Author's Notes

One Must Fall: The Battle for Ganymede is a novel re-imagining of the events, almost exclusively, of the single-player campaign mode of One Must Fall: 2097, the one-on-one fighting video game by Diversion Entertainment, published in 1994 by Epic MegaGames, now just called Epic. The title is in the vein of the era's Street Fighter or, somewhat more closely, Mortal Kombat. Originally, I had intended to do detailed descriptions of all the machines, and many of those will still appear; however, it is easier for the reader to simply search for the relevant images.

It's been a decade since I really played this game. Some of my memory of it might be rusty; ergo, where the story departs from the game's canon, such as it is, future chapters will hold with the story's newly established canon. After all, that's how fan-fiction works.

CHAPTER 1

State of WAR

Heavy, gray rain streaked the windows of the mag-lev train as it zipped over the ruins of the Midwestern countryside at almost three-hundred-thirty kilometers an hour. With one hand, the young blond woman wiped her face, as much to cover it as to remove the tears that had joined the drops of rain in their falling. Her other pressed a corner of her data pad, and the screen's faint cerulean went flat black, and she tucked it away into a hidden pocket at her hip. Things were bad; painfully bad. It wasn't enough that Crystal's parents had mysteriously died while working on WAR's mysterious Nova project; her brother, a ranking member of the corporation who wouldn't state what he did for a living, had, with that notice, effectively disowned her. Losing her portion of the family's considerable fortune, as well as any of her stake in the company were hard, but that was nothing compared to what he'd said, his admonition for her not to show up at the company's televised tournaments at all.

Throughout their entire lives, Christian had been Crystal's guardian angel. He was stronger, braver than she, and much admired by WAR's chief publicists and executives. Crystal herself had more flown under the radar, hid in her brother's shadow; an easy place to get lost. Christian cast a great shadow. He'd become her guardian angel, always quick to jump on anyone who spoke ill of her, or threatened her in any way. In their youth, Christian had been involved in more than a few fights simply to protect his sister's honor. If his defense and attention sometimes felt a little strange and suffocating, it was, at least, the greatest association she'd ever had. Now, he'd told her that she would be getting in the way, that she had no place in the tournament, and that he refused to sponsor her. A brilliant bio-chemist in her own right, Crystal had expended the last of her finances making this trip, securing her spot. After all, she had a claim to the company as much as anyone. As much as Christian.

It was with obvious haste that the parts of the Flail had been strapped onto the trucks now speeding on roads over the Nevada desert. Flat, empty sand stretched out nearly as far as the eye could see, a bandanna-sporting man with an assault rifle hanging out the passenger side window of the rear truck. He pulled his head in to jam a radio, shouting obscenities at it before he put his head back out and fired shots into the air. The other trucks picked up speed, one an enclosed vehicle falling behind slightly, black smoke pouring from its stack.

What the man had been firing at was evident, now. High above them, a giant airborne base shot forward, weapons on its bulbous nose turning slowly toward the escaping vehicles. One of the trucks tried to turn, losing traction at those high of speeds and spinning out of control before toppling, the bed with its heavy cargo remaining upright. Even as the driver stepped out and loaded up a shotgun with explosive rounds, another shadow flew from the carrier, long and lithe, slamming into the ground almost directly on the lead vehicle's hood. The almost-humanoid, somewhat feline figure slowly unfurled from its crouch, standing at an easy eight stories tall. It went low again, one hand stopping the next truck, throwing it end-over-end backward, and one by one, the convoy stopped. The men on foot were reloading, having spent their ammunition on it, but it was all for nothing. The next instant, they were crushed or scattered or torn to pieces from the aircraft's weapons, and the Jaguar silently observed the proceedings.

It did step back as the aircraft eased itself down, and another Flail's spiked wheels rolled off its back. The wrecker began loading the parts onto the carrier, until something changed in the ground. From a distance to the south, another Flail approached. Its paint was chipped, armor missing in spots, one of the hanging chains from which the Flail derived its name completely missing. As it drew closer, the WAR team could see even more was wrong with the machines. Though it approached with clenched fists, ready for combat, the left fist refused to close completely, and the shielded eyes sparked occasionally. Even experienced pilots could only guess what that meant.

The fight, then, was brief. WAR's Flail finished packing away the parts recovered from the wreckage and loaded itself back up onto the carrier, powering down, while the Jaguar turned to face the incoming wrecking machine, hardly more than a shambling wreckage itself. The tan Jaguar outpaced the Flail easily, wearing it down quickly with driving kicks to the head, catching the one good chain in an overhead throw and tossing it several kilometers away. Each flurry of disarming blows only seemed to make the Flail more determined, and finally it charged, paused and ducked as the Jaguar's attack flew over its head, and lashed out immediately with the damaged fist. That strike knocked the Jaguar back. It took only a moment for the Jaguar to reassess the situation and fly back into action, leaping high into the air and coming down directly onto the Flail's head, slamming it into the ground. Then, with both hands it lifted the struggling machine, launched itself upward again, and as it landed, tore the damaged Flail in twain over its knee, tossing the pieces aside before it remounted the carrier.

