Disclaimer: I do not own X, Alia, Zero, or any other Megaman character from any of the series.
Chapter 1
The Maverick's attack knocked Maxter flat on his back. The buster shot had reduced his brown armor to a charred, mangled mess. Warnings and see through diagnostic heads up displays appeared before his eyes to tell him just how badly hurt he was. His internal energy display showed his power at 23%, another HUD displayed a list of damaged systems, and yet another was kind enough to tell him about the massive amount of coolant and hydraulic fluid his body was losing. He shut off all of the displays except for his IE HUD. He knew that they were there to let him know what his status was, but he found them distracting in the middle of a firefight. As Maxter opened his eyes and struggled to lift his head up to see just how bad the damage was for himself, he decided that his status could be summed up in one word . . . screwed.
I can't move my legs or arms, I'm bleeding all over the place, when I look down at my body I can see my insides, and I'm separated from the rest of my unit . . . I am definitely screwed.
He looked up over his feet at the Maverick who had attacked him and wished he hadn't. The enemy reploid was charging up his buster for the kill shot. It didn't help any that Maxter recognized him as a member of the 3rd Unit who had gone missing during the colony drop after Sigma had spread the Virus all over the planet. In fact, all of the Mavericks he had fought today had been Hunters prior to that fateful day.
It looks like we finally figured out what happened to you. I can't believe I'm going to die at the hands of a former comrade. This sucks.
Maxter saw the ex-Hunter fire. He closed his eyes and braced himself for the end.
He heard the shot hit something metallic and the sound of dissipating plasma. Maxter opened his eyes, surprised that he was still alive, and saw why the blast hadn't reached him. The 10th Unit's commander, Knight, had come from nowhere and blocked the shot with his shield. The gold and black reploid, whose armor looked like something from the Middle Ages, quickly swung the battle-ax in his right hand at the Maverick before he could fire another shot. The ax buried itself deep into the enemy's chest, causing him to explode as his reactor went critical.
Knight was relieved that he had found another member of his command alive. He still didn't know how a routine patrol in this sector of the Rocky Mountains had gone so wrong. They had detected some odd energy signals coming from a nearby cave after arriving in the area and had gone to investigate. As a result, they had walked right into an ambush and the unit had gotten separated when a grenade tossed by one of the Mavericks caused a rock slide. Right now though how they had been ambushed didn't matter, what did matter was getting rid of these Mavericks and finding the rest of his team.
Knight let his shield absorb the brunt of the blast and dashed towards the cave that had been the source of the signal. The two Mavericks who were supposed to have been covering their deceased ally came out of the cave and aimed their assault rifles at the oncoming Hunter. They never got the chance to fire before Knight was on top of them. He continued his dash and slammed into one of the Mavericks with his shield, pinning his opponent against the side of the mountain next to the cave entrance. Knight kept the Maverick pinned as he pivoted his body and decapitated the other Maverick with his ax.
Before Knight could deal with the Maverick pinned down by his shield, he heard something land next to him with a dull thud. The next thing Knight knew he was flying through the air and fell hard on the ground. The 10th Unit's commander looked up to see a pair of Mavericks on a mountain ledge above him to his left. He recognized one of them as the Maverick who had been throwing grenades at his team earlier and he noticed that the other Maverick had an assault rifle aimed right at him. Knight brought his shield up to protect himself as the reploid opened fire. The armor piercing rounds from the assault rifle tore through Knight's shield and body. The Hunter grimaced in pain as he felt a round shatter his right knee joint. Another round hit his left shoulder and caused the arm holding his shield to go limp. Knight tried to make his way into the cave so that he could have some cover while he tried to figure out what to do next.
Maxter could only lay there and watch as his commander tried to make it to safety. He tried in vain to get up and fire his own weapon at the Mavericks and draw their attention away from Knight, but the damage he had sustained prevented him from doing so. Maxter then noticed what looked like a small group of rocks sliding down a mountain slope and landing near the cave. The rocks reached the ground and one of them pointed itself right at the Mavericks and fired a rocket propelled grenade at them. The projectile destroyed the ledge the two reploids had been standing on causing them to fall to the ground below. The "rocks" then aimed a buster pistol at the Mavericks and fired twice. The shots left both of the Mavericks with gaping holes in their heads.
