The losses had come heavily that year. First her beloved Houndsoldier, Rayna. Callie and Rayna had been partners for decades, traveling all over the Republic, and later, the Empire, to various governmental testing facilities for Callie's work in overseeing high-level repairs on prototype Zoids. A terrible accident at one of the facilities had shattered Rayna's armored body so completely that her Zoid core had failed. Callie, already in her later years, soon found that she was no longer able to experience joy and satisfaction in her career, and had chosen to retire.
Several months later - well before Callie had even begun to recover from the loss of her dear friend - Callie's mother, Lara, had passed away. She had taken ill not long after surviving the Death Stinger's destruction of the Republican capital New Helic City, and had never been the same in the years since. Callie thought that the widely-reported death tolls of the Death Stinger's unprecedented assault had always been far too low, for they did not take into account the indirect casualties that perhaps did not manifest until years later: people whose fragile nerves and constitutions had shattered as a result of extreme, unbearable fear. Her mother had technically survived that day, the day the capital fell, but in many ways, as far as Callie was concerned, it had also been the day that Lara had died.
Callie was all alone in the world.
The sun was slanting low through her windshield now as her jeep rumbled along, the same way the sun had slanted low through the windows of her mother's humble flat in downtown New Helic City one afternoon a few weeks ago. Callie remembered sitting with Lara in the dying light, observing the bleak contours and valleys making up that sad, withered face. She had gotten up to feed more wood into the fire, as if by increasing the illumination in the room, so too could she shine light into their dark past.
"Tell me about him, Mom," she begged. "Please. Anything you can remember."
"I'm sorry," Lara said, her voice heavy. "There is so much now that has slipped away. Perhaps it's for the better."
"No, no it isn't for the better!" Callie cried, her frustration and intense desire to understand flaring. "It isn't fair!"
Lara had simply gazed at her daughter, a tender sadness filling her eyes until they became empty and vacant once more.
-.-.-.-
The memories come and go. They were once so sharp. I could recall every detail: each regiment, each personality, each Zoid. All of the adventures with Jack. We fought so many battles, traveled to so many places. He relied on me no less than I relied on him. These images, they are faded now; they pass by me like clouds.
The days here are long. I try to remain active so that my bolts and memory banks do not give out. I remember times gone by. I patrol the grounds. No one has come to this fortress since the day the boy and his Shield Liger arrived years ago. They saved me from the red and black Command Wolf that attacked me. I, in turn, saved them from that same Command Wolf. Reliance. Trust. That boy and I were partners, just for that one afternoon. It felt good to remember what it was like to have a partner.
Then the boy left. Just as Jack left.
The boy did not come back. Jack did not come back.
I am all alone in the world.
My memories, like me, abide.
-.-.-.-
Callie knew better than to try to keep driving as night fell. She found a large rock outcropping and parked nearby, making camp beside this silent sentinel. Its very timelessness was comforting; it had been here for thousands of years, and was likely to remain for many thousands more. Zoids, humans, war, peace - all came and went, but this magnificent stone archway endured. In her small, shaky human life, punctuated as it was, like all humans' lives, with loss and impermanence, there was solace to be found here in its shadow.
She ate dinner and retired to her sleeping bag, lying on her back and gazing in wonder at the distant stars. A small, treasured book lay beside her, one she had found stuffed in a non-descript box when sorting through her mother's things after Lara had passed away. A note taped to its cover read: "I found this in an abandoned fortress in the Desert Wastes years ago. Your husband Jack Holbrook's wartime service is an inspiration to us all. I am grateful for the opportunity to give this diary back to you, with whom these memories belong." It had been signed by none other than Van Flyheight, a hero for the ages, and he, he of all people was praising her father!
Major Holbrook's voice came to her then, from a faraway time: his words small barbs, wounding her again and again. She let them replay in her mind, over and over, seeking meaning, looking around and between and beneath for the larger story.
The man had been in terrible pain, that pain of the heart and mind that the greatest scientists of the Republic and the Empire, studying soldiers returning from war, were only now beginning to understand. He had always been in pain, for the entirety of her life. He had been a major in the Great War, had seen combat, been wounded, lost friends, been crushed under the weight of impossible choices. He had been in command of Sunset Fortress, a lonely Republican outpost in the Desert Wastes. Such a fortress, at first glance, was of little strategic value, but situated as it was atop ancient Zoidian ruins, it became a hotbed of activity once the Guylos Empire, in search of the Zoid Eve, learned of its true worth. This was all Callie knew of who her father was; aside, of course, from the cold, cruel man he had been before dying of a heart attack when she was still only a young woman. She knew there had to be more to him than that. Never having known the person he was before the war, she longed to hold a different picture of him in her heart: someone noble, brave, and kind, someone of whom she could be proud. Besides, how could you ever know who you were if you did not know where you had come from?
