Chink… Chink… Chink… The high-pitched ringing of metal on metal echoed rhythmically across the rocky cavern. Red-brown pieces of stone were slowly chipped away from the dusty silver sheet of metal that they covered. Sweat dripped lazily down a tanned forehead, plastering auburn locks of hair to skin. Asparagus green eyes showed weariness mingled with excitement as the treasure beneath the earth was slowly brought back to the surface.
Rana Iitani allowed the head of her pick to rest against the rock beneath her feet. She raised a hand, brushing the back of it across her forehead and heaving a sigh. Surveying her work, she couldn't help but feel a small surge of excitement. She had almost completely unearthed what she thought to be the cockpit of a Zoid. Once that was out, the real fun would begin. An anticipatory shudder worked its way up her spine.
Rana stood in a valley by the name of Urlmar, one of the more forbidding places on Planet Zi. Bordered on all sides by enormous, rusty red mountains, it wasn't easy to get to. No foliage grew in the valley, or on the mountains. The place was, by all reasonable definitions, a desert. According to some books Rana had read on the area, an imperial research base had stood on the spot thousands of years before, back when the Empire and the Republic were still at war with each other. After the horrific meteor strike during the war the fault lines of the continent had shifted and the base had been unlucky enough to be right on top of two tectonic plates as they crashed together. The mountains had risen and the base had been buried. The base's name had been given to the valley once the situation on the planet had settled down enough for people to actually notice such trivial things as unnamed valleys.
Intrigued by the valley's story, Rana had decided to investigate. She had graduated from her last required schooling the year before, and she had enough money saved up from odd jobs to support herself while she did something that she considered fun. About a month ago she had packed the storage compartment of her Sea Striker with provisions and extra clothes, rolled up her bedroll, and told her best friend Todd that she was leaving on an extended adventure. He had raised an eyebrow at that, but didn't try to stop the willful young woman as she waved goodbye and headed out the door.
Riding out to the valley had not been a particularly enjoyable experience. The Sea Striker was old, and the small magnesser that allowed it to hover would give out at odd moments only to sputter back to life before the small Zoid could actually hit the ground. It also seemed as if the device never gave the same output for more than a few seconds, and Rana found herself bouncing quite a bit as her mechanical manta ray bobbed up and down as if tossed on a choppy sea. Her relief when she finally reached the outermost mountain around Urlmar Valley and settled the Sea Striker to the ground was immense.
From some satellite pictures of Urlmar Valley, Rana had known that she was in for quite a trek to the low area within the mountains. There was no clear-cut path either over or around any of the stone behemoths. She had plotted out what appeared to be the easiest course on one of the more detailed images, and had to hope that none of the features had changed too drastically in the two years since the picture had been taken. Slinging her pack over her back, filled with tent, bedroll, and enough provisions to last for ten days, she had set out across the moisture-less terrain.
As the area lacked any sustenance for small herbivores or even insects, so too did the valley and its surrounding mountains have an absence of any larger animals that could have been a threat. In fact, the area seemed to lack any kind of life at all. When Rana settled down at night the only sound was the faint breeze across the rocks and her own breathing. It was rather unnerving, lying in the silence beneath the twin moons and twinkling stars; unnerving, but peaceful too.
Since Rana hadn't had to worry about dangerous animals, she had been able to focus all of her attention on walking. Luckily the path she had chosen had been fairly free of difficult obstacles, and it had only taken her about three days of determined hiking for Urlmar Valley to come into sight. From there it was pretty much a slide down to the valley floor and a short trek to a small overhang under which Rana had set up her tent.
Rana's next three days in the valley were spent exploring. Though mostly flat, the valley floor still held interesting cracks and depressions. Rana hadn't known what she was expecting to find, but she checked each of these anomalies thoroughly, sometimes digging a few feet down into a depression before moving on to the next. It was during one of these short digs that she felt a familiar resistance to the motion of her shovel.
Surprised, Rana had bent down and brushed away a rather thick layer of dirt. She had been greeted with a silvery flash and the smooth touch of metal beneath her fingertips. After that she had spent the rest of the day chipping away rock and dirt in each direction away from the original spot, trying to discover the extent of whatever it was that was buried beneath the earth. Just as the sun was vanishing behind the western mountains, Rana found herself looking down at a familiar insignia.
A red dragon wound itself around a gold-hilted sword, wings flared. Its maw was open in a snarl, tiny pointed teeth poking out against the black background. Rana knew that insignia; she had seen it in practically every history book that had ever been forced in front of her. It was the symbol of the Guylos Empire, one of the famous factions from the war. All the stories said that the Empire had made sure to stamp its insignia across each and every one of their plentiful machines.
