MEGA MAN X: ISLAND OF AWAKENING
By Erico
CHAPTER THREE: A MAVERICK'S RED HERRING
"Great. Just friggin great." Hazil grumbled as he handed X a datapadd. The doctor was rolling about the entire HQ with the leader of the Hunters, comparing notes, names, and records in an attempt to sift through the megabytes of data and assign Hunters to units. And X noted with solemn irritation that he was wasting no time in complaining about everything that could even possibly tick him off. The latest being the GDC and their spending habits.
X tried to ignore him and stared at the current list of six names on his datapadd. Kluver, Ossad, Zanuck, Nirvana, Malloy and Riley…But Hazil rambled on.
"I mean, it makes no sense! Cornus Island is the GDC's pride and joy to be sure…but no one pisses with it! It's like frigging sacred burial grounds. Sure, building that Dino Tank may have stuck a few above normal eggheads together for a few years and changed their perspectives on how the world works…but you heard how much they blew! That's more than four times the operating budget they set aside for us."
"That upsets you?" X said absentmindedly as he tagged Unit placement markers beside the names and brought up more. Fernice, Jannsen, Seder, Danforth, Lowell…
"Damn straight!" Hazil snorted dejectedly, taking a look at X's choices and making slight adjustments on their psychological profiles. No sense in sticking people together that would end up being at each other's throats instead of the Mavericks. "If it weren't for the kaboodle of dough that Cain coughs up every year to keep things around here halfway decent, it'd be…it'd be…"
"Military?" X queried wryly. Hazil nodded and sighed.
"With the hash marks, purple hearts and Service Medals. The whole bit."
"Understandable." X said softly, tagging his last few names and shutting the padd off. "After all, when all's said and done, you have to have a place to come home to and unwind. Blowing fellow reploids to atoms because they're considered Mavericks does have severe psychological effects on people." Hazil noted that as X continued to speak, his voice took on a harsher and harsher tone. And the doctor spoke up in return, his retort seeming a little harsher than he meant it.
"I suppose you would know a lot about that, hero." X froze, and Hazil whirred back a few inches on his treads, tightening up from the blow that X might decide to whack him with.
But it never came. X released his tension with a sigh and merely shook his head.
"Hazil, tell me you haven't forgotten what I told you on the morning of June 20th."
"You said a lot of things, X." Hazil replied softly. X's eyes did not fill with frustration, irritation, or aggravation. They filled with sadness.
"I said that in war, there are no heroes…only mourners." X said finally. "Zero tried to rhyme his epithet and decided to pursue being a hero. He was killed. And now he's being held by the Mavericks." Hazil blinked a few moments, and knew that X was fast approaching the barrier of depression he had skated on these past months. Being a knowledgeable doctor on not only matters of the body, but the mind as well, he opted to change the subject and spare the prototype more grief.
"So why did people call Mega Man a hero?" X shrugged.
"Who knows what was going through their minds? But I have a sneaking suspicion that my older brother never really appreciated it much…" X's eyes misted over, as if he had entered a trance and had been taken to another plane of existence. "There was a song composed by an old 20th Century Rock Band called Styx…the title of the song was Mr. Roboto." Hazil crossed his arms.
"It seems pertinent, then."
"How did the lyrics go…" X's voice trailed off. "I'm not a hero…I'm not a savior…forget what you know…I'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond my control…" X shook his head. "That's how the song went. And the more I think about it, I believe that they had him in mind when they did it."
"Or you." Hazil noted poignantly. "Admit it. Those same lyrics fit you as well." X's greenish blue eyes blinked softly for a moment, and then the greatest Hunter nodded his head.
"They do indeed. I think you'll find that in a lot of songs in the past, their messages seem to parallel the thoughts, feelings and emotions of crucial people in the world today." Hazil sighed. X was leading him into a philosophical debate.
"Music is supposedly the window to the soul, some say. But on to more recent events. What do you think about the GDC's new Dino Tank?" X shrugged.
"You want the optimist or the realist to speak?" Hazil raised and eyebrow and grinned cockishly.