She rolled over, groping for her flashlight and clicking it on after finding it. She opened her father's diary up again, reading again its final entry. He had felt alone in the world, too, knowing he would have to abandon his dear friend. Callie could not imagine which was the more difficult: a loved one taken away, or a loved one consciously left behind. Life, it seemed, was always about loss, and the only way one could cope was to hold on to the memories.
-.-.-.-
I am alone yet by now am beyond loneliness. I no longer recall the moment when my existence began, but I do know that I was on my own for some time before the Republican army found me, before I was assigned to Jack.
Jack was Private Holbrook when we met, not yet Major Holbrook as he was when he left me. He had never piloted a Zoid before; I had never had a pilot. I had not known nor understood the idea of purposelessness until I suddenly had a purpose. I was part of an army now. I had specific tasks to accomplish. In the beginning, it was learning to understand Jack, and guiding him so that he might learn to guide me. Later, it was seeking a target, laying siege to a city, disrupting enemy radio communications, leading an army.
I thrilled to this life of having meaning, of being part of something larger than myself. I had not understood the reason for the formlessness which had characterized my early days; I did now. We Zoids are, fundamentally, creatures intended to act: it is in our nature to serve a cause, to pursue an end. My time with Jack was the greatest of my life, because I was able to exist in accordance with my nature, and fulfill my potential as a Zoid.
The days since Jack left have been difficult, and not only because I have been lonely. I do not know what I am to do, nor what is expected of me. Long ago, I supposed that, as the sole remaining member of Jack's unit at this fortress, it was my task to protect it from those who would infiltrate and attack. But in the end, I was not given orders to remain. I may have supposed wrong. I do not know. Jack is no longer here to guide me and direct my capabilities towards a fruitful end.
What am I, now, as a Zoid with no pilot? A Zoid with no purpose? A Zoid alone? What use am I anymore?
-.-.-.-
The fortress loomed up in the distance before her, imposing and fragile, terrible and beautiful all at once. Callie breathed a sigh of relief, that she had made it safely. This trek, especially without a high-speed Zoid like Rayna to eat up the kilometers, was dangerous and more than a little ill-advised. Dr. D's face had been grave - a state it was not often in - as he had explained to her how to prepare, and how to negotiate the endless, nearly-featureless desert safely.
"But Callie, in spite of all my worries, I understand why you're doing this. I only wish I had known Major Holbrook better myself, so that you wouldn't feel you had to undertake a task such as this." He had looked down into his usual salty coffee. "I think you're very brave. Not because you're going into the Wastes without a Zoid - although that's very brave too - but because you're searching into the past. You don't know what you'll find, but you're willing to look, anyway." He smiled at her then. "It hasn't been the same without you at the lab, you know. These young whippersnappers, they couldn't repair a Zoid with a paper cut!"
"I, I just couldn't..." Callie began, faltering as she remembered Rayna in the midst of the explosion, loyal and fearless like her animal counterpart. Rayna had jerked her head violently to one side in a desperate attempt to keep her cockpit intact, her pilot safe, allowing the brunt of the force to be absorbed by her torso, where her precious heart, her Zoid core, resided. Callie, knocked out by the unexpected maneuver, had not regained consciousness until after Rayna's core had ceased to function. Well-meaning doctors had told her it was just as well, that Callie hadn't had to witness Rayna's life energy seeping invisibly out of her, but this just made Callie feel worse. Rayna had been a steadfast, faithful partner, sacrificing herself in order to save Callie; she did not deserve to die alone.
"I know," Dr. D said, putting his hand kindly over Callie's and helping her to emerge once more from her painful thoughts. "I have a feeling this trip will be beneficial to you, even if you never learn anything about your father. You need some time to process everything that's happened. And, fortuitously, this is a great time to go! Thanks to Fiona, the Republic and the Empire are finally starting to pay attention to Zi's priceless heritage, in the form of all the many ruins left behind by the ancient Zoidians. If you don't visit Sunset Fortress soon, the archaeologists will descend upon the site like locusts and take everything of interest away!" He let loose with one of his trademark manic bursts of cackles. Callie had looked at him then, her feisty, irreverent former boss, and smiled.
