Post by rantinan on May 4, 2006 1:32:55 GMT -5
Stare
I sat in the cockpit of the gale and felt it.
Stare
Painting the diploguns in an orange suitable to match the flyscizors and the lord gale, It drilled into my back.
Stare.
Its golden eyes. Staring.
“Damned king liger. What’s it’s problem”, I muttered to myself.
I hadn’t observed Pearce standing close by, the first I knew of her was her chuckle.
“Perhaps it likes you. You did save it from the interior decorator of doom.”
I asked what I should do about it then.
“take it for a ride” she said like it was the most obvious thing ins the world
Take it for a ride… right…
The simple fact of the matter is that I hadn’t cause I was… worried. It seems odd to tell it now, but every zoid I knew was either bipedal or insectile. I’d never been inside a pointed cat before, let alone one as twichy and with such a reputation for being uncontrollable as a king liger.
But I wasn’t going to get anything done with that damned cat staring at me, so what else was I gonna do. Reluctantly I climbed inside.
The detailing shop we’d taken the kingey to repair the damage caused by the shotgun like effect of loosely secured gold plates shattering had done an amazing job. The king liger was restored to pristine and original condition, the modifications made by the late unlamented Smythe removed in favour of sky blue leather and functional stainless steel. I settled into the command chair, noting that the detailer had adjusted it after parking it in the hanger. It fit me like a glove, the helic blue leather soft and supple, unlike the cracked old leather in the gale.
My hands sought the controls. These too had been rebuilt, their smooth steel surfaces finished with wound cord grips. From the inside, the machine was indeed fit for royalty.
I throttled her up.
Wow.
This thing was amazing.
Everything I’d read about liger said they were temperamental beasts, prone to going out of control, but this king liger was nothing like that. The machine seemed to purr as it started, strutting out the entrance ramp of our grounded whale king with almost no need for encouragement.
Seeing the desert open before us sparked a primal feeling in me, and I jammed the throttle to the stops.
BAM
King ligers got some serious pickup.
In under 30 seconds I was travelling almost as fast on land as the lord gale could in the air, the liger’s boosters howling out a challenging roar. A grey streak overtook me, then settled back to hover a few meters off my right shoulder, Pearce in her storm sworder.
Her face flashed up on the secondary monitor. “I’ve got a drone string on tow, try out your guns.”
She pulled ahead, and I activated the targeting radar.
The king liger’s mega vulcans are misnamed, they are not gatling type guns at all, but instead insanely fast firing auto cannon. Combined with the doplar radar mounted in each ear, giving a 3d picture of the airborne target, it was almost as easy to tag the first drone as it would be to stick a pin into a pin cushion.
Pearce nosed up and then stalled, a manoeuvre designed to avoid my fire and bring her into my rear arc. I let her twitching the king liger’s tail into line with the second drone, letting off a needle from the tail mounted rail gun as I did so.
“Damn. I was hoping you’d forget that. Most liger pilots do”
“I’m not a liger pilot, I quipped back. I’m a scruffy ass no good bandit with an unbelievable streak of bad luck and the ability to dodge.”
“Dodge this”, she snarked, firing a pair of paint filled practice missles at me.
I didn’t dodge this. Instead I tried out the system that made king ligers so damned feared, the omnidirectional e shield. Paint filled missiles exploded in a black cloud only to be eaten by coruscating energy.
Pearce cursed
“You certain you never piloted a pointed cat before”
“Never climbed into one before now, but this thing handles a lot like a spiker with better guns and armour!” I quipped right back.
It was true. While it wasn’t quite as manoeuvrable as my old man’s spiker, this thing was easily twice as fast, had similar rear facing firepower, and wicked if short reached close combat systems. And then there were those e shields.
damn me if this thing wasn’t a pleasure to drive.
damn me.
BANG.
That was the sound of the front shields overloading after going face first into a large rock. I was lucky enough that the shields had been up, if they hadn’t, then Stoller would be looking at another refit for the cockpit of this thing.
Pearce chuckled “why is that the first time you crashed that thing, and you didn’t even hurt yourself.”
I pondered for a moment.
She was right.
I crashed the gale continuously, even in practice, and I often injured myself. Certainly something as catastrophic as running into a boulder should have resulted in bruising, but the only bruises I had were the old yellowed ones I’d picked up crashing the zark.
