Chapter Four: Of Decisions
It had been a week since the end of the archaeological expedition and, courtesy of one of Garth's father's colleagues, they were travelling home by Whale King, having loaded the entire computer system of the base, and all of the newly created zoids onto the large, airborne transporter. Garth was deep in thought, as he had been for most of the journey home. In his dreams he saw time and again the deaths of both zoids and men, the same deaths he had seen after ejecting from the Godos he had piloted in battle, would he ever, he wondered, reach the point, in a zoid battle, where neither life nor death mattered to him anymore? Moreover, the zoid that was his new partner was like no zoid that anyone had seen before. How could he, of all people, manage to master a zoid that none had seen before?
It was in the middle of one such session of brooding that his father called for him. Quickly he headed for the bridge section of the Whale King where his father and his father's colleague had been studying the base computer system day in day out, looking for clues to the identity of the numerous unknown designs of zoid that now filled the hangar bay of the Whale King.
"Son, sit down," his father told him, "I don't believe I have ever properly introduced you to my colleague, Professor Adrik Grayson, so I shall take the time to do so now. Son, meet professor Grayson, professor of information storage and retrieval at the university of Geigolos. Adrik meet my son, Garth. Now, down to business. Garth, Adrik and I have been studying the computer system that we retrieved from the Red River base, and we have just stumbled across the technical blueprints for your zoid, the Dragowing. Your zoid, as you had no doubt already worked out, is a flying zoid of the dragon family. However, what you may not have known, indeed what you probably didn't know, is that the Dragowing was a wild zoid, in the final stages of formation, that was discovered in the secret base of an ancient Zoidian, a zoid that was destined to prove whether or not the phasing out of seemingly useless components in the ZNA makeup of a zoid would have beneficial effects on the power of the zoid itself, or if this process would damage the adaptability of a zoid beyond the ability of sheer power to counteract. As a result of this, the Dragowing should theoretically be more efficient than the vast majority of zoids, and also possesses an arsenal that is far more advanced than anything that has been produced even now. Son, I must now ask for your decision, do you truly wish to become a zoid warrior?"
Garth hesitated for a second, but only a second before replying, "Yes father, I will become a zoid warrior."
"Then," stated professor Grayson, we had better find a zoid team willing to take the boy. But first," he continued, "I had better teach him the mechanics of flying a zoid."
That evening, all that Garth could do was take things easy after the intensive training he had been given alongside professor Grayson's personal Redler. Indeed, by the end of the session, his skills had begun to outstrip those of his mentor, with him hitting targets on the first pass, even at speeds of Mach 0.95.
Overnight professor Meyer found himself tense, unable to sleep. He knew that he would have to report his findings almost immediately to the guardian force, whose abandoned base his son had discovered, and he would have to study the computer core that he had recovered far more thoroughly, for already he had found evidence that almost conclusively proved that zoids evolved in the wild to far more powerful forms than had ever been created under laboratory conditions, to the best of his knowledge, and proving the sheer power of zoids such as the Blade Liger and the near mythical Genosoarer, whose power had been downgraded by the academics over the last century or so as a lasting peace had been established, and the strange circumstances under which not one, but indeed six seemingly unique dragon type zoids had been found at the base were enough of a conundrum to have severely shaken even the professor's way of thinking, but now, he thought, he had better try and get some sleep, whether he felt tired or not, otherwise he would not have the strength for the full day ahead of him tomorrow.
Next morning, the Whale King reached their home, a medium sized concrete bunker in the desert, large enough to house maybe three Whale Kings and all the necessary maintenance equipment for them, with a tall tower reaching up into the sky from the top of it. Their first task, that of disembarking all of their zoids, both old and new, from the Whale King went without a hitch and soon all that remained was the unloading of both the computer core that they were studying and their personal belongings. Garth's father beckoned him aside for a moment at that point, "Garth," he started, "last night I put up an advert looking for a zoid team that would be willing to have you and, when I checked this morning we had received three responses, let's go start checking them out shall we?"