Callie now drove her jeep carefully through the open archway, and parked in a large courtyard. Nature was in its slow but steady process of reclaiming the fortress and ruins for its own, preparing to swallow up their secrets forevermore. Trees had stubbornly burst through carefully-laid stone to spread their verdant arms to the skies, and moss crept stealthily over corner and ledge. A light gust of wind whirled around her, throwing open the diary on the jeep's passenger-side seat. Callie slammed her hand over the book to prevent it from perhaps being carried off, and looked down through her fingers at the words marching soldier-like across the page in her father's tight, tidy handwriting: "Gordos," she saw. "Dear friend."
A terrible crash just ahead caught her attention. She jumped out of the jeep, clutching the diary as though it might somehow shield her from harm, and stared as something enormous crashed through a copse of trees between two low buildings in front of her. Sunlight caught white spinal plates, and a beautiful cockpit canopy the color of a bright, promising sky.
-.-.-.-
Intruder. Intruder. Intruder.
I must protect this fortress until Jack returns.
Jack will return someday.
If I do nothing else, if I am a Zoid with no pilot and no purpose, at least I can do this, protect this fortress, for Jack.
None shall disturb my memories.
-.-.-.-
"It can't be," Callie breathed as a tremendous white Zoid emerged from the trees. "After all this time? Gordos?" Trembling, she raised the diary to examine it more closely, flipping to that heartbreaking final entry. An aged photograph, nearly blanched of all its color by the relentless passing of the years, fluttered delicately into her other hand. She held it up. It was the same Zoid as that which stood before her now.
She swallowed, feeling the ground still reverberating beneath her feet from the creature's approach. The Zoid leveled its two beam cannons at her, preparing to fire, but nevertheless she stepped forward, holding the photograph in front of her like a guiding light.
Who comes bearing this picture of Jack and me?
"Gordos," Callie called across the space between them.
Who is this woman, who looks so much like my Jack?
"I am sorry to intrude on your fortress, Gordos. I am the daughter of Major Jack Holbrook, commander of the First Desert Division and this fortress in the Great War."
Jack?
Callie stepped closer, lowering her hands slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. "I am sorry, Gordos. Major Holbrook...my father...passed away a long time ago now. He never forgot you, Gordos. Leaving you behind, fighting that terrible war, losing his friends...it broke his heart and his spirit." She looked down at the picture in her hands. "I don't think he was ever the same after that."
Jack...you knew Jack...and he is gone?
I understand. He is not coming back for me. He will never return to this fortress.
I see now that I am truly alone in the world. What point is there? Why need I exist, then, with Jack gone?
The cannons lowered. The Gordos released itself downward, resting its belly on the cobblestone, utterly defeated.
Let the rust come. My leg...it will hurt me no longer. My memories will fade into the past where they belong.
"Gordos," Callie said, approaching closely now. She rested a gentle hand on its cool white metal. "My Zoid passed away a few months ago. She was beautiful, fast and strong and loyal. She was my dear friend. I have missed her so much. I know my father felt the same way about you. It was a deep bond you two shared. But that doesn't mean you should give up. I will always carry the memory of my Zoid with me, just as you can always remember my father, and carry those memories with you."
The Gordos vocalized softly, listening.
Callie gazed at her hand resting on the smooth metallic flank. "You're free now, Gordos," she said quietly. "You've guarded this fortress well. You did everything that was asked of you, and more. And you know that he would be so, so proud of you.
"I am not my father," she continued, standing tall now and looking at the Zoid's empty cockpit. "But I can care for you. I can repair your leg so it feels good again. And I can be your dear friend, too, if you would have me."
There was a small pause. A bird soared past overhead, its echoing call lilting and hopeful.
Then slowly, with an infinite grace, the Gordos lowered its chin to the ground. There was a low whirring sound as the blue canopy opened, beckoning.
Alone no more.
-.-.-.-
Author's Note:
I had to write this story, because "Memory" is an episode begging for a sequel. I know no small number of Zoids fans have found that episode heartbreaking, myself included.
I did a lot of research into the canon, such as it is, for this story, and found English-language resources lacking. I did my best to be accurate but it is entirely possible that I made a mistake. I apologize for any errors.
Reviews, as always, are deeply appreciated.