In one heated moment he was merely Sergeant Jirair… no longer husband Jirair. No longer father to be.
Had it been twenty years? His son would have been training to replace him; or his daughter to take her place in the defense of the tribe. His eyes bore no tears, but he had decided that his pain was simply too deep for them to adequately express it.
“All is quiet, beloved,” he said softly; a low rumble from his chest. “I must provision and rest for tomorrow’s patrol. You keep watch.” He smiled at the rusting tangle of metal, ignoring the silken strands of silk from some metal-laced arachnid drawn between the twisted hydraulics. “I’ll relieve you tomorrow.”
His dark smile faded suddenly. Jirair glanced to the raised control surface above his head as his brow slowly knit into a frown. He tapped the yellow lever again to bring the controls hissing back before his chest. A slight, high-pitched claxon was sounding from his active sensor console.
“What have we?” he intoned suspiciously.
The holographic area overviewer slowly rotated to match the compass heading. There, just at the edge of his scanning range, was an unidentified unit marker. Jirair frowned, his gaze shifting from a distant remorse to one of a predator spying its next kill. He drew his well-worn helmet even as he smashed down on the steering petals, twisting his Godos violently in the direction of the marker.
“Ridgespine,” the captain intoned automatically, “North Two en route to intercept unidentified marker, detected at eighteen-twenty-five hours. Vector is nine degrees three minutes north latitude, one-three-seven degrees four minutes west longitude. Distance; twelve kilometers. Time to intercept; four point five minutes.”
“North Two, Ridgespine confirms.” The response was staggered, caught unawares. “Uh, contacting North One for rendezvous.
“Acknowledged.”
Captain Jirair slid his thumb across the ventilation control on his breastplate, breathing in a fresh gust of cold air as it billowed through his helmet. His hands danced across control surfaces with instinctual precision, the computer chirping audio acknowledgements in an adequately female voice. “Targeting; check. Hydraulics; check. Weps; check. E.C.M.; check. EvacSys; check. SenScan; check.” It would certainly be a stroke of ill luck for this to be one of those times the gun link system failed.
“North Two, respond.” The voice was high pitched but as sure as death.
“Affirmative, Major,” the captain responded quickly. “This is North Two.”
“I’m sending you waypoint Alpha; I’ll meet you in three.”
“In three,” Jirair repeated. His jaw muscles bunched as the Godos landed an extended stride as the ground fell away with the cresting of a hill. The uneasy tone of the tracking system drew his eyes back to the overviewer. The unidentified marker slid steadily on its course, its speed unchanged despite terrain. “Nolan,” the captain added reservedly. “Don’t engage this guy solo.”
“Have some insight on our mark, Jirair?” The Major’s tone was more that of an old friend than a commanding officer. Of course, he and Jirair had patrolled these lands since before Taimi became his wife.
“Just feels wrong, Nolan,” he said almost inwardly.
Three minutes seemed to pass within only a dozen strides of the Godos. Jirair glanced out of his left canopy pane at the darkened plains beyond; within the shadow was an undulating shape surging alongside him. He flipped a toggle to the right of the overview control panel and the darkened panes of armored glass flashed up like daylight. He saw the former Helic Shadow Fox drawing ahead of him, the barrels of the 30mm beam Vulcan cannon spinning up, indicating that Major Nolan was conducting a weapon check.
“Engage in twenty seconds,” the commanding officer supplied. “I’m going to confirm our mark, as distant as possible.”
“Nolan,” Jirair began, his stomach feeling like poisoned ice.
“Nothing for it, Captain,” snapped the response. “He’s paced with you, old man. If I don’t draw him ‘round, it’s me alone and you’re on cleanup duty.”
“Acknowledged,” Jirair affirmed. “Please be careful.”
“Always.” The Fox bounded ahead, more than doubling the speed of the plodding Godos. “Visual in ten.”
Captain Jirair could only watch on his monitor as the pulsing blue circular marker representing Major Nolan’s Desert Fox as it closed on the white square depicting the unknown unit. Visual in five. He bit his lower lip absently and scowled. Nolan was right. The unknown was holding at one-hundred and forty kilometers per hour, and the most he could achieve on a steady downgrade was one fifty. Visual in two.
“In range.” Nolan’s voice sounded strained. “Nightsight can’t make it out; must have S.D.M. skin or something.”
“What is it, sir?” Jirair’s heart was pounding. Visual range. Hell, that was short range for virtually any weapon on Zi. “Can you match a silhouette?”
“Database is chewing on it,” the captain responded quickly. “He’s big. Biped. Not huge. Going to call him down, see if I can draw him south.”