Overly excited now, but with no light left to work with, Rana had reluctantly retired to her tent. She had curled up in her bedroll, knowing that she would have to head back to her Sea Striker the next day or risk running out of supplies. Regret at putting off the dig had burned inside of her.
But still she had gone. In her haste to gather more provisions and return to her find she was able to cut nearly an entire day off of the time it took her to return to her old Zoid. She had gathered enough provisions to last at least fifteen days and somehow managed to haul the load of food and water over the mountain and back to the valley. That was when the real work had begun.
Several days of chipping away the layer of dirt and rock above what Rana believed was a trapped Zoid had revealed at least some of the things coloration. A brilliant crimson red tried its best to show through a coat of dirt that would take hours to wash away. Silver accents shone through the earth like veins of the precious mineral, and it was as she was digging near the location of her original find that Rana had come across a panel of translucent emerald green.
Leaning down, Rana had gazed at the jewel-like panel. It was less dusty than the other areas, and Rana supposed that this was because of the thing's completely smooth surface. Gazing into it, she was just able to make out what appeared to be several large lenses. She hadn't been able to count them all, but from the set-up they looked to be part of a Zoid's optical camera system.
Figuring that an optical camera would only be located in a Zoid's eye, Rana had assumed that the area on which she stood was above the Zoid's head. From what she knew of Zoids, Rana knew that the cockpit was almost always located in the head. Exceptions to that rule were Zoids with very small or no visible heads, like the Leo Blaze or her Sea Striker, and those were only very small Zoids. Looking over what she uncovered, Rana knew that this Zoid was not a small one. It seemed more between a high-end medium and a large.
It was as she was thinking about the cockpit that Rana thought of something that she should have thought of before. She didn't even know if this Zoid, most likely thousands of years old and covered in several tons of rock, would work. For all she knew its Zoid core had been crushed and the thing would never move again. Was it really worth the effort to extract it? She didn't honestly know.
Eventually Rana came up with a compromise. She would dig up the Zoid's cockpit and open the thing up. After that she would try to activate it. If it didn't at least make some sort of beeping noise or give her a flicker of the control panels, she'd leave the thing where it was and forget about it. She wanted to avoid the disappointment of getting the whole thing out only to realize that no amount of repairs would ever make it work.
And so she had started working on the cockpit in earnest. Every day, from just after sunrise until there was so little light that she was more likely to hit her own feet than the rock Rana would work to unearth the cockpit. Little by little the earth fell away. Rana had chipped away more around the eye, careful not to strike the smooth, translucent material, and had found what appeared to be a seam in the metal armor.
Now, several days later, Rana found herself looking at the tip of a nose, the last piece of the head to be uncovered. She had already worked away the stone to the back of the cockpit, and had even revealed part of two large ears. The sun was already slowly sinking behind the mountains, but Rana knew that she would finish this part of the excavation before night had truly fallen. Tomorrow she would try opening the cockpit.
"That's right, buddy. Tomorrow you haf'ta show me you're still alive down there."
Through the few weeks she had spent in the valley, Rana had found herself talking more and more to the trapped Zoid. She had no other company, and if the Zoid were still active then she was almost entirely certain that it could hear her. She had never really talked to her old Sea Striker, but she had seen and heard many other pilots, whether they had transporters or battlers, talking with their own machines. For some reason she found it quite pleasant to talk to this Zoid.
Rana went to bed that night almost giddy with excitement and nervous anticipation. Her dinner of a thick beef stew roiled in her stomach, almost but not quite threatening to come up if she didn't calm down. She closed the tent flap almost reluctantly, not wanting to lose sight of that silver hatch trying its best to shine in the moonlight despite the dirt that covered it. But the nights were cold and reason finally won over, forcing Rana's hand to move the zipper along its path and steering her to her bedroll. She curled up within the down-filled bedding and allowed her eyes to flutter closed.
TATATATATATATATATATATA! The machine-gun fire rang out across the barren landscape, quickly followed by the booming thud of shells on metal. Rana felt herself thrown against a pair of shoulder restraints then back against an unknown but strangely familiar seat. She knew that the motion should have caused her pain, but oddly she felt none.
She turned her head, the motion painfully slow and drawn out, to find herself looking at a view-screen. She had never looked at this screen before, yet she thought she knew it somehow. Displayed on the screen was a Dark Horn, its Gatling gun clearly trained on Rana and whatever the heck it was she was piloting. She felt the fiery coldness of dread building within her stomach.
"We've gotta get out of here Sun!"