"Give me both. I'll pick the one I like."
"Optimist first then. The GDC is an organization that seems to be on the track to accomplishing great things, and I believe that if they want to flaunt their powers by building a localized, Cornus Island only defense Juggernaut, that's their freakin perogative as long as they don't touch my paycheck." X rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"The realist sees a familial correlation into the history of the past. After my older brother Mega Man defeated Wily in two Robot Rebellions, the gray haired lunatic supposedly recovered the wits and senses that had left him years ago in the teleportational experiment gone awry. That experiment, by the way is what caused Mega Man's older brother Protoman to be blinked away to fend for himself as he made his way back on the long trip home. Wily asked forgiveness for the acts he had committed while insane, and pledged to work with my father Doctor Light in a project that would forever protect the world."
"This project Hazil, was the construction of a giant peacekeeping robot codenamed Gamma. It was immense in size like the GDC's Dino Tank, and was designed to keep order and protect the world, like the Dino Tank is supposedly going to protect the island. Of course, the designs made by Wily in the early stages called for eight specific variants of Energen Crystals. They couldn't just MAKE THEM. This was back before they had molecular altering technology. These were found in seven remote regions about the earth…and one which had been found on the dark side of the moon. Of course, these eight locations just HAPPENED to be having difficulties at the time, thanks to the Robot Overseers going berserk and taking over, creating strongholds to which none could enter, and thankfully none left."
"So Wily and Light asked Mega Man to once more don the guise of the 'hero' and go about to these locations, stopping the Robot Rebellions and collecting the eight diverse elements. Mega Man accomplished the goal in spades, and along the way kept running smack into his older brother Protoman. He didn't find out about the red and gray robot's true nature until AFTER the entire Rebellion, of course."
"And this peacekeeping robot Gamma was finished as planned. Light and Wily had worked together to create a metallic behemoth who now at last had a working power system and a highly advanced neural network thanks to the crystals. And here's where things get bad."
"Wily turned around, shoved Light out of the picture and dragged Gamma back to his new Skull Fortress. Mega Man arrived a bit later than usual, thanks to the fact he had to deal with a Wily robot known only as 'Doc Robot.' I'll tell you, that one doppleganger posed more danger to Mega Man than all of the eight Robot Masters did."
"And when Mega Man went to face Wily and bring him to justice, the insane doctor who had never reformed, and had been lying through his teeth the entire time, brought the gigantic robot Gamma to bear on him. And then it was with bitter truth that Mega Man and the world realized something that day."
"Big giant metallic guardians may seem like a good idea, but there's too great of a chance that their power will end up in the wrong hands. And that's when they hold the potential for destruction. That's when the guardians reverse roles and become conquerors."
X blinked a few times and finally shook his head to bring himself out of his trance. Hazil stared at the blue Hunter for some time, his mouth slightly open as he gaped in amazement. Finally, the Medical Reploid came to his senses enough to whistle in appreciation and suck in a breath.
"X, I don't know what to say. The simple fact you know this much…and have that opinion…" Hazil's eyes darkened. "Now I'm jittery about that Dino Tank." X nodded.
"Thought you would be. And I know that much because I have a desire to know things." X's eyes twinkled sadly. "If I hadn't been a destroyer of misled reploids, I could be a History Teacher."
X remained silent after that, and Hazil found himself unable to tear his gaze away from the childlike and enigmatic features of the Hunter. No matter what, X's eyes held a twinkle in them that few reploids could match. Of course, seeing as he was the original, perhaps X was entitled to a little difference. Hazil decided the world owed him that much.
"Come on. If we've got all the lists done, let's bring them in to Cain and do some final piecework on the suckers. I'd like to get this over with so I can get back to work sterilizing my needles."
"Aye, Captain." X said softly. "Aye."
"Agile to Violen. Come in, Violen." The lanky purple Maverick blinked his reddish eyes for a moment, then finally growled. "Violen, if you don't respond I'm gonna…"
"Ease off, hotshot." Violen grumbled, finally activating his own connection and silencing Agile in midsentence. "I assume you're calling to find out about my progress with the Red Herring."