Maxter lay there amazed at the speed with which the Mavericks had met their end. He saw the "rocks" help Knight to stand up and supported the commander as they began to come towards back towards Maxter. As they got closer, Maxter realized that the "rocks" were actually a reploid whose armor had been camouflaged to match the surrounding terrain. He grinned as his fellow Hunters reached him.
"Thanks Mirage, I'm glad to see you. Have you seen any of the others?"
"They managed to regroup and take out the rest of the Mavs. Then we split up to try and find you and Knight . . . is that the cave we were looking for?" Mirage replied as his armor shifted back to its normal gunmetal grey color. It always struck Maxter as odd that Mirage's armor seemed a little too bulky for a six foot tall reploid. The shoulder-mounted RPG launcher was also a little unusual since most reploids didn't have such weapons attached to their armor.
"Yes, that's it. We'll check it out after we send Maxter back to HQ for repairs. Do you know if anyone else was injured Mirage?" Knight responded. He was hoping that everyone else had made it out okay and that nobody else got hurt as badly as him or Maxter.
"A few minor injuries, nothing that can't wait till we finish the investigation, but a few of us didn't make it . . . Troy got crushed in the rockslide and both Blade and Shard were taken out by a sniper . . . I'm sorry Knight, but Maggie got shot up pretty bad and I don't know if she'll survive."
Knight tried to keep the stricken look from appearing on his face when he heard the news about his sister. She had been so eager to join the Hunters and had been overjoyed when she learned that she had been assigned to the same unit as her big brother. Maggie had wanted nothing more than to do something where she could make a difference. Knight felt guilty about not being there to protect her. He barely managed to keep his voice steady as he spoke.
"She's a tough kid . . . I'm sure she'll be fine."
"Commander, you and Maxter should return to HQ for repairs," Mirage said, "The rest of us can handle the cave. Besides, it would probably make her feel better if you were there with her."
Knight nodded and replied, "You're right, we are pretty banged up. You and the others can finish up here and report back to base when you're done. There could be other Mavericks around and there's no reason for you to stay longer than you need to. Understand?"
"Yes sir."
With that, Mirage watched as Knight and Maxter turned into beams of light and went back to Maverick Hunter HQ.
"Not again . . ." Slag groaned after he and the rest of the 17th materialized at the camp for the work crews in Reconstruction Zone 12 of Sector 111943.
"Great, just great," commented Charger. From the sound of his voice, one would have expected the scene before them to be one of total carnage with the camp in ruins and most of its inhabitants dead or under attack. That was hardly the case. The camp was in excellent condition and there were only a few workers hanging around and relaxing before their next shift. "They dragged us out here for nothing again."
"Don't talk like that. We should be grateful that this was just a false alarm and there are no Mavericks attacking this place."
Despite the rebuke he gave them, X could understand their frustration. This was the tenth time they had been sent to stop a non existent Maverick attack on a work camp in the last two months. X was glad that the remaining Mavericks were leaving the camps alone, but even he was starting to get annoyed at all the false alarms that had been received in the last few months. A few were just where a worker thought he saw someone suspicious near the camp, one or two had been initiated as someone's idea of prank, and several of them had been the result of a series of glitches that had been plaguing the HQ's computer for the last few months. However the Hunters had to respond to the alarms since they could not afford to assume that it wasn't a real alert, especially at the relatively defenseless camps.
Ever since Gate's defeat two years ago; the Hunters had been organizing the reploids who had not fled underground with the humans into work crews. After the space colony Eurasia had been destroyed, its debris had fallen to the planet and caused massive ecological damage. The purpose of these work crews was to try and repair that damage, making the surface habitable again. They also repaired the damage done to cities by the rampaging Mavericks during the colony crisis. The camps served as housing for workers and equipment as well as a communications center that helped coordinate the activities of the crews within the Reconstruction Zone. The work camps had also eased the overcrowding at the Hunter bases that had been caused by refugees fleeing the Nightmare.