“I think there is something seriously wrong with the lord gale.”
“I think you’re right”
But what to do about the lord gale. Any time I tried to get into it’s computers it got angry. Very very angry. I already had one metal leg, thers no way I wanted to risk a metal arm… or a metal head.
Which was silly relay. I mean Pearce and I SHOULD have been sending that convo over an encrypted channel if we didn’t want gale to react..
It reacted.
Forum out of the front of the whale king came three orange blurs, a fly scizzors, a diploguns and the gale. A shot cracked from the diploguns, just late enough to bounce of my shield as it powered up again.
“Your gale’s gone nuts” came our boss’s calm voice.
Stoler’s elephander snaked it’s trunk out of the ramp and grabbed the diploguns, and started pounding it against the ground. Pearce ditched her practice missles and drones, and flicked out the sworder’s laser blades, heading to confront the fly scizzors..
Which left me facing off with the lord gale.
I could practically sense its hurt betrayal on one level… but I could also se in the way it moved under its own motivation the psychotic killer that had been trying to murder my ass on the other. A schizophrenic zoid. A scitzo zoid optimized for close combat. I rattled off the light practice rounds I’d had in my mega vulcans, but they merely bounced of the lord gales thick armoured plate. Fortunately with the diploguns out of action, there was no way that the lord gale could actually crack my e shield short of repeated close combat strikes. And a king liger might have better guns than a gale, but it was designed form the outset to be a close combat killer.
I charged the laser blades.
With its unearthly howl the gale came skip gliding towards me, intending to do one of it’s signature overhead passes with the lances. I wheeled to one side, flicking the tail mounted slasher blades up into its flight path. Charged lances and charged tail blades connected. My liger was dragged along by the tail and I just managed to disentangle in time to miss that rock. Right, plan two.
I don’t HAVE a plan 2
The gales coming back at me. I’m pinned against a rock. I have a zoid with boosters.
Ok. Gotta plan 2.
I sprang to the top of the large rock, then launched my liger head first with boosters blaring at the lord gale.
Twannng.
Apparently it didn’t have any kamakaize airborne assaults by pointed cats in its database.
Bam!
Sharp metal teeth biting into a leg for purchase while the body flails. Laser cut pieces raining down around us. The ground coming up fast.
Impact.
Unconciousness.
“I abso-*Watch your language!*-lutely have to stop *Watch your language!* doing that” burst from my lips as I woke.
“Damn straight” said Stoler from my bedside
“The liger?”
“It’s fine. You just wacked your head.
“The gale?”
“You pretty much shredded it. We were picking through the parts and I found something interesting. Very interesting.”
“What?”
“I’ve called in an old friend. He’ll be able to tell for certain. Now go back to sleep.”
I did. Surprisingly enough Stoller wasn’t mad at me. I’d *Whoops! I tried to be kewlziez and use a naughty word!* up, but he seemed cool. While I was trying to puzzle this out sleep overtook me again.
Stoller’s friend was a cranky old drunk called Leyon. He mighta been pissed when he showed, but he looked at the black lump that had been knocked loose from the core blox of the gale and stared in surprise.
“An ultimate X. Amazing. And you say it was acting strangely psychotic? Independent mobility? Talking to the pilot? Can I plug in some instruments? There is so much I can learn!”
Astonishingly everyone, including Stoller, was looking at me. I nodded.
Leon hooked up computers probes and other odds and sods to the still scorched gale parts. Soon he was in a manic scientist mode, and completely incomprehensible to normal humans. I went to hang out with the king liger instead.
When I wondered into the hanger it greeted me like an over enthusiastic kitten.
Someone had put a much better harness than the original helic type into the cockpit. Sanders grinned at me from his corner as he worked on his sinker, and gave me a wave, which I returned appreciatively, before slipping in to the soft leather seat, and heading out. I don’t pretend to understand what had happened the day before, but I’d realised on thing for certain. This liger was my only zoid now, so I better damned well know how to drive it.
(authors note. this thing just keeps on getting more complex as I write it. Next chapter SHOULD involve my own insanely overcomplex ultimate X theories, a rampaging elephander, and mabye even the appearence of some fuzzy friends.. or they might wait another chapter)
I sat in the cockpit of the gale and felt it.