"That I am."
"The base is easy enough. Abandoned reploid construction facility which was picked up by us covertly, now still considered unusable, no one suspects it is still in production."
"What model reploids did they build there?" Agile asked, scratching the bottom of his chin.
"Half breeds, mostly. Not complete reploids, but mostly robotic hoverdrones and ground pounders, that sort of thing. They have enough smarts in them to avoid damage, yet they're still cheap enough to produce en masse. They lack any sense of free will, which makes them little better than smart drones."
"That's good and dandy." Agile replied. "Be sure to get a few more shipments out before we activate the comm grid and point the place out for the entire world."
"Your hoverdrones are as good as there. What kind of defense do you want me to keep on base?" Agile furrowed his brow, picturing Violen at the abandoned desert facility in the Middle East, sand blowing about his massive metallic feet.
"Don't make it too easy. If they get wise, that wouldn't be good."
"Not too much, not too little. Do I sense a retelling of the Goldilocks and Bears horror story?" Agile frowned.
"Violen, what have you been smoking? There's no horror in Goldilocks. She eats their food and zonks out in their beds." Violen chuckled a bit, a low chuckle that filled the comm with a sense of dread.
"In my version, they rip her head off and kick it about for Rugby. The curls make it aerodynamically sound, doncha know." Agile laughed in response, his bloodthirsty mind just picturing the lumbering furry creatures destroying a senseless human.
And in place of the growling bears, he saw himself and Violen standing there, severing her neck muscles one by one as she screamed out in unimaginable agony…
Agile shook his head and brought himself out of his trance.
"I'll have to keep that version in our database then. Violen, finish up there and meet me back at the insertion point to Paradise. One final rally of our forces, and then it's showtime."
"Serges gonna be there?" Violen queried. Agile shrugged.
"He said he still had work to do with Zero. But don't worry. He'll make it to Paradise as well as any of us. Agile, out." The comm went dead.
Violen blinked his optics for a moment before turning around to face the Maverick standing beside him, one of the new Maverick Generals that Serges, Agile, and Violen had recruited for the great Second Uprising. In his past life, he was known as Jasper, a rambunctious and hot tempered animal reploid who worked for an underwater drilling corporation in Australia.
In this one, he was a long jawed, hunched over metallic demon with a mouth full of deadly teeth, a whippish tail, powerful legs that could shoot him in the air like a spring, and a pair of matter generators on his shoulder blades that allowed him to hurl wall climbing buzzsaws.
In his life as a Maverick, Jasper the driller was now Wheel Gator, the most violent and gung-ho member of the team of eight. He grinned a toothy grin and looked at Violen with a knowing look.
"Waaht of it, mate? That limey Agile had a thing or two the say, eh?" Violen nodded his head and deactivated his own comm. He swung his arms behind his back, making sure not to slam them into the morning star mace attached there and walked towards the outskirts of the facility. Willingly, Wheel Gator followed, his walk oafish and jerky. Of course, considering he was modeled after an Alligator, they weren't designed to walk on two feet.
"That he did, Gator. Put up medium security drones about the interior, and a few heavy 'Mechs on the outside."
"Hey mate, I got me a great new 'Mech design, and it can fire two rounds every second. Not yeeh average energy blast, I'm talking a heavy explosive shell that bursts on impact and scatters whoever's enough of a doink into the bloody kingdom come itself."
"What do you call it? Trailblazer?" Wheel Gator grinned and waggled a finger.
"Not quite. I call it a Party Favor." Violen frowned.
"Odd name. Then again…you're Australian, right?"
"If I'm not, then the bloody sun shines up my arse. Yeeh damn right I'm Australian. And if yeh wanna know why I call it a party favor, it's because we do things differently. What do yeh call a Type Four Pacific Storm Disturbance?"
"A typhoon."
"I call it a summer shower." Wheel Gator said, grinning widely. Violen smacked himself in the face as the train of thought finally checked into his station.
