Here Without You, Baby…
Chapter Two: Meteora
By: Sci-Fi Raptor
Disclaimer: I don't own Zoids or Battletech/Mechwarrior
But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscious seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
No one knows what its like
To feel these feelings
Like I do, and I blame you!
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain woe
Can show through
-Limp Bizkit (Behind Blue Eyes)
A long time ago, on Terra, there was a horrible war that was known as World War II. It was known as the war to end all wars. There was a very evil genius that went around making millions die in death camps. When the victors finally set the people free, they were met with a horrible site; death and decay wherever they turned. People dying or already dead were on their beds. It was said that to end the war, they had to use a horrible weapon that killed a lot of people. Many years after the war a lot of people thought they were all a hoax. That all those millions who died were just a bunch of make-believe statistics.
Why do I bring that up? Well, it's kind of like what we're going through right now. Our government is subjugating billions of people and aliens and no one knows about it. And its all General Molotov's doing. We did have negotiations with other races and form alliances. But when he became general, he made us conquer those planets. And he made the death camps.
We were ready in less then a month. We would have left earlier, but Jonathan had to build something. I have no idea why, and Seymour is as clueless as I am. But I let him finish it, and we were all set. James Lovell had retrained everyone with using the HES, and gave everyone a personal workout program to keep us at our peak. The techs said that all ships and HEV's were ready, and everyone was assigned one. Molly made 3 tons of high explosives…
We took everything with us, since no one else was going to need the base. We packed it up and put it in our storage. My Herculean X2 went inside the Drop Ship, and we set off for launch. In a few minutes, we were back in Zi's solar system.
The reason why I called it Operation Meteora was because, when we would enter Zi's atmosphere, we would be inside a large asteroid that would slam into an area near where we'd make our base. We chose to hit a mountain because we could then fly to a nearby desert and bury ourselves there, near an ore deposit. We would need it for CHOAM and the Drop Ship to be able to make repairs.
"Did you find one yet?" I asked Mark. We were both in the Drop Ship's bridge, and Mark was looking for an asteroid large enough for us to fit the Drop Ship in. After a few hours of searching, we found an asteroid large enough, somewhere in the solar system's asteroid belt. We used the Xi'an's psionic thrusters to get to it, just in case there were any Terran scouts in the area. In about three hours, the Drop Ship reached it, and we used the Drop Ship's weapons to make a hole to lodge the Drop Ship in. In fourteen hours, our excavation was complete, and the Drop Ship was inside the asteroid.
"I just realized something" Joanna suddenly said. Everyone was in the lounge of the Drop Ship, waiting for us to start the operation.
"What?" I asked.
"We have two ships here, but one doesn't have a name."
"So?" I said. Its not like a name means anything.
"Well, in naval tradition, its bad luck not to name your ship."
"Really?" I said dispassionately.
"Any suggestions?" Amy said.
"Pegasus!" Jonathan said
"Lightning." Seymour said.
"Jesus Fucking Christ!" James swore.
"Don't you think that's a bit vulgar?" Amy said. He stood up and moved away from where he was sitting.
"I think I felt something where I was sitting." He said, regaining his composure.
"Oh…"
"What do you think Crass?" Amy asked me.
"Huh?"
-_-; "What do you think we should call it?" she asked again.
"… Hammer." I said simply, and left.
"Hammer?" Mark repeated. I had left by then, so I didn't hear him say it.
"Why Hammer?"
Somewhere in Zi's solar system
Unknown asteroid
2 hours Before Impact
"I christen thee, Hammer" Amy said, breaking a bottle of wine on the hull of the Drop Ship. We were all outside, standing on the transport we stole from the prison, doing some naming ceremony Joanna dug up. As captain and commander of the ship and mission, I had the final word with the naming, and I left it as Hammer.
The bottle shattered, and the contents sprayed everywhere, quickly turning into hundreds of spheres of translucent yellow liquid. We all went back into the transport, and docked back inside the Hammer. Soon, the ship started to violently shake as we entered the atmosphere. When Mark thought we were out of their radar's range, we ejected out of the asteroid and headed to our designated base area.
"Is our cloak still working?" I asked Mark while he made us descend even more.
"Yeah, they'll never see us coming." He replied, realizing as we slowed down to cruise speed. Suddenly alarms went off.
"What's going on?" I queried the AI.
An exterior camera feed was opened on the screen, and I could see our bay doors opening.
"Someone is attempting to leave the ship with one of the Storm Sworders."