Milano Steele awoke slowly, groggily, yet with a strange determination. A nurse backed slowly away as the chemicals clouding his mind began to fade, and he sat, gradually, reaching for the bottle of water that usually sat beside his bed. The door to the tiny room opened, the passage filled by a large, dark-haired man. "You spent far too long toying," the man told Milano. He couldn't tell if he was frowning especially now, or if that was simply the man's usual grumpy face.

"No," he finally replied, taking another swig of water to try and wash the metal taste from his mouth. "Whoever piloted that thing was an expert. No rookie takes hits like that, or times a blow that well. Even you would have lost to some fresh wannabe in that old and broken of a HAR. Whoever it is, they're desperate."

"Tell Jean-Paul. This tournament might provide the perfect bait."

Milano had no response. Raven was, of course, right, but no one needed to tell the huge Navajo that; his very walk made it clear he knew exactly what he was doing, path back to WAR headquarters went on in relative silence, the Flail's pilot cheering with his friends about what he perceived as a victory. Of course he was wrong; Milano knew that. Everyone knew that, but hadn't the heart to tell him. This hadn't been a job worth getting excited over. The fact that it had even gone the slightest bit wrong meant there was more at risk here than they'd possibly imagined. It meant someone knew something they didn't, and for everyone who was anyone in WAR or any of its subsidiaries, knowledge was the greatest form of power. It was a good part of what made Raven so powerful, outside of his sheer physical strength and martial prowess.

The Devroes had been perfect puppets. What made it tragic was they had been the best working team they'd had. Raven rarely sat when he could stand, and now he stood, much against the crew's insistence, near the cockpit of the carrier as it hovered briefly over its landing zone near WAR's headquarters, and slowly lowered itself to the ground. Lift trucks, another Flail, and hovering platforms hurried out, while a pair of high-rigs meandered in behind the team to collect the Jaguar and Flail that had been used in the recovery. By then, Raven was already inside, stepping into the elevator as it shot him up over a hundred floors. When it stopped, the box remained still, slowly equalizing the pressure before the doors popped open, the air around Raven rushing out past him into the office space.

Here, even Raven was unwelcome, and while he didn't doubt his ability to take on anyone, the automated weaponry that covered most of this hall would cut even him down in an instant. They were subtle, except the one turret on the ceiling, but his carefully trained eye could just spot the hatches or hidden panels. Curiously, Raven always suspected that not all of the weapons were fire-arms. He expected Kreissack to have every kind of overkill covered when it came to his own safety.

"What... do you... need?" The man was ancient. His body had broken down decades ago, but through the careful, constant application of bionics, prosthetics, and other words that meant machines doing the job his normal body should have been. Each pause was a long, mechanical breath, and every sentence punctuated by a pained wheeze that, in anyone else, might have been a cough.

Few places anywhere made Raven uncomfortable, but Kreissack's office was definitely one of those places. He made his report quickly, and turned to leave. Before he'd made the door to the elevator, that wheezing, grating voice followed him, carried by just an ounce of the old force that had once held him rapt, to sit at the man's feet and learn. "The girl, the ... Devroe girl. ... I understand... her ... brother does not... wish ... her here. See... to it. There ... are enough... in ... this charade... as it is."

Plug did not look happy when Milano entered the bay, looking up longingly at his massive alternate body. "For the love of a the welding god, kid, what the hell did you run into out there? A boulder? I mean, I get the once, you're stupid like that, but repeatedly?"

Everyone took a ribbing from Plug. The man was always the hardest worker on the team, and always the last one to turn out the lights. Didn't make it easy, at first, but Milano had taken a liking to the old mechanic. Tournament fighter, they said, best of the best, from back when the H-for-human part of the HARs was a lot less mind-magic and more mechanical manipulation. He still kept a trophy on his desk, which was actually a toolbox that he happened to have papers and things scattered atop. Techs hurried across the scaffolding in front of the giant machine, welding, measuring, recording, tightening. Occasionally a man-lift would appear on one to get the tech just to the right height. Even from this distance, the noise was deafening. "Armor piercing bullets," Milano explained, futilely, he knew, but sometimes you just said it. "That punch, though. I should have seen that one coming. Whoever was driving that Flail was good, it was just a scrap 'bot."

His reward was an unsatisfied grunt. "You tried to come in high over a standing guard. Every new guy knows you never come in high at a standing guard, or even a slow advance. They'll flip that on you quicker'n a flash. Come on, kid. You got potential. Just watch your step next time. You join the advance, draw 'em in and hammer 'em with reflex hits until they can't see straight. You got that?"

A chuckle, and Milano nodded. Even though he knew the basics of HAR fighting, hearing Plug tell him how to do it, that cadence to his voice like he was reliving an old memory rather than teaching a new fighter, was music. "How long?" Milano finally asked, and Plug's incredulous look bored holes in him.

"Have it done before you need it again," Plug reassured Milano, then grinned and shrugged. "Tomorrow, most likely. Doing a fix-up on another 'bot, plus a custom paint job. 'Course, you got first call, but some of my guys are still working on this new thing."

New thing. That caught Milano's interest, and he leaned in. "New?" he repeated, and was confused himself at the look of confusion on Plug's face. The man led him all the way out to the third row of hangars, a normally silent place, and to a corner where noise could readily be heard.