"I see where this is going. Next you're going to say Foster's…"
"Australian for beer." Wheel Gator finished, slapping Violen on the back. "Don't you worry your big monkey 'ead off one bit. Ol' Wheel Gator will straighten this mess up and get it workin nice." Violen nodded.
"Just be sure you get to the checkpoint soon. Remember, it's up to you to tame the beast when we take Paradise." Wheel Gator cracked his knuckled and exposed a claw for a moment, reaching up with it to scratch the edge of his teeth.
"Don't I know it…Now don't worry. I'm sure as two Reptiles we'll get along fine. It'll be like hanging out with me great great great great granddad!" Violen shook his head and walked out of the facility, passing a massive green 'Mech that Wheel Gator had described. Alone to himself and the desert sky, Agile let the wind blow hot sand across his body as he whistled.
"I thought being Maverick took out all the fun stuff in life. Somehow, Wheel Gator still finds the time to crack sick jokes…and even I enjoy gorrific stories." Violen shrugged. "All in all, it's not a bad life." Violen grinned, baring his teeth.
"Not to mention as the bonus you get to kill all the humans you want."
In the MHHQ, a Hunter who doubled as an electrical technician was examining the recovered Maverick Communicator. His armor was green and brown, and his helmet had odd apertures on the lateral sides.
He stood at about medium height and weight for reploids, with a Mark 17 X-Buster and a basic Dash Thruster system. Unseen on the outside was his strikingly bluish hair, but everyone immediately noticed the eerie brown eyes that belonged to him.
His name was immediately identified as reploid. He was known as Gearloose. A side name he had held before joining the Hunters was Vitorro, but he preferred the power that Gearloose carried with it.
And at the moment, he was staring through a high powered magnification lens, trying to make sense of the circuitry that had been melted. Over the past hour, he had managed to repair much of the damage to it…but this one section was more severely damaged, and he had saved it for last.
"Blast it…" Gearloose grunted, blinking for a moment. "No way in Hell this all makes sense…no way in Hell…" He pulled back from the circuit board and wiped the sweat from his brow.
Cain and Commander X chose that moment to come walking through the door, both looking anxious for results. Gearloose silently clenched a fist inside of his mind, but left his hands slack as they approached. Cain stopped his hobbling and leaned farther down on his stick.
"Report, Mister Gearloose." The green and brown reploid shrugged, walking over to obtain his still cold strawberry soda.
"Good news or bad news?" X crossed his arms.
"We've been getting a lot of that lately. Just tell us both." Gearloose cracked a weak smile. X was a straightforward reploid, and his predictability was something that Gearloose appreciated.
"All right then, boss. When we rescued this little piece of hardware, it had taken a few dings from stray Buster shots on both sides. Needless to say, a Maverick comm that had been on a now vaporized foe before it was obtained is not the best kind of condition you hope to find it in. I've managed to patch up a lot of the minimal circuit damage to it…" Gearloose sighed and brought his magnification scope over the crucially damaged area, then motioned to X. The leader of the Hunters walked over and placidly stared through it, giving only a slight nod of his head.
"Like I was saying, I managed to repair most of the minimal damage. But this…this particular area was banged up the worst, being the part of the board that was eaten away by a lucky shot. Prelim scans showed no hidden subroutines or explosive charges. Trust me, this thing wasn't booby trapped. We just kind of shot it past uselessness." Gearloose finished. X narrowed his gaze further through the scope and scrutinized it closely.
"So you can't repair it?" Gearloose shrugged again.
"Hey, if I knew the original circuit pathway design, I could just scrap that one section and build a new component to it. The comm chip that was soldered onto that part managed to survive. But I can't do squat if I don't know the original design…and that thing's so slagged, I can't make head or tail of it." Gearloose sighed in resignation, scratching the back of his helmet. "I'm sorry, X. There's nothing more I can do."
But X wasn't listening to the defeatist words of Gearloose with all his mind. He still had a significant part dedicated to viewing the circuit pathways, and something about them…
He narrowed his gaze further, his mouth curling up into a glaring jowl.