“Nolan…”
Marjor Nolan did not hear Jirair’s warning. Bright flashes stained the artificial dusk painted across the tinted canopy glass. The captain’s headphones filled with the crackling thunder of muted 30mm beam Vulcan fire. He bared his teeth and stomped hard on the drive petals, though he was already thundering across the night-blackened plains at full speed. He could see the intruder backlit by a spray of beam fire.
“Impossible!” It was the only word of the transmission that reached Jirair. An intense glow bloomed from the larger Zoid’s back-mounted cannons and the result stole all thoughts from the captain’s mind. He could only watch helplessly as Nolan’s Desert Fox surged a hundred yards, crumpling and shredding through the air as if it were struck by some giant fist. Whatever manner of weapon this was, its effects were absolute. The Desert Fox was smashed into a smoldering mass, and Major Nolan could in no way have survived it.
The intruder turned to run headlong at Jirair’s Godos.
The mark was a theropod class, not a Gojulas or anything near. Jirair had seen one of the mighty Helic war machines before. This was smaller, but more advanced. Before he could visually identify the attacker, his consol chimed an affirmative and updated the display. The white square blinked away, replaced by a bright green arrowhead.
“Impossible, indeed,” Jirair muttered to himself. “Impossible or not, I’ll leave a mark on you before I go down!”
The cockpit of the Godos thundered as the four 35mm cyclic cannons roared to life. Two blazing muzzle flashes erupted from each torso gun pod, two more from either side of the pilot’s seat from the over-shoulder units. The ammunition counters on his M.F.D.s dropped from 1,000 to 800 rounds per drum. Jirair roared with rage as heat warnings screamed in the confines of his helmet.
The Deadborder loomed over the comparatively diminutive Godos. Tracers stitched across the shadowy form. His weapons had no apparent effects against the living dead’s Dark Armor. Jirair watched as the large, back-mounted cannons glowed menacingly.
Jirair spoke calmly as his weapons shut down, their magazines half empty. “Taimi, at last we are together again.”
The deafening roar of the gravity cannons melded with the rending of steel and flesh.
The sun’s light drove away the darkness of the night. A gentle wind wafted over the dry summer grass and caught up the acrid smoke from two twisted hulks of scorched metal, the tendrils billowing into the sky to form ever writhing sculptures. A number of the Muroa Plains Tribe knelt on the cold, cracked earth, their eyes closed to the horrors around them, their ears taking in only their own prayers and sobs as they mourned the loss of two distinguished warriors, and two very dear friends. What horror they had encountered had vanished with the dawn. In their hearts, the people of Muroa could only pray that it would not return.
The air barely stirred the dust of the Plains of Muroa, enough only to briefly rustle the arid brush daring to compromise the naked landscape as it rolled away to the distant Starfall Sea beyond the western horizon. Plains. So long had it been that the legendary disaster had ravaged the world of Zi that there were only writings to remind the scattered and scratching populous of what had once been. Of what was gone forever.
Captain Jirair narrowed his eyes, the dark flesh framing them creasing with recesses gouged from the heavy burdens of his post, timeless and seemingly without end. The aches of his spine and shoulder where mere shades at the very edge of his perception; the trophies of mere flashes of valor that he now carried in perpetuity. He glanced away from the distant glow of the setting sun to his right, to the single pane of armored canopy with a notably darker tint. It was held in by heavily welded plates of rough industrial steel, the distressed and reset composite frame about the pane still shrugging free the paint attempting to conceal the wounds of the past.
He smiled.
Jirair had patrolled the borders of his tribe’s hereditary lands for more than five decades and the vast majority of those within the armored skull of this very machine. His Godos was a front line trooper of the Helic Republic some centuries ago, or so his father had told him. It had gone so many refits, so many customizations as components aged and failed, that it was merely a shadow of its former self. It was the second heaviest Zoid in the tribe; of the twelve mechanical beasts in their military, only Major Nolan’s Desert Fox was more powerful.
With a long sigh, Jirair frowned at the softly glowing displays cluttering the roll cage before him. Sweeps of light representing both passive sensors and active scanners illuminated their screens in their own times, the effect causing a gently surging and receding aurora to play over his features like moonlight playing through a crystal pool.
“Let’s make the Far Ridge,” Jirair said in a gravely, conversational voice.
He slowly pressed the drive pedals forward with his dusty, well worn boots and the Godos drew a huge foot from the dust and crushing it heavily down two meters ahead. The lurching machine picked up speed, hunching over as it slammed across the Plains, its side weapon pods rotating to match pitch with the torso as the head lowered slightly toward the ground.