Stare
Painting the diploguns in an orange suitable to match the flyscizors and the lord gale, It drilled into my back.
Stare.
Its golden eyes. Staring.
“Damned king liger. What’s it’s problem”, I muttered to myself.
I hadn’t observed Pearce standing close by, the first I knew of her was her chuckle.
“Perhaps it likes you. You did save it from the interior decorator of doom.”
I asked what I should do about it then.
“take it for a ride” she said like it was the most obvious thing ins the world
Take it for a ride… right…
The simple fact of the matter is that I hadn’t cause I was… worried. It seems odd to tell it now, but every zoid I knew was either bipedal or insectile. I’d never been inside a pointed cat before, let alone one as twichy and with such a reputation for being uncontrollable as a king liger.
But I wasn’t going to get anything done with that damned cat staring at me, so what else was I gonna do. Reluctantly I climbed inside.
The detailing shop we’d taken the kingey to repair the damage caused by the shotgun like effect of loosely secured gold plates shattering had done an amazing job. The king liger was restored to pristine and original condition, the modifications made by the late unlamented Smythe removed in favour of sky blue leather and functional stainless steel. I settled into the command chair, noting that the detailer had adjusted it after parking it in the hanger. It fit me like a glove, the helic blue leather soft and supple, unlike the cracked old leather in the gale.
My hands sought the controls. These too had been rebuilt, their smooth steel surfaces finished with wound cord grips. From the inside, the machine was indeed fit for royalty.
I throttled her up.
Wow.
This thing was amazing.
Everything I’d read about liger said they were temperamental beasts, prone to going out of control, but this king liger was nothing like that. The machine seemed to purr as it started, strutting out the entrance ramp of our grounded whale king with almost no need for encouragement.
Seeing the desert open before us sparked a primal feeling in me, and I jammed the throttle to the stops.
BAM
King ligers got some serious pickup.
In under 30 seconds I was travelling almost as fast on land as the lord gale could in the air, the liger’s boosters howling out a challenging roar. A grey streak overtook me, then settled back to hover a few meters off my right shoulder, Pearce in her storm sworder.
Her face flashed up on the secondary monitor. “I’ve got a drone string on tow, try out your guns.”
She pulled ahead, and I activated the targeting radar.
The king liger’s mega vulcans are misnamed, they are not gatling type guns at all, but instead insanely fast firing auto cannon. Combined with the doplar radar mounted in each ear, giving a 3d picture of the airborne target, it was almost as easy to tag the first drone as it would be to stick a pin into a pin cushion.
Pearce nosed up and then stalled, a manoeuvre designed to avoid my fire and bring her into my rear arc. I let her twitching the king liger’s tail into line with the second drone, letting off a needle from the tail mounted rail gun as I did so.
“Damn. I was hoping you’d forget that. Most liger pilots do”
“I’m not a liger pilot, I quipped back. I’m a scruffy ass no good bandit with an unbelievable streak of bad luck and the ability to dodge.”
“Dodge this”, she snarked, firing a pair of paint filled practice missles at me.
I didn’t dodge this. Instead I tried out the system that made king ligers so damned feared, the omnidirectional e shield. Paint filled missiles exploded in a black cloud only to be eaten by coruscating energy.
Pearce cursed
“You certain you never piloted a pointed cat before”
“Never climbed into one before now, but this thing handles a lot like a spiker with better guns and armour!” I quipped right back.
It was true. While it wasn’t quite as manoeuvrable as my old man’s spiker, this thing was easily twice as fast, had similar rear facing firepower, and wicked if short reached close combat systems. And then there were those e shields.
damn me if this thing wasn’t a pleasure to drive.
damn me.
BANG.
That was the sound of the front shields overloading after going face first into a large rock. I was lucky enough that the shields had been up, if they hadn’t, then Stoller would be looking at another refit for the cockpit of this thing.
Pearce chuckled “why is that the first time you crashed that thing, and you didn’t even hurt yourself.”
I pondered for a moment.
She was right.
I crashed the gale continuously, even in practice, and I often injured myself. Certainly something as catastrophic as running into a boulder should have resulted in bruising, but the only bruises I had were the old yellowed ones I’d picked up crashing the zark.