"Hold on…" X said softly, staring at it for a moment longer. Sure, the plastic in the area was blackened slag, but somehow the metal pathways although melted, were strangely…
X stumbled back in surprise for a moment, then regained his composure and stared at it again.
"My God…" X gaped. He could hardly believe it. Those Mavericks…those devious Mavericks…
"Hey Gearloose…if I knew what the circuit pathways originally looked like, how long would it take you to fix this puppy and get it operational?"
"With a replicator…five minutes." Gearloose grunted in surprise. "But that'd mean…" Gearloose shook his head in disbelief. "You know what the pathway looks like?"
X shut the magnification scope off and turned to a nearby desktop PC. Bringing a CAD program online, he brought up a familiar emblem of colored metal that was familiar to all the Hunters.
From the pointed nose to the Trapezoidal shape and the wolfish resemblance…the Maverick Logo. X then brought up a frozen image of the damaged circuit board and overlaid it on top of the computerized Maverick logo.
Gearloose let his jaw drop. Although the metallic pathways in the plastic slag were warped and definitely not to original specs…
"I'll be a Goddamned Gold Digger…" Cain exhaled in stunned fury. "The Mavericks based a circuit board design on their own emblem…" X nodded, smiling a bit as he stepped back and let Gearloose trace the design on the screen with his fingers.
"Gearloose, this isn't the first such occurrence of this type of thing. Back when humanity was just beginning to experiment with the true potential of microcircuitry, designers would sometimes leave little hidden images onto the chip as well. From a Waldo, with red hat and all, to little antannaed aliens, the humans dabbled with their fun pasttime. These were so small they usually went unnoticed." X turned about to face Cain.
"But the Mavericks were pretty deliberate about this one. Still, I have to hand it to them…deviously hard to recreate to an untrained eye." Cain rolled his tongue about the inside of his mouth.
"So how did you know it was supposed to look like that?" X's eyes dimmed out and his smile vanished.
"Cain, I fought them for two weeks in the First Uprising. You tend to notice when they have that insignia on them. It burns into your memory…a ghost image you never completely get rid of." Cain lowered his gaze.
"I'm sorry, X." He turned over to Gearloose and gave a short nod of his head. "X and I will be in the War Room. When you get that thing repaired, bring it up to us. We'll turn it on and see what our little friends are up to…" Cain rubbed his hands together, the glistening fires lighting themselves again in his eyes.
"This time, we'll finish off the Mavericks for good. I promise you that."
Life was good for one Emilius Cristoph, the AmeriCanadian representative for the GDC. He leaned back into his padded seat and calmly sipped on a mint julip, noting with satisfaction that the stewardess had actually gotten it right and kept it just cold enough.
He looked across from him, noting that the other members of the GDC entourage were also holding similar gazes of satisfied happiness. All in all, it had been a good day. On their prized gem island, Cornus, they had managed to create over the past decade a gigantic metallic behemoth that would stand as a foreboding warning to all that the GDC was not to be tampered with. It was a feeling within him of pride, of invincibility…really, of ego. And Emilius Cristoph had enough ego to pass around to ten other people.
"I'd say that the GDC has outdone itself this time." Cristoph said with an upraised air, beaming at his comrades.
Kannah Jadim of the Saharan Delegation smiled and nodded his gray haired head, a stark contrast to his dark brown skin. Tilting his own carbonated soda about in his grip, Jadim continued.
"Mister Cristoph, I feel this represents the beginning of a new age. An age where the petty squabbles of individual nations will take a different turn. If this prototype Dino Tank proves to be successful, then I believe that the Council will make a unanimous vote to build more…enough so that one can exist in every region. Imagine it! A world, finally at peace…with the guardians standing above all, watching. And the best part is that they are controlled by humans, and not Artificial Intelligence." Geoffrey Lyons, the British GDC delegate coughed for a moment before snuffing his cigar out.
"Rather. We'll have none of those bloody Mavericks problems surrounding our tanks. I just really can't stand them one bit…matter of fact, I'm really sort of cold to reploids in general. I'm sorry if that makes me seem like a boor, but that's just my beliefs."