The pair of them adjourned to Professor Meyer 's office, where they made another check between them, in case anyone else had responded to their advert, but since the last check no new messages had been left. The teams that had left messages were the Raven, Hawk and Paladin teams, and the pair of them took the opportunity to look up these three teams in the database of the zoid battle commission, discovering that the Hawk team was the only team of the three that had any previous experience, while the Raven and Paladin teams were both starting from scratch, trying to get together the pilots and zoids to make a name for themselves when the year's zoid battle tournament began in about one month's time.
The Hawk team, a relatively experienced zoid team whose choice of both zoids and pilots focussed on a ferocious aerial assault, had over the summer months bought a trio of the newly developed Stormsworder Phoenix- type and had trained to use the new design to its full advantage.
The Raven team had been formed by the youngest son of the aristocratic Raven family, and this team would primarily be based around the use of the mighty zoids that this family had picked up in the years following the founding of this family at the end of the Guylos war 200 years before.
The Paladin team, formed by a disparate group of friends had less financial security than even the vast majority of zoid teams, with most of their zoids so far having come either from various junk heaps or been loaned to them at least as a short term arrangement for testing purposes.
Of all three teams the Paladin team looked least likely to advance in the ranking, and after he turned down the Hawk team (who apparently only wanted him as a pilot for a fourth stormsworder) the best team for him to join appeared to be the Raven team.
The next morning, they started off for the interview arranged the previous day, which would take place upon the Raven estate. The pair of them hoisted themselves into the cockpit of the Dragowing, thankful that the technicians of the New Helic Republic had been farsighted enough to fit this zoid with a two-seater cockpit. Taking off at full speed, the Dragowing began to practice both targeting and manoeuvres on route, with Garth's effective top speed at absolute accuracy climbing to Mach 1.3 by the time they touched down outside the gates of the Raven estates.
The estates owned by the Raven family were opulent to say the least. Indeed most would have described their grounds, which stood not twenty miles away from the capital of Geigolos, as palatial, their neatly manicured lawns making a welcome change from the scrubland that was found almost everywhere on the other side of their fence. In the middle of it all stood the white marble palace of the house Raven. The family's head groundskeeper met them at the gate, escorting them to a zoid hangar where they could park the Dragowing while they were here, and then, once their zoid was secure, he led them to the house. At the top of the stair that led to the front door of the house, Count Vincent Raven awaited them, walking sedately down the stairs to greet them as his groundskeeper returned to the keeping of his grounds.
"Good morning to you, Professor," he exclaimed, shaking Garth's father firmly by the hand, "so, this is your son, who would become a zoid warrior. I should probably introduce the pair of you to my son, meet Andreas Raven, whose zoid team your son would join. Son, meet professor Karyl Meyer, and his son Garth. I hope you will show Garth the estate while me and his father discuss the arrangements in private."
"Certainly father," replied Andreas, who at a height of five foot nine had jet black hair and a lean but well muscled physique. Behind him stood a machine, not large enough to be considered a full zoid, but of a similar appearance nonetheless. It was in appearance lizard like, with a body of black metal, yet with an almost blue sheen to it.
"What is that thing?" Garth asked in puzzlement.
"This," replied Andreas, "is Darkness, my organoid."
"Your son has an organoid?" asked the Professor, who was still in earshot, "I thought they were only mythical constructions."
"My dear Professor," count Raven replied, "there are many things in the world of zoids that have at some time or another been considered little more than myths. The experience of my family has been that the majority off these so-called myths are nothing but the truth. Come Professor, I shall show you our family's zoid museum."
"That was going to be the first stop on our little tour," remarked Andreas, "come on."
Soon they were inside an underground hangar that housed one of the largest and most diverse collections of zoids known to man.
"Impressive," Karyl remarked, studying the first row of zoids.
"Isn't it just," the count replied, a condescending expression upon his face. He then proceeded to lead them down the rows of zoids, pointing out everything from Blade Ligers to Gojelos' until, at the end he showed them the pride and joy of his collection, a Double-sworder, a pair of Genosoarers and a Genobreaker, all of which were fully functional.