"X, come in. What's the status of the camp?"
"No signs of any Mavs, Alia. Everything looks normal," X responded to the blond spotter's inquiry, "It could just be another false alarm."
"You could be right, but the readings I'm getting indicate that there are at least five Mavericks and two ride armors . . . What?! Now it says that they're inside the camp! Do you see anything?" Alia replied, allowing some of the exasperation she was feeling to break through her normally calm demeanor.
X felt sympathy for Alia's situation as he and the other Hunters scanned the camp for any signs of the supposed Maverick attack force. He knew that the glitches that had been affecting the Hunter computer system were really starting to get to her. Her job as a spotter required her to be able to provide accurate data to a Hunter unit in the field about enemy forces, the area they were in, and any security measures they might run into. What vexed Alia the most about the malfunctions was that she had no way of being certain whether or not the computer was providing her with the correct readings and information she needed. Alia didn't like the idea of sending a Hunter into a situation blind or getting them into danger because of inaccurate information, especially if the Hunter happened to be X.
"There's nobody here except for the workers . . . unless the Mavericks are using some type of cloaking technology," X said.
"I doubt they have the resources for that. Looks like another false alarm," Alia sighed, "Are you going to finish checking out the area or do you want to come back to the base?"
"We'll do a sweep of the area to make sure everything is alright and then return to base."
"Alright . . . just be careful if you do find something."
"I'm always careful . . ." X began.
Alia interrupted him and teasingly said, "Oh, then that little incident with the land chaser was you being careful?"
"Well, yeah. I survived didn't I," X replied, "Don't worry, I'll be okay."
"See you when get back to the base, over and out."
X closed the channel on his communicator and turned to face his unit. They came to attention and waited to find out what they would do next. "Okay guys, we're doing a standard security sweep of the camp area. Charger, Matrix, Jace, and Scanner, I want you to patrol the perimeter. Slag, Sera, and Corg, you three check out the equipment storage area. . ." X continued giving out assignments to the other Hunters and when he finished, they broke up into their teams to carry out their orders.
The reactions from the 17th were mixed. Some of them didn't feel a need to carry out a patrol of the area since they believed it was a false alarm. Others were grateful to get out of the base for a while and a few just liked the idea of getting out of the scheduled patrol for that morning. Charger tried his best to look nonchalant but it was pretty obvious to anyone who knew him that he would rather return to base than hang around the camp any longer than necessary. Sera and Corg didn't seem to mind since they were working together. X just hoped that they didn't sneak off to be by themselves instead of doing their jobs, but that was why Slag was there to chaperone them. X didn't really mind it at all; it was nice to be somewhere where the reploids were trying to do something constructive and weren't hell bent on killing him.
Alia observed the activities of the 17th from her spotter station back at the HQ's command center. She typed a few commands that brought up a new window that displayed information gathered by a program she had been running prior to the alert the 17th had been ordered to investigate. The program had been gathering all of the information about the series of computer malfunctions that had been occurring at the Maverick Hunter headquarters and searching for any pattern to them. The glitches were more extensive than just a few false Maverick alerts. Fake intruder alerts, teleporters sending Hunters to the wrong coordinates, occasional communication blackouts, and malfunctioning security systems were all being caused by glitches that had suddenly appeared in the central computer. Some of the human Hunters who had chosen to stay on the surface rather than go to the underground warrens most of humanity had retreated to were even blaming the recent problems with the air conditioning on the malfunctions. Needless to say Signas had asked her, Douglas, and several other techs and spotters to find out what was causing them.
Alia resisted the urge to curse as she analyzed the results of the program. There was no discernible pattern to the computer malfunctions. Every system appeared to be affected equally by whatever was causing them. There were also none of the normal indications that they were the result of a virus. She also remembered how she had been unable to trace the glitches back to what had caused them when she had fixed them.
She minimized the window and returned her attention back to the 17th's activities. While she watched them perform a security check on the camp, Alia thought about the data she had reviewed.