Cristoph's silent eyes spoke volumes as they flickered to life, spreading out to his smile and deepening it. He lifted his mint julip in salute and emanated a small chuckle.
"Believe me Mister Lyons, you are in good company. Don't worry about it." Cristoph sighed, shaking his head. "I too feel that we made a mistake in building reploids. For all the supposed good they do for us, they hold too much possibility for striking back. That's why we have the Hunters. But they're no better than the Mavericks, in my opinion. Just a different group of heavily armed reploids, fighting under a different flag."
Jadim frowned and blinked. "Pardon me Mister Cristoph, but there are humans in the Hunters as well." Cristoph shrugged.
"I refer to the majority, delegate Jadim. There are a few humans with the Hunters, yes. But most of those humans are not in combat roles. The most visible of them, Cain…his duties there are purely bureaucratic. I have my own personal belief about who the Hunters are. I think that they're nothing better than a group of reploids who want to kill, and they feel that by fighting on our side, they'll get more out of it. After all, they get paid, they get room and board, and they get to play hero. All in all, not a bad package deal…and it attracts the most unsavory of them." Jadim narrowed his eyes and pointed at Cristoph.
"Somehow I get the distinct impression you are hostile to them…more than you should be, considering that they protect the world from the Mavericks."
"What? The few skirmishes that we have from time to time?" Jadim shook his head at Cristoph's biting reply.
"No…the Uprisings." Cristoph laughed.
"Oh, please. There's only been ONE Uprising. And the leader of that revolt is now dead. Sigma was a Maverick Hunter before he changed sides. There is most definitely something disturbing about that snap change that frightens us. What happens if the Hunters all decide the Mavericks have been correct all along? Then we find ourselves facing an even bigger threat…one that could indeed carry out the plans of human genocide."
"Cristoph, are you familiar with history?" Jadim asked, his voice now low and cold as ice. Cristoph downed the last of his julip and slammed the glass on his armrest.
"Enough."
"Then tell me about why the United Nations went to war against the Serbs…against Iraq when Hussein began to wipe out the Kurds." Cristoph opened his mouth and began to speak, but Jadim flung his hand out and continued, silencing the delegate with his forceful continuance.
"I'll tell you why. The UN went to war against them because those two powers were committing GENOCIDE…threatening to destroy the very fabric of morality, and if it had continued, it might well have gone global. In that same respect, that is why the Hunters keep facing the Mavericks. I assure you Cristoph, those Maverick Hunters aren't in it for the money, the benefits, or the free health care." Jadim leaned forward in his seat, letting his smoldering eyes burn themselves into Cristoph's skull.
"They do it because those in the Hunters have a sense of morality…a sense that many HUMANS seem to lack. They know that while there is injustice, racism, and harassment of reploids by the humans, achieving victories over these obstacles by mass killing and cold blooded revenge is not the answer. They know that the very existence of the Mavericks threatens them all, because there are some humans who would leap on them all, bad apples or not like a pack of wild dogs and persecute the whole lot. Cristoph, your views only prove that like the Nazis before you, you are filled with burning hatred and a grievous bias against a race of intelligent beings that are trying their best to LIVE…and live better than us." Jadim leaned back in his seat and shook his head, his face now beet red.
"It is people like you, Cristoph, that keep the world from moving forth into an age of peace. As long as there are those who would cause conflict over petty issues of discrimination and superiority, there will be no surcease to the endless chain we cease to break."
Cristoph took it all in stride, absorbing the angry words of his fellow GDC delegate with a blank stare of mild interest.
But inside he was seething. Seething, because he wanted to scream out in rage, hurl himself across the cabin of the airplane and strangle Jadim's breath out of him. Jadim sighed and covered his eyes, still shaking his head.
And when no one else in the traveler's compartment was looking, Cristoph vented his rage.
Even in old age, he was strong. And his angry trembling hand lowered itself and the empty polymer glass down next to the floor…polymer glass that was built to withstand a fall of fifteen feet without a crack.