The morning continued, with it becoming all the more clear that all the Raven family wanted was the Dragowing, and that Garth was nothing more than an optional extra as far as they were concerned. So, politely but firmly Garth turned down membership in the Raven team, leaving him with only the Paladin Team as an option, given that no other zoid teams had responded to their advertisement of services for hire.
The Paladin team, when they caught up with them, were in a small back street café having a cup of coffee. Their team, like most, already boasted three members and these took the form of a man in his mid twenties, thickly muscled and reaching a height of five foot seven with fair skin and blue eyes that darted about all over the place as well as a skinhead which didn't look out of place on him; a youth in his late teens, dark skinned and lean with brown eyes that seemed to look straight through you into your very soul and black dreadlocks, as such this six foot two pilot appeared to be very disconcerting at first; the third pilot seemed to contrast with the other two even more than the pair did with each other, for while the other two dressed in the practical jeans, vest and combat boots of zoid pilots, their jackets draped over the back of their chairs, she wore more expensive clothing in the form of a lightweight blouse and a more formal style of trouser on top of fashionable heeled boots, also wearing a single silver bracelet around one wrist. At five foot four she was the shortest member of the team but her age, as far as Garth could tell was at least a year greater than his own fifteen years and her fair skin and green eyes seemed to convey whole volumes of emotion without even trying while her shoulder length blonde hair looked perfectly natural rather than a peroxide blonde.
"Hey, I was told that you guys are the Paladin team, is that right?" he inquired.
"Depends on who's asking," the skinhead replied.
"Yes we're the Paladin team," said the girl, suppressing a yawn as she did so.
"Are we to take it you're the new zoid warrior who's looking to join the team?" asked the skinhead.
"Yes, I am," answered Garth.
"Any competition to snap you up as a pilot, dude?" asked the dark skinned youth.
"No, they were only after either me or my zoid, not both," Garth replied.
"Okay, dude, pending your agreement, your hired," stated the skinhead, "my name's Jake Sanders, the lady on my left is Adrianne Tovas, and the gentleman in the black is Mykkael Josephson, but he don't speak too much. Sit down dude, have a coffee on us, then we'll show you our base and our zoids."
Sitting down he joined them willingly, ordering just an ordinary coffee, before Adrianne, noting his clothes, changed his order to some specific brand that she knew, telling him that if he just ordered coffee here he would get, instead of the delicately flavoured coffee he was used to, a brown sludge that looked like it could be used for stripping paint and a taste that was even worse.
Afterwards, they took him over to their base, which was just on the outskirts of Geigolos, the three off them bouncing along in a jeep beneath him as he followed at low speed in his zoid. Their base, it seemed was a disused military bunker that had been constructed to protect against the abortive mobilisation of the Chazidi Free States barely ten years ago. Within it stood their zoids, a stripped-down Rev-Raptor, a white Liger Zero and an odd bear-like zoid, the like of which had not been seen before, which Jake explained was called an Ursazerk and was the first working prototype of its design.
Reflecting back on this moment, Garth was able to see clearly that the members of the Paladin team respected him as an equal, creating a far better working environment than he would have had as a member of either the Hawk team or the Raven team. For better or for worse, the Paladin team, and all of the problems that it would face, were where he belonged now.
It had been a week since the end of the archaeological expedition and, courtesy of one of Garth's father's colleagues, they were travelling home by Whale King, having loaded the entire computer system of the base, and all of the newly created zoids onto the large, airborne transporter. Garth was deep in thought, as he had been for most of the journey home. In his dreams he saw time and again the deaths of both zoids and men, the same deaths he had seen after ejecting from the Godos he had piloted in battle, would he ever, he wondered, reach the point, in a zoid battle, where neither life nor death mattered to him anymore? Moreover, the zoid that was his new partner was like no zoid that anyone had seen before. How could he, of all people, manage to master a zoid that none had seen before?