“Unit North Two calling Ridgespine. Proceeding on course two-three-zero, speed nine clicks, waypoint is Delta, E.T.A. mark in ten,” Jirair droned automatically.
“Ridgespine to Unit North Two; course and speed confirmed,” crackled a younger man’s voice from the cabin speaker. “Any situation to report?”
“Negative, Ridgespine,” the captain returned. “Just sayin’ goodnight to Taimi.”
There was a pregnant pause from the com, then the voice responded again in a slow, burdened tone. “Understood.”
No, he didn’t. Jirair knew that the corporal’s heart was in the right place, but understanding was far beyond him. It was his most fervent wish that none of his tribesmen would know the pain that rent him. That was why he was out here. That was why he placed twice as many hours in a cockpit as any other Zoidrider of his tribe. Why he lived more at the barracks and the hanger than in his small hovel in the Northeast Quarter.
Even a kilometer out from his waypoint, Captain Jirair could see Taimi’s silhouette against the burning orange of the dying sunlight. He instinctively drew his Godos around to the left, leaning against the torn padding of his command seat even as he wrenched it around and snapped it upward to its full height. Jirair waited for the dust to waft away on the breeze and stroked the chipped yellow switch just within his reach to the left of the compass. With a slight groan of protest and an almost reptilian hiss, the tinted canopy shell rose upward, letting the bright, unfiltered rays of the sun fall across his pocked and weathered face.
Jirair took a deep breath of the still warm night air and pulled his helmet from his head, letting thick, wet coils of salt-and-pepper scratch across his brow. He absently brushed his unkempt hair aside and stared intently at Taimi’s marker with eyes the color of rusting iron.
It was hardly the tombstone she deserved; the stripped and torn femur of an Imperial Merda he had recovered from its smoldering hulk after he had hammered it full of holes with his quartet of 35mm cyclic cannons. After it had rent her Elephander to pieces with a salvo of rockets and repeated bursts from its massive 50mm cannon. There was no body to recover. No face to kiss. In one heated moment he was merely Sergeant Jirair… no longer husband Jirair. No longer father to be.
Had it been twenty years? His son would have been training to replace him; or his daughter to take her place in the defense of the tribe. His eyes bore no tears, but he had decided that his pain was simply too deep for them to adequately express it.
“All is quiet, beloved,” he said softly; a low rumble from his chest. “I must provision and rest for tomorrow’s patrol. You keep watch.” He smiled at the rusting tangle of metal, ignoring the silken strands of silk from some metal-laced arachnid drawn between the twisted hydraulics. “I’ll relieve you tomorrow.”
His dark smile faded suddenly. Jirair glanced to the raised control surface above his head as his brow slowly knit into a frown. He tapped the yellow lever again to bring the controls hissing back before his chest. A slight, high-pitched claxon was sounding from his active sensor console.
“What have we?” he intoned suspiciously.
The holographic area overviewer slowly rotated to match the compass heading. There, just at the edge of his scanning range, was an unidentified unit marker. Jirair frowned, his gaze shifting from a distant remorse to one of a predator spying its next kill. He drew his well-worn helmet even as he smashed down on the steering petals, twisting his Godos violently in the direction of the marker.
“Ridgespine,” the captain intoned automatically, “North Two en route to intercept unidentified marker, detected at eighteen-twenty-five hours. Vector is nine degrees three minutes north latitude, one-three-seven degrees four minutes west longitude. Distance; twelve kilometers. Time to intercept; four point five minutes.”
“North Two, Ridgespine confirms.” The response was staggered, caught unawares. “Uh, contacting North One for rendezvous.
“Acknowledged.”
Captain Jirair slid his thumb across the ventilation control on his breastplate, breathing in a fresh gust of cold air as it billowed through his helmet. His hands danced across control surfaces with instinctual precision, the computer chirping audio acknowledgements in an adequately female voice. “Targeting; check. Hydraulics; check. Weps; check. E.C.M.; check. EvacSys; check. SenScan; check.” It would certainly be a stroke of ill luck for this to be one of those times the gun link system failed.
“North Two, respond.” The voice was high pitched but as sure as death.
“Affirmative, Major,” the captain responded quickly. “This is North Two.”
“I’m sending you waypoint Alpha; I’ll meet you in three.”
“In three,” Jirair repeated. His jaw muscles bunched as the Godos landed an extended stride as the ground fell away with the cresting of a hill. The uneasy tone of the tracking system drew his eyes back to the overviewer. The unidentified marker slid steadily on its course, its speed unchanged despite terrain. “Nolan,” the captain added reservedly. “Don’t engage this guy solo.”