With one conscious muscular command, Emilius Cristoph tightened his grip on the glass.
It silently blossomed into a jagged pattern of spiderweb cracks before finally turning into pieces and falling loose from his grasp.
He's wrong…They're all wrong…Cristoph seethed silently in his mind, somehow containing the incredible rage and maintaining a blank stare.
His mind was as dark and clouded as the increasing droplets of blood coming from his gashed hand.
The War Room of the Maverick Hunters was a bustling and busy place, filled with humans and reploids alike chattering in their various languages. Some were wearing headsets and scanning the airwaves for alerts of trouble, a task best filled by reploids with higher data absorption clockspeeds. Built like the operating bridge of a Star Trek ship, all the stations were designed to face forward towards the main viewscreen. A viewscreen that was currently showing a map of the earth, tinted green in a sign that there were no disturbances anywhere.
Cain leaned back in his reclining chair and looked about. Placed in the center of the room on an upraised section of metal, he could watch everything that was happening with relative ease. It was the Hunter's main command chair, a chair that no one but him had ever filled.
At the current moment because he had nothing better to do, aside from perhaps dusting off his arrowhead collection, the aged yet venerable James Cain was waiting patiently for and the reploid technician known as Gearloose to arrive. Today was now Six P.M. on December 19th, 2118, which meant that they could bring the Maverick Communicator online and hopefully be able to trace the transmissions to the final Maverick outpost. Cain allowed himself a wry grin.
Then the Maverick followers of Sigma would be forever destroyed…and along with them, the world's greatest threat.
X chose that moment to walk through the hissing hydraulic doors that led to the spiraling hallways. He looked over at Cain and addressed the man with a curd nod before speaking.
"Gearloose got the gizmo ready yet?" X asked. Cain shrugged.
"He hasn't come in. Try ringing him up on the horn." X harrumphed and brought his wrist up to his mouth. With a subconscious command, he slid a section of his armband back to reveal a sophisticated wristcomm and keyed in the frequency for Gearloose's own.
"Commander X to Hunter Gearloose. You reading me?" The response was immediate.
"Five by five, X. What's up?"
"Cain and I are here in the War Room, just wondering where you've gone off to with our hot tamale."
"Try looking behind you, true blue." Gearloose said with a chuckle. X swiveled about just in time to see the green and brown colored Hunter walk through the hydarulic doors, carrying the intricate Maverick comm in one hand. X shut his comm off and slid his armband back into place, then folded his arms.
"About time you got it working…Are we all ready to do this?" A quick look over to the signal triangulation console gave X a view of a confident magenta colored reploid who flipped him a thumbs up. Cain shrugged.
"No time like the present. If the safeties are all active, and this thing's not gonna bite…light it up, Gearloose."
Gearloose hit the power switch to the repaired mechanism and then dialed in it's function; receive only. He nodded his head at Cain, then walked over to the transmission console and plugged it in. The War Room's speakers were then filled with the empty static of unused Maverick channels as Gearloose squinted his eyes and began to try frequency after frequency in the comm's range.
X and the rest of the Maverick Hunters exchanged glances of concern and anxious nervousness as the frequencies produced static, one by one. There was an all too real possibility this one device might have been abandoned by the Mavericks…
"HOLD IT!!!" Gearloose yelped out loudly, his eyes bulging in surprise. He listened in closely over his headset and grinned. "Eight ball, corner pocket. Hold on all, I'm tuning you in."
A few buttons pressed on the console next to Gearloose, and soon the scratchy voice of a male reploid filled the speakers of the War Room.
"Wheel Gator here…I think we're bloody well prepped. Shipment's out the door as we speak." X swiveled to the signal trangulation console.
"Can you trace it? Hurry, it sounds like he'll be ending the transmission soon!" The human at the console groaned at what his screen showed him.
"It's encoded! Gearloose, what's the encoder sequence?" Gearloose didn't even look up as he snapped the answer back.