What? Where had that come from? Who was Sun? Rana didn't know the answers to those questions, but apparently her dream-self knew what she was doing. She felt her fingers tighten around the controls, pushing them forward. A sound somewhat like a rushing explosion met her ears and then she was once more forced back against that unfamiliarly familiar seat.
Without knowing why, Rana felt her right foot flex on the pedal and then the Dark Horn's image was on the screen directly in front of her, looming closer and closer. It opened fire just as Rana felt her Zoid leap forward, right into the hail of bullets.
"Aahhh!"
Rana awoke with a start, jolting upright against the constraints of her bedroll. A few droplets of sweat were sticking to her face, and she could feel a few others sliding down her back. The sensation made her shudder. She unzipped her bedroll and brought up her knees, wrapping her arms around them. The dream was fading fast; she couldn't even remember any of the details anymore. All that she remembered was the sickening fear and her feeling of helplessness as something horrible happened; something horrible that she had absolutely no power to stop.
Forcing herself to shake off that awful feeling, Rana stood and unzipped her tent. Surprisingly the sun was already peeking over the eastern mountains, its rays just starting to travel down the opposite peaks. Deciding that it was as good a time as any to wake up, Rana quickly got dressed and started up the cooker for breakfast.
After making sure that it was a safe distance from the tent, Rana left the cooker to warm up and wandered over to newly-revealed cockpit hatch. In the dawn light it was hard to tell that the thing was silver. If not for the elegantly curved lines of the surface it would have still blended perfectly with the ground. This fact bothered Rana, and she returned to her tent to grab a scrub brush and some water. The brush was normally used on her feet to prevent calluses, but Rana figured that she could sacrifice her feet for a few days.
Working together, the water and the prickly bristles of the scrub-brush slowly washed or ground away the cached on dirt. It was tough going, but the brilliantly shiny metal that was revealed was well worth the effort. Or at least Rana thought so. Other people might not have been so happy after a half-hour's worth of work had only cleared away a patch of dirt the size of Rana's hand. Sighing and smiling slightly, Rana set the brush on the ground and decided it was time for breakfast.
Breakfast was a light affair of scrambled eggs and a somewhat-stale biscuit. Rana had decided to save her larger meal for lunch, and she really didn't have much of an appetite. She kept glancing over at the buried Zoid, itching to pry open that silver lid. She gobbled down her eggs and made quick work of the biscuit, ignoring the pain in her teeth from chomping down on the hard bread.
Finally she found herself back at the cockpit hatch. She crouched by the thing's nose, running her fingers along the red area that showed beneath the seam. If this Zoid was built like most, it should have a hatch release switch somewhere near the front. It took Rana a while to find it, but eventually she felt her fingers brush against a cleverly hidden notch in the red metal. She slowly worked two fingers into the notch, probing. Finally she felt something give and pushed her fingers against it.
Rana had to leap back, almost getting hit in the nose as the great silver canopy whooshed open. Dirt and small pebbles fell away from it to gather in Rana's nose and mouth, making her cough and close her eyes against the deluge of debris. When she could finally open her eyes again she found herself looking up at the now vertical hatch.
Shifting her gaze, Rana looked down into the open cockpit and her eyes widened in disbelief. Except for the dirt that had fallen in from the opening canopy, the thing was spotless. The seat was made of some kind of light tan leather, the color contrasting with the dark brown harness straps. Said straps appeared to be made of nylon, which hadn't been used for such purposes since hundreds of years before. The control panels seemed to be made of the same silver metal as the canopy, though they were much shinier. What surprised Rana about them, though, was that she could not see any visible indications of what the controls and displays were for. Everything was smooth and blank.
But that wasn't right. Every Zoid she had ever had a chance to pilot had always had some clearly labeled controls or gauges. The fuel gauge had been foremost among those, making it easy to check how much fuel you had left before even starting your Zoid. Looking around, Rana could see none of the customary indicators. Perhaps this Zoid had been unfinished when it was buried. Knowing her luck, which hadn't ever been the best, Rana supposed that this was probably the case.
Deciding that it couldn't hurt to just try and see if the thing worked, Rana slid down so that her feet were resting on the pilot seat. She hated to get the chair dirty like that, but it was the easiest way to actually get in the thing at the moment. Stepping from the seat to the floor of the cockpit, Rana dusted some of the dirt off of the pilot's seat before actually sitting down in it. She didn't want to grind it into the leather, after all. Figuring that there was no need for the safety belts at the moment, Rana left them alone. After all, she didn't even know if the Zoid would activate and if it did it was still buried under several tons of rock.
