Here Without You, Baby

Chapter One: Insurrection

By: Sci-Fi Raptor

Disclaimer: I don't own Zoids or Battletech/Mechwarrior

Here are all the people I have to thank:

I have to thank Channel Zi for its Zoid stats, Jeff Meier of for the picture of that hot Z3Roadster from Amy's First Kiss, Mike Perry of /robotech, Edward High of High Gallery, Michael of the Explorer Corps, Paul from Ral Partha Europe Ltd, Julie for being a great hostess, and of course, the readers! Now on to the show…

"On count one of treason, we find you… guilty. On count two of disobeying NASAADSR regulations, we find you… guilty. For these charges, you will be sent to the prison asteroid for life."

Hi. It's me, Crass. And as you can see, I was just judged.

The MP's took the chained Crass Fisheye to the awaiting fold space transport to send him to the prison block; the military court started its case on another NASAADSR pilot caught for treason.

You're probably wondering how I managed to get caught so soon after meeting the Xi'an. Well, I purposely did it.

The transport was filled with nineteen other prisoners, and he was cuffed to his seat. In a few seconds, the transport counted down.

Well, when the Xi'an saved Amy Rose and I, they also got hold of CHOAM. It was decided that I would have a covert mission on Zi to try to emancipate it, but I needed men to run my ship.

The transport soon arrived in the Crab Nebula and docked on a 5,000-kilometer wide asteroid. The prisoners were escorted to the de-con and taken to their cells.

So I told them that I would get caught and go the Gulag, a prison where a bunch of people I had known had gone because they said that the government was actually taking over other worlds instead of helping them (as I found out not too long ago).

Crass was given a duty roster and an extra jumpsuit for when he would clean the one he was wearing.

So I figured I was bound to find someone that could help me there, and I told my plan to the Xi'an. When Amy found out, she begged me not to go, but I had to. Even though there was no assurance that I would live long enough to get to the prison, I knew that I couldn't do anything with just Amy and I; the Xi'an couldn't operate it either, so I had to have humans on board.

My cellmate was a red haired, stocky white person. His accent betrayed his origin.

"Me name's Jonathan Burke. What's yours?" the Irishmen said, offering his hand.

"Hi. My name is Crass. Crass Fisheye."

Our operation will be known as Meteora, and it will be a deep surgical covert operation on Zi. We will have my Herculean X2 and a Primus class drop ship. My Herculean X2 had a partial lance of HEV's, namely, a Jenner IIC (light recon), Kodiak (heavy assault), Diashi (heavy assault), Mad Cat (medium assault with limited flight capability), a Harrier IIC (the modern version of the Harrier. It has space flight capabilities), and an ATT (amphibious troop transport. It is capable of carrying one HEV, and up to eight people). The Primus class drop ship is a new drop ship with some of the newest HEV's; it was salvage that the Xi'an had managed to get their hands on from a recent battle. The new HEV's are hybrids of Zoidian chassis and Terran weaponry. The drop ship also had a lance consisting of two Rev Raptors, two Command Wolf's, one Liger X, two Hammer Heads, two Iron Kongs, and three Storm Sworders. The Drop Ship was capable of carrying more, but most of the HEV's were damaged beyond repair. All of them had their weapons, armor and sensors replaced by Terran stock. The only thing they kept were the CPC's.

We would act as a unit, with me at command. We would attack, destroy or disable strategic locations that the Terran's set up, and emancipate as many people as we could.

My first operation, like I said before, was to get recruits. I would need about ten people, including myself. Any more, and it would bee too crowded, any less and I'd be short handed. And they couldn't be anyone. There were reasons why people got sent here, so I would have to pay close attention to people of interest. I would need people that were specialized in certain things to let the operation run smoothly, and have loyal followers; namely, those who really knew what our people were doing.

I spent about two weeks there before I had a good idea of whom I wanted. My cellmate Jonathan Burke and brunette named Seymour "Buzz" McAllen were very good technicians that could fix anything, and were very knowledgeable about programming, Jonathan specializing in AI. A brunette named Joanna Thomson was a strategist that served in four tours, and knew everything there was to know about tactics. A French brunette named Renee Armand was a highly recognized medic. A blonde named James Lovell was a domineering man that was a master in many forms of hand-to-hand combat, and many of the other exotic arts. A fiery redhead named Molly Bialy was a demolitions specialist, and was also a highly skilled engineer. Mark Fitzgerald was an ace pilot who could fly anything as fast as a fighter to anything as big as a mother ship. And finally, a blonde named Catherine McNeil, an ace HEV/HES specialist, just like me. All of them had pretty exceptional skills.

I covertly went about trying to see if they were interested in the hypothetical situation if it were to happen, and all were very quick to enlist. In another week, I was ready to get us outta there.