What is causing these malfunctions? There's no sign of any viruses in the system. It also doesn't appear to be the results of a program somebody loaded into the computer. Maybe it's the result of some the system problems we had during the colony drop and the Nightmare . . . But we fixed those already. There was only one other possibility Alia could think of.
Somebody inside the base was responsible for what was happening.
She didn't dismiss the notion offhand. Many Hunters had gone Maverick a little more than two years ago. That meant there would be at least several Mavericks familiar enough with the base's computer systems to try and sabotage them. The only real holes in that theory was that Alia had changed the protections on the computer system to prevent the former Hunters from being able to access it and she had put in other new security measures as well. The saboteur would also have to infiltrate the base and pass the virus scans routinely administered to all Hunters. It also didn't make sense that a saboteur wouldn't do more than create some easily correctible glitches or just save themselves time by using a virus to create the computer problems. The other problem was that despite the large number of anomalies plaguing the system, none of the problems were severe enough to really disrupt the Hunters' activities.
Alia pushed the thoughts aside and chastised herself for allowing them to distract her while she was supposed to have her full attention on spotting for X's unit. She would have to analyze that possibility later along with the data at a later time. Out of the corner of her eye, the spotter caught Signas heading towards her post from the spotter station for the 10th unit. She remembered that there had been some commotion over there earlier after X and his team had been sent to the camp. The 17th had originally had a patrol scheduled before the alert had come in and Knight's squad had been given the assignment instead. The grim look on the young general's face meant something had gone wrong there.
Signas came to a stop at Alia's station and asked, "What's the 17th's status Alia?"
"No sign of any Mavericks sir. X decided to have them do a sweep of the camp to make sure that there's nothing to worry about," she replied.
"Good . . . Have you made any progress finding the source of the computer problems?"
"No, but I'll finish going over the data after X returns," Alia hesitated before continuing. "What happened to Unit 10?"
Signas grimaced and spoke in a low, pained tone, "They were ambushed by Mavericks . . . just like Units 23 and 12 were last week."
Alia absorbed the news with concern. Three units ambushed in such a short period of time. How are the Mavericks pulling it off? Even during the uprisings they never managed to lay successful ambushes this often, she thought.
"Alia," Signas started, "there's going to be a senior staff meeting at seventeen hundred. Will you please let X and Zero know?"
"Yes, Signas, I will. I'll have a report about the malfunctions ready for you by then as well."
"Thank you."
Daniel and the remaining members of the 10th unit entered the cave shortly after Knight and Maxter had teleported out of the area. They saw a few dead Mavericks and Mirage kneeling down next to what appeared to be some kind of transmitter. Daniel called out to Mirage and the grey reploid stood up.
"Here's the source of those readings we picked up," Mirage explained pointing to the transmitter. "It looks like they wanted to draw our attention so they could ambush us."
"That still doesn't explain how they knew we had a patrol in this area or why we couldn't detect them until they attacked," responded Daniel.
"Maybe this thing is responsible for that. It could have hidden the Mavericks' signatures with the energy it was emitting," Mirage paused and regarded the device again. "We should probably have Douglass take a look at it."
The transmitter looked rather unimpressive. It was a small, black two feet by two feet cube. There was a datapad that acted as a control panel plugged into a port on the back of the box. It certainly didn't look like it was capable of hiding a Maverick power reading, let alone broadcasting the readings the Hunters had detected when they arrived.
"Do you really think it's safe to take that thing? It could be booby trapped for all we know," Daniel argued, "The last thing we need to do is to bring back something to the HQ that could blow up or expose everyone to the Maverick virus!"
"Well Daniel, contact the HQ and have them send someone who can determine whether or not it's safe to bring it back," Mirage said as he went back to examining the transmitter.
Daniel opened a channel to the base on his communicator. I've got a bad feeling about this. It seems like they went to a lot of trouble to use a transmitter to lure us to a cave when they ambushed us before we even got near it, he thought as he told the 10th's spotter to send a team to make sure it was safe to bring the device back with them.