Sighing quietly, but still overwhelmingly excited, Rana leaned back and wrapped her fingers around what she assumed were the thrust controls on either side of the seat. They were on sliding tracks and she had seen controls of that kind before, most often in large model Ligers. The boosters would activate if you pushed them forward, propelling the Zoid. There were also red buttons on the insides of the handles. Rana had seen these on a Blade Liger. They were used to deploy and activate the powerful laser blades. Rana didn't think that this Zoid was a Blade Liger, so she wondered what the buttons were for. Shrugging, she leaned forward slightly to examine the other controls.
As she had seen before, most of the panels were smooth and blank. However, a few of them had buttons of varying sizes and shapes. There were six buttons total, all of them fairly close to the pilot's chair. Three identical rectangular buttons in dark gray were on Rana's left, far enough up that she had to reach to get them but not so far that it was inconvenient. Of the other three, there was a medium-sized circular red button on the underside of the front console. It was covered in a thick rectangle of glass with black and yellow stripes around the outside. Judging from the looks of it, she wouldn't want to press that. The other two were less daunting – a silver rectangle situated close to her right hand when it rested on the thrust control, and a green triangle in the same place on the left.
The silver button was almost invisible unless Rana looked closely. It was barely raised above the console and was exactly the same color. Only the dark seam around the edges gave it away. It was unclear whether the button was supposed to be hard to find, or if that was just a flaw in the machine's design. Either way, it was a very interesting button and Rana found her right hand moving towards it. The button gave easily beneath her fingers, sliding smoothly back against the console.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a soft whoosh of hydraulics, Rana found the canopy closing on top of her. She gave a surprised kind of squeak and almost tried to scramble out of the cockpit before realizing that that would only get her caught at best and cut in half at worst. She settled back against the chair with a tightness starting to form in her chest.
"Alright. That wasn't what I was hoping for, but I guess I'll go with it." She gulped nervously, fingers fidgeting on the thrust controls. "Let's try something else, shall we?"
It was hard to see in the cockpit with the canopy closed. A little light came in through the translucent spots on the eyes that weren't blocked by cameras or inner consoles, but it wasn't enough to light anything clearly. Luckily Rana pretty much remembered where all of the buttons had been. She wasn't really sure about the green and she knew that she didn't want to touch the red one, so she reached forward for the three plain gray ones.
Rana pressed the buttons down one by one, then two at a time, and finally all together. There was no feedback no matter what she did with them. Finally she sat back and ran one sweaty hand through her hair. There were only two buttons left to try now. She could only hope that the green one got some sort of a response.
Rana carefully moved her left hand from the thrust controls to the smooth panel behind it. She slowly ran her fingers up the cool metal until she felt the precisely manufactured edges of the triangular button. She brought her fingers over top of it, squeezing her eyes shut as she pressed down.
This time the reaction was immediate. A deep rumble echoed from somewhere behind Rana deep within the earth. It quickly increased in pitch until Rana could only hear it as a soft whirring. All around her panels lit up, a few blinking while others dimmed to show that their systems were dormant. There was a series of three quick beeps and the entirety of the cockpit that wasn't covered in blinking displays or important controls lit up into an exact display of the surrounding valley. A small hole in the front console flickered with light and a three-dimensional radar system popped up, along with a compass.
The radar was currently covered with a smaller version of the valley and surrounding mountains. It had amazing range, even picking up Rana's Sea Striker. But wasn't her Sea Striker turned off? She remembered making sure that it was powered down so that it wouldn't run out of fuel. Why then did it show up on the radar? And what were those dark spots on the valley floor? She hadn't seen anything like that around. Before she could think about it too hard, Rana found herself being jostled as the cockpit shook.
"What the…?" The metal frame around her shifted, forcing her back onto the seat. She wasn't sure why, but some instinct screamed at her to put on the safety straps. She quickly grabbed the thick nylon straps and pulled them into place across her shoulders and hips. Glancing around, Rana realized that the cockpit suddenly seemed to be a few inches higher off the ground than it had before. "What the hell is going on here?"
A high-pitched, rumbling whine answered Rana's question. Then the cockpit shook again, abruptly freeing itself from the ground. It swung back and forth, slamming Rana against the sides. Finally it stopped moving, but in the absence of movement a deep groan began to echo from within the earth. It was an unearthly, teeth-clenching noise that made Rana push her hands against her ears and squish her eyes shut. A raucous chorus of incessant beeping brought her back to reality and she looked up. Pressure alarms were blaring and blinking warning lights. Apparently the Zoid was trying to free itself from the rock that encased it.
"Whoa buddy, it's okay." She didn't know why she was telling a many-ton metal monster to calm down, but it seemed like the only solution at the moment. "You're alright, just calm down and I'll figure out how to get you out."