Prison Block Space Port

Asteroid A10022

Crab Nebula

8:00 AM local

It was going to look like any routine transfer to the nearby mining site. I pulled some strings and I managed to get my whole crew into the same "boat". We would all act as if nothing was different, and the guards would send us on our way. And then the Xi'an came. A whole glisork of them took over the ship after a brutal, but lopsided battle for control. Jonathan passed out. Soon the crew was ejected from the shuttle (with their space suits on) and Gerald piloted the shuttle to an awaiting Isnor. We docked with it, and the Xi'an carrier transported us to our temporary base.

Hammer Temporary HQ

Xi'an Territories

It took me a while to reassure them that the Xi'an weren't gonna kill us. They were still agitated, but when they saw Amy come in, they finally calmed down. The glisork had gone back to their Home World, and left us to ourselves. One by one, the rag-tag crew vacated the shuttle and made their way to our makeshift HQ. When everyone got there, and were seated, all hell broke loose.

Everyone wanted to know what was going on, why were they there, and most importantly, why were the Xi'an there?

So I told them. They were chosen to form an elite group whose mission was to liberate a world from Terran occupation. They were there because they were the best of the best, and they saw what Terran forces did. And then I gave them the history of the Xi'an. Well… I was about to, but gave it to Amy, since I still didn't completely believe them. Maybe it was just because of all that training.

When it was over, I got everyone to introduce him or herself. One by one, they all gave their name, occupation and a little about their story. When the formalities were over, I gave everyone their jobs. The techs would check through the fixed Primus class Drop Ship and my Herculean X2 (which the Xi'an were kind enough to upgrade its weapons and armor to their class, since their naval class weaponry was so much better than ours) and all the HEV's. I told Renee to go through her equipment and mess around with it. I gave Joanna detailed maps and Intel of all the intended operation sites, and a list of what had to be done. I showed Molly where the chemical storage was. I told Mark to get used to the Drop Ship. I told James to get a program ready that would teach us basic hand-to-hand concepts. And Catherine, Amy and I… we just waited.

"Well…" Catherine started.

"We're finally gonna get my planet back." Amy stated.

"Your planet?"

"Yeah. I was born on Zi."

"Wait, you're not Terran?"

"Nope."

"So… you're like… an alien!?"

"I guess… but to me, you guys are the aliens."

"Hmmm"

"I'm going to see how the techs are doing…" I said, and left the two to converse.

The techs at this point were going through the Herculean X2, and stopped when they saw me.

"How's it going?"

"Its good. It's amazing what Xi'an technology can do. They were even nice enough to give us a psionic pulse drive in case our sub-light engines didn't work."

"Too nice, if you ask me…" I replied.

"Well. There was something else we found." Seymour said.

"Hm?"

"Lets just show him." Jonathan said. They quickly went to the internal circuitry, and showed me a glowing module.

"This is a Xi'an tracker. Once we turn on the reactor, this will turn on, and the Xi'an will know everything that we do or say."

"I expected s much…"

"Do you want us to get rid of it?"

"No. Its probably somehow tied into the ship. Put something on it so that we can fry it if we need to. I don't wanna upset the Xi'an; not yet."

"Yessir" they said, and scampered back to their jobs.

Seeing that I left our ships and HEV's in good hands, I went to Molly to see how she fared.

"Hi Molly!" I said loud enough to be heard over her lab equipment.

"SHHH!" she scolded. She came up to me and said that if I spoke too loud, the chemicals might spontaneously explode. I got nervous and left her. She was a talented demolitioner… nothing I could really do.

I then went to Joanna to see how she was doing. Surprisingly, she was on the floor, cross-legged, with maps and reports all around her.

"Hi!" I said.

"I can't believe you guys had so much Intel. It's perfect. We can go in here and take that out…" she said, in a world of her own.

"Oooookay." I said and left her. I saw the Drop Ship flying in the air, so I assumed Mark was doing fine. Seeing that everything was running smoothly, I went back to Amy and Catherine.

"Is not…"

"Is too"

"Just see the way he… oh, hi Crass!" Catherine said mid-sentence.

"Who's what?" I asked.

Amy was about to say something, but Catherine was on top of her in a second, and covered her mouth.

"Nothing, no one. Right Amy?" she said, and squeezed on her for reinforcement.

"Uh huh." She nodded.

"Girls are so weird sometimes…" I thought out loud.

"What! I'm not a girl!" Catherine said, offended.

"You're right, you're probably forty." I said to the teenager. Her face turned red, and basically jumped on me.

With great power… I thought as I wrestled her off.

Comes great responsibility I thought again, keeping myself from hurting her. I saw Amy leave out of the corner of my eye.

Well? What do you think? Slow start? Dull start? Should I just not continue the sequel? I hope you guys liked it, since I had quite a few people really asking for it (don't worry, things really speed up next chapter).

Um… I'm on a much farther chapter now, so any suggestions will probably be manifested mucho más adelante…

[Later]