"We have some more bad news" Mark reported.
"What now?" I said urgently.
"I just detected some enemy contacts. Someone just gave us away."
"Dammit" I said. "Try to keep them off of us." I ran out of the room and patched into Caroline with our CORE modules.
"Caroline. I need you and someone else to take a Storm Sworder and the Harrier out and keep those enemies off our tail.
"What enemies? What's going on?"
"Patch into CHOAM, it'll tell you everything." I said, as I hurriedly entered the docking bay. I had to struggle to keep the wind from ejecting me from the Hammer.
"Actually, CHOAM doesn't work right now…" Seymour told me.
"Why not?" I yelled at him through the CORE module.
"Well, you told me to scan it just in case the Xi'an tampered with it, and delete the NASAADSR modules from it."
"Then why didn't you finish it?"
"…sorry"
"Dammit. Just patch into Mark and ask him what's going on." I said, as I undocked the Storm Sworder and left the Hammer, on an intercept course with the other Storm Sworder. He had a definite lead on me, but the pilot didn't know how to go to the Storm Sworder's max speed, Mach 3.2.
"Amy. Besides me, Catherine and whoever else left with her, who's missing?"
"Well, your out there, Catherine is in the Storm Sworder and I'm in the Harrier-"
"What? Go back to the Hammer and let someone else fly it!"
"Why? Because I'm too weak?"
"…"
"Well, anyway, the only other person missing is Jonathan."
"Dammit. Why didn't I think that we'd have a mole onboard!" I said, cursing myself. I cut off all communication and went into passive radar to keep Jonathan from realizing I was there. I soon caught up to him, and when I was in range, I fired both my Xi'an ectoplasmic inducers. I scored hits on his left wing and on his tail. The drag caused by the ruptures on his flight surfaces made him suddenly corkscrew left. I slowed down, and fired at his exposed cockpit.
Lucky for him, a sudden thermal flipped him around, and I hit his flight pack instead. He lost control, and had to eject. But I fired once more.
When I came back to the Hammer, I saw dozens of Zabats surrounding it. Catherine and Amy did their best to take as many as they could, but the Hammer's defensives did most of the work.
"How many more left?" I demanded as I got within range and sliced a few Zabats with the Storm Sworder's head spike.
"Thirty left" Joanna reported.
"Damn" I said to myself and burned another pair of Zabats with plasma. The area of contact made an outline of energy as it evaporated.
Amy and Catherine were covering Mark's blind spots, so I jetted there as quickly as I could. The three of us took out about half of them before they decided it was time to retreat.
"What are you waiting for?" I said in a rage as I chased after them.
"What are you talking about?" Amy said.
"If we let them get away, they'll tell them where we're headed!" I said, and blasted them all to hell. Catherine and Amy just waited as I made short work of them. Then I went for the pilots.
"Crass! What are you doing!" Amy screamed as I took out two pilots.
"What I did to Jonathan!" I yelled back, and got ready for my second run. Before I could go though, the Harrier fired missile at me, forcing me to disengage.
"What the hell are you doing!" I said angrily.
"Crass, we're here to save people, not become them." She pleaded. I fired at her.
"What the hell!" Catherine said, and grabbed my Storm Sworder. "Get a hold of yourself, commander"
"Get off of me. I'm gonna kill everyone of them!" I raged, and drove my head spike into her Storm Sworder's belly. She let go, and I went for the helpless Terrans.
"Crass! No!" I heard Amy say. I felt an impact on my aft, and then I was losing altitude. I looked at my damage indicator, and saw that my thrusters were gone, and there were internal explosions racking the HEV. I pulled the ejection chord, but the cockpit exploded as I did it. The chute came out, and I felt the sudden force of it decelerating me. I looked at the hunk of metal that was my HEV, and saw it explode. Shrapnel flew everywhere, and I was lucky enough to turn my head when I did, because a hunk of rubber was headed right for me. I felt a pressure on the back of my head and everything went black.
In case anyone gets confused with who's who, I have a list of the team roster here for clarity:
Crass Fisheye- Leader
Amy Rose- Second in command
Jonathan Burke- technician
Seymour "Buzz" McAllen- technician
Joanna Thomson- strategist
Renee Armand- medic
James Lovell- hand-to-hand specialist
Molly Bialy- demolitionist
Mark Fitzgerald- pilot
Catherine McNeil- HEV/HES specialist
[Arigato and goodnite]