Surprisingly, the Zoid stopped struggling. The pressure sensors slowly ceased their beeping, leaving only the gentle whirring of the activated Zoid core.
Rana sighed, hanging her head in relief. "Well now, that's better, isn't it?"
A groaning whine echoed from the Zoid's vocal processors. It obviously did not agree.
Reaching forward, Rana gently patted the central console. "Trust me, it'll be alright. Now how's about you let me out so that I can see what I can do about this mess?"
For a moment the canopy seemed to clamp down even tighter, causing Rana to hold her breath. But then it swung upward, albeit with a reluctant groan, and sunlight once more fell within the confined space. Rana breathed another sigh of relief.
Rana undid the nylon restraints and jumped from the cockpit, yelling in surprise as she actually fell several feet to the ground. She turned to look at the Zoid, finding that it had indeed lifted its rather fox-like head free of the ground and that it had also brought up part of its neck. The cockpit was at least five feet off the ground, putting Rana at a level with the things teeth – brilliant crimson affairs that were obviously quite sharp.
"Geeze! You could've at least given me some warning!"
Another sort of whine rumbled across the valley, causing the Zoid's head to shake. It seemed to be laughing at her.
"It's not funny!"
Rana grumbled and turned to look at the rest of the Zoid's body. It had managed to free its neck, but the entirety of its body, legs, and tail - if it had one - were still buried. It had already taken Rana close to two weeks to unearth the head. Who knew how long it would take to get up the rest of it?
She sighed, resting one hand on the side of a large incisor. "I really don't know how to do this, bud." Looking back up at the head, Rana realized that this Zoid was probably bigger than she had expected. "I don't think I can do it alone."
The Zoid whined again, this one obviously sad and frustrated. Another groaning echo came from within the earth and Rana felt the ground beneath her feet tremble.
"Hey! Stop that! You're just gonna ruin your joints!" She smacked the side of her fist against the incisor for emphasis.
A rush of air ran out between the Zoid's jaws and it settled its head back on the ground, obviously disheartened. Its cockpit was once again level with the ground.
"Listen, I've got a friend at home that knows a guy who knows a guy that digs for oil. I bet he could help out, right?" No response. The fox-like Zoid didn't seem to be listening anymore. "Well, if you give me a week or so I can go home and come back with some help and we can dig you out of here! I mean really, what's another week when I'm sure you've been down there for centuries?"
Another rush of air was the only response. Rana sighed and rubbed her hand along the ridge of red armor beneath the green eye. "Trust me, I'll be back with help as soon as I can, okay? I wouldn't leave an active Zoid stuck in the ground."
Rana turned and started over to her tent. If she packed up quickly she could get on the trail before noon. She had her hand on one of the support poles when a thought struck her.
"Hey, do you want to be deactivated while I'm gone? It would make the waiting go by faster."
The red and silver head shot upwards, a menacing hissing noise passing its jaws. It turned towards Rana, the green eyes flashing. Rana wasn't sure if the fox was doing it on purpose or not, but the flash certainly sent a shiver down her spine.
"Alright, alright, it was just a suggestion. And what about fuel, anyway? You might run out and I don't know if I can bring any with me."
In answer the fox lowered its head to the ground, the canopy swinging upwards. Despite the Zoid's active state, only one panel was lit up. Rana moved to investigate.
Self-Contained Nuclear Fission Adaption System
Status: Active. All Systems Green.
Rana's eyes widened. "What the hell?! You're nuclear powered?!"
The fox answered with a soft whirring and slowly withdrew its head, the canopy falling closed again. It settled its head back in the original depression, but somehow Rana knew that its attention was still on her.
"Man, that can't be safe. You better not have given me radiation poison or anything."
The Zoid whined quietly as if to say that it would never think of such a thing, it was perfectly safe to be around, and that she had better come back even after knowing its power source all at the same time. How she got such a translation from the mechanical vocalizations of a red and silver fox Rana could only guess.
Heaving an exasperated sigh, Rana continued packing up her gear. "Fine, fine, whatever you say." She shook her head, wondering now why she had ever thought that digging up a buried imperial Zoid was a good idea. "Stupid machine, probably gonna get me killed." The statement was made under her breath, in the hopes that the great red monstrosity wouldn't hear.
----
So that's chapter one.
Yes, I know the first third is horrible. I have to work on my semi-flashbacks.
For those that don't know, a magnesser is something that actually exists in the Zoids universe. Its most famous use is in the Mad Thunder's horns. Apparently it was one of the few devices capable of allowing the Pteramander/Salamander to fly.
Please don't criticize the Zoid's power system. There's a reason for it, trust me.
Other than that, criticize away.