“I think there is something seriously wrong with the lord gale.”
“I think you’re right”
But what to do about the lord gale. Any time I tried to get into it’s computers it got angry. Very very angry. I already had one metal leg, thers no way I wanted to risk a metal arm… or a metal head.
Which was silly relay. I mean Pearce and I SHOULD have been sending that convo over an encrypted channel if we didn’t want gale to react..
It reacted.
Forum out of the front of the whale king came three orange blurs, a fly scizzors, a diploguns and the gale. A shot cracked from the diploguns, just late enough to bounce of my shield as it powered up again.
“Your gale’s gone nuts” came our boss’s calm voice.
Stoler’s elephander snaked it’s trunk out of the ramp and grabbed the diploguns, and started pounding it against the ground. Pearce ditched her practice missles and drones, and flicked out the sworder’s laser blades, heading to confront the fly scizzors..
Which left me facing off with the lord gale.
I could practically sense its hurt betrayal on one level… but I could also se in the way it moved under its own motivation the psychotic killer that had been trying to murder my ass on the other. A schizophrenic zoid. A scitzo zoid optimized for close combat. I rattled off the light practice rounds I’d had in my mega vulcans, but they merely bounced of the lord gales thick armoured plate. Fortunately with the diploguns out of action, there was no way that the lord gale could actually crack my e shield short of repeated close combat strikes. And a king liger might have better guns than a gale, but it was designed form the outset to be a close combat killer.
I charged the laser blades.
With its unearthly howl the gale came skip gliding towards me, intending to do one of it’s signature overhead passes with the lances. I wheeled to one side, flicking the tail mounted slasher blades up into its flight path. Charged lances and charged tail blades connected. My liger was dragged along by the tail and I just managed to disentangle in time to miss that rock. Right, plan two.
I don’t HAVE a plan 2
The gales coming back at me. I’m pinned against a rock. I have a zoid with boosters.
Ok. Gotta plan 2.
I sprang to the top of the large rock, then launched my liger head first with boosters blaring at the lord gale.
Twannng.
Apparently it didn’t have any kamakaize airborne assaults by pointed cats in its database.
Bam!
Sharp metal teeth biting into a leg for purchase while the body flails. Laser cut pieces raining down around us. The ground coming up fast.
Impact.
Unconciousness.
“I abso-*Watch your language!*-lutely have to stop *Watch your language!* doing that” burst from my lips as I woke.
“Damn straight” said Stoler from my bedside
“The liger?”
“It’s fine. You just wacked your head.
“The gale?”
“You pretty much shredded it. We were picking through the parts and I found something interesting. Very interesting.”
“What?”
“I’ve called in an old friend. He’ll be able to tell for certain. Now go back to sleep.”
I did. Surprisingly enough Stoller wasn’t mad at me. I’d *Whoops! I tried to be kewlziez and use a naughty word!* up, but he seemed cool. While I was trying to puzzle this out sleep overtook me again.
Stoller’s friend was a cranky old drunk called Leyon. He mighta been pissed when he showed, but he looked at the black lump that had been knocked loose from the core blox of the gale and stared in surprise.
“An ultimate X. Amazing. And you say it was acting strangely psychotic? Independent mobility? Talking to the pilot? Can I plug in some instruments? There is so much I can learn!”
Astonishingly everyone, including Stoller, was looking at me. I nodded.
Leon hooked up computers probes and other odds and sods to the still scorched gale parts. Soon he was in a manic scientist mode, and completely incomprehensible to normal humans. I went to hang out with the king liger instead.
When I wondered into the hanger it greeted me like an over enthusiastic kitten.
Someone had put a much better harness than the original helic type into the cockpit. Sanders grinned at me from his corner as he worked on his sinker, and gave me a wave, which I returned appreciatively, before slipping in to the soft leather seat, and heading out. I don’t pretend to understand what had happened the day before, but I’d realised on thing for certain. This liger was my only zoid now, so I better damned well know how to drive it.
(authors note. this thing just keeps on getting more complex as I write it. Next chapter SHOULD involve my own insanely overcomplex ultimate X theories, a rampaging elephander, and mabye even the appearence of some fuzzy friends.. or they might wait another chapter)