“Have some insight on our mark, Jirair?” The Major’s tone was more that of an old friend than a commanding officer. Of course, he and Jirair had patrolled these lands since before Taimi became his wife.
“Just feels wrong, Nolan,” he said almost inwardly.
Three minutes seemed to pass within only a dozen strides of the Godos. Jirair glanced out of his left canopy pane at the darkened plains beyond; within the shadow was an undulating shape surging alongside him. He flipped a toggle to the right of the overview control panel and the darkened panes of armored glass flashed up like daylight. He saw the former Helic Shadow Fox drawing ahead of him, the barrels of the 30mm beam Vulcan cannon spinning up, indicating that Major Nolan was conducting a weapon check.
“Engage in twenty seconds,” the commanding officer supplied. “I’m going to confirm our mark, as distant as possible.”
“Nolan,” Jirair began, his stomach feeling like poisoned ice.
“Nothing for it, Captain,” snapped the response. “He’s paced with you, old man. If I don’t draw him ‘round, it’s me alone and you’re on cleanup duty.”
“Acknowledged,” Jirair affirmed. “Please be careful.”
“Always.” The Fox bounded ahead, more than doubling the speed of the plodding Godos. “Visual in ten.”
Captain Jirair could only watch on his monitor as the pulsing blue circular marker representing Major Nolan’s Desert Fox as it closed on the white square depicting the unknown unit. Visual in five. He bit his lower lip absently and scowled. Nolan was right. The unknown was holding at one-hundred and forty kilometers per hour, and the most he could achieve on a steady downgrade was one fifty. Visual in two.
“In range.” Nolan’s voice sounded strained. “Nightsight can’t make it out; must have S.D.M. skin or something.”
“What is it, sir?” Jirair’s heart was pounding. Visual range. Hell, that was short range for virtually any weapon on Zi. “Can you match a silhouette?”
“Database is chewing on it,” the captain responded quickly. “He’s big. Biped. Not huge. Going to call him down, see if I can draw him south.”
“Nolan…”
Marjor Nolan did not hear Jirair’s warning. Bright flashes stained the artificial dusk painted across the tinted canopy glass. The captain’s headphones filled with the crackling thunder of muted 30mm beam Vulcan fire. He bared his teeth and stomped hard on the drive petals, though he was already thundering across the night-blackened plains at full speed. He could see the intruder backlit by a spray of beam fire.
“Impossible!” It was the only word of the transmission that reached Jirair. An intense glow bloomed from the larger Zoid’s back-mounted cannons and the result stole all thoughts from the captain’s mind. He could only watch helplessly as Nolan’s Desert Fox surged a hundred yards, crumpling and shredding through the air as if it were struck by some giant fist. Whatever manner of weapon this was, its effects were absolute. The Desert Fox was smashed into a smoldering mass, and Major Nolan could in no way have survived it.
The intruder turned to run headlong at Jirair’s Godos.
The mark was a theropod class, not a Gojulas or anything near. Jirair had seen one of the mighty Helic war machines before. This was smaller, but more advanced. Before he could visually identify the attacker, his consol chimed an affirmative and updated the display. The white square blinked away, replaced by a bright green arrowhead.
“Impossible, indeed,” Jirair muttered to himself. “Impossible or not, I’ll leave a mark on you before I go down!”
The cockpit of the Godos thundered as the four 35mm cyclic cannons roared to life. Two blazing muzzle flashes erupted from each torso gun pod, two more from either side of the pilot’s seat from the over-shoulder units. The ammunition counters on his M.F.D.s dropped from 1,000 to 800 rounds per drum. Jirair roared with rage as heat warnings screamed in the confines of his helmet.
The Deadborder loomed over the comparatively diminutive Godos. Tracers stitched across the shadowy form. His weapons had no apparent effects against the living dead’s Dark Armor. Jirair watched as the large, back-mounted cannons glowed menacingly.
Jirair spoke calmly as his weapons shut down, their magazines half empty. “Taimi, at last we are together again.”
The deafening roar of the gravity cannons melded with the rending of steel and flesh.
The sun’s light drove away the darkness of the night. A gentle wind wafted over the dry summer grass and caught up the acrid smoke from two twisted hulks of scorched metal, the tendrils billowing into the sky to form ever writhing sculptures. A number of the Muroa Plains Tribe knelt on the cold, cracked earth, their eyes closed to the horrors around them, their ears taking in only their own prayers and sobs as they mourned the loss of two distinguished warriors, and two very dear friends. What horror they had encountered had vanished with the dawn. In their hearts, the people of Muroa could only pray that it would not return.