"Beta 22niner…I put in the designation to the Hunter's main computer bank fifteen minutes ago. It should recognize it." The human brushed back his frazzled black hair for a moment, quickly typed in the code Gearloose had given him, and grinned when the computer beeped a positive tone.
"Got it! Frequency decoded…I'm tracing it now." With that estabilished, X, Cain, and Gearloose tuned their ears back on the conversation, which was decidedly one way. Whoever this 'Wheel Gator' was speaking to didn't want anyone else to know where they were.
"Ya know, I'm not really a creature of the desert…give me those old muddy swamplands any day, ya know mate?" Wheel Gator's voice paused for a moment, then he let out a grunt of surprise. "Bloody Hell! Agile, don't key in a response! My signal's being traced!" The signal cut off abruptly, leaving static and a stunned room of Hunters.
Cain turned his chair about to face the human who was tracing the signal.
"Did we get it?" He asked tersely. The human gritted his teeth and typed in a few rapid key commands, then sighed in relief and relaxed his pose.
"Yeah, we got 'em. Signal source pinpointed…took me a while because it was so weak. The reason he detected it was I put in a feedback loop between our comm and his. Boosted the signal and gave us an exact location fix. But I'll tell you, those Mavericks won't be using this kind of comm from now on." Gearloose shut the comm off and groaned.
"Great. I go to all that trouble to fix it, and now you tell me that it's useless junk." The human shrugged and gave a wry smile.
"Not exactly. Makes for one Hell of a dinner table curiosity." X cleared his throat and looked over to the human.
"So where are they?" The human typed in a few key commands, and then fed the computer the coordinate data. The computers whirred for a moment, and then the main viewscreen activated.
The globe rotated for a moment before highlighting an area of the Middle Eastern Peninsula on the west side of Eurasia, then zooming in closer and closer. The human tapped his fingers on the plastic countertop beside him.
"It seems our Maverick friends have been setting up shop in an abandoned Arabic Confederation reploid construction facility." X rolled his eyes.
"Seems a bit like gangsters and abandoned warehouses during Prohibition to me." The human shrugged and looked at X.
"Makes perfect sense. I mean, who's going to look for them in the middle of nowhere?"
"Us." Cain said finally, pushing free from his chair and leaning on his walking stick for support. He directed a stern gaze at X and nodded his head.
"X, I'm leaving it to you and whatever Hunters feel like volunteering for a group of fifteen to get to that facility in the desert and put a stop to them. Time is of the essence…now that they know company's coming, they'll be on full alert." Cain rubbed his chin for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "X, you might as well take the Landchasers with you. Hangar Bay three, now…I'll tell the crews to prep their engines."
X folded his arms and gave Cain a stare of worry.
"Cain, we haven't even field tested those things yet!" Cain shrugged.
"WE may have not, but they were designed by the GDC. And if they say they'll run, then they will. I want to give you and the other Hunters a fair shot at getting there fast and furious…those Landchaser Hovercycles are the only hot ticket in town." Cain turned about to all the Hunters present in the room, and adopted a pseudo-serious stare of intense purpose.
"I want all of you to be keyed up. We are going to put an end to them tonight…we are going to at last wash away the final remnants of Sigma and his Maverick Uprising. All of us are going to have to work at a hundred and ten percent, got it?"
Sharp cries of affirmation filled the room, and even X could see what was happening.
X could see it in their eyes. All their hopes, all their dreams, all their promises to themselves and to the world that they could protect it from the Mavericks…
Was culminating in this.
X tightened up his fist, once again feeling the cold hand of fear, panic, and loathing fill him. Not again…he didn't want to take more lives…
If only Zero was here…Zero could help him. Zero was a REAL Hunter…
Do you wish to arm the X-Buster? X blinked in shock as the thought filled his mind again. He groaned and sent back his response.
NO. The query vanished from the corner of his eye, and once more he was staring at the room.
But the sense of foreboding was with him still. It was like X had a Sixth Sense for danger…a second sight that told him there was perils afoot.
And as he watched, he shivered subconsciously.
He could almost feel death's cold and bony hand on his shoulder…waiting…
Waiting for someone to die tonight.