It was in the middle of one such session of brooding that his father called for him. Quickly he headed for the bridge section of the Whale King where his father and his father's colleague had been studying the base computer system day in day out, looking for clues to the identity of the numerous unknown designs of zoid that now filled the hangar bay of the Whale King.
"Son, sit down," his father told him, "I don't believe I have ever properly introduced you to my colleague, Professor Adrik Grayson, so I shall take the time to do so now. Son, meet professor Grayson, professor of information storage and retrieval at the university of Geigolos. Adrik meet my son, Garth. Now, down to business. Garth, Adrik and I have been studying the computer system that we retrieved from the Red River base, and we have just stumbled across the technical blueprints for your zoid, the Dragowing. Your zoid, as you had no doubt already worked out, is a flying zoid of the dragon family. However, what you may not have known, indeed what you probably didn't know, is that the Dragowing was a wild zoid, in the final stages of formation, that was discovered in the secret base of an ancient Zoidian, a zoid that was destined to prove whether or not the phasing out of seemingly useless components in the ZNA makeup of a zoid would have beneficial effects on the power of the zoid itself, or if this process would damage the adaptability of a zoid beyond the ability of sheer power to counteract. As a result of this, the Dragowing should theoretically be more efficient than the vast majority of zoids, and also possesses an arsenal that is far more advanced than anything that has been produced even now. Son, I must now ask for your decision, do you truly wish to become a zoid warrior?"
Garth hesitated for a second, but only a second before replying, "Yes father, I will become a zoid warrior."
"Then," stated professor Grayson, we had better find a zoid team willing to take the boy. But first," he continued, "I had better teach him the mechanics of flying a zoid."
That evening, all that Garth could do was take things easy after the intensive training he had been given alongside professor Grayson's personal Redler. Indeed, by the end of the session, his skills had begun to outstrip those of his mentor, with him hitting targets on the first pass, even at speeds of Mach 0.95.
Overnight professor Meyer found himself tense, unable to sleep. He knew that he would have to report his findings almost immediately to the guardian force, whose abandoned base his son had discovered, and he would have to study the computer core that he had recovered far more thoroughly, for already he had found evidence that almost conclusively proved that zoids evolved in the wild to far more powerful forms than had ever been created under laboratory conditions, to the best of his knowledge, and proving the sheer power of zoids such as the Blade Liger and the near mythical Genosoarer, whose power had been downgraded by the academics over the last century or so as a lasting peace had been established, and the strange circumstances under which not one, but indeed six seemingly unique dragon type zoids had been found at the base were enough of a conundrum to have severely shaken even the professor's way of thinking, but now, he thought, he had better try and get some sleep, whether he felt tired or not, otherwise he would not have the strength for the full day ahead of him tomorrow.
Next morning, the Whale King reached their home, a medium sized concrete bunker in the desert, large enough to house maybe three Whale Kings and all the necessary maintenance equipment for them, with a tall tower reaching up into the sky from the top of it. Their first task, that of disembarking all of their zoids, both old and new, from the Whale King went without a hitch and soon all that remained was the unloading of both the computer core that they were studying and their personal belongings. Garth's father beckoned him aside for a moment at that point, "Garth," he started, "last night I put up an advert looking for a zoid team that would be willing to have you and, when I checked this morning we had received three responses, let's go start checking them out shall we?"
The pair of them adjourned to Professor Meyer 's office, where they made another check between them, in case anyone else had responded to their advert, but since the last check no new messages had been left. The teams that had left messages were the Raven, Hawk and Paladin teams, and the pair of them took the opportunity to look up these three teams in the database of the zoid battle commission, discovering that the Hawk team was the only team of the three that had any previous experience, while the Raven and Paladin teams were both starting from scratch, trying to get together the pilots and zoids to make a name for themselves when the year's zoid battle tournament began in about one month's time.
The Hawk team, a relatively experienced zoid team whose choice of both zoids and pilots focussed on a ferocious aerial assault, had over the summer months bought a trio of the newly developed Stormsworder Phoenix- type and had trained to use the new design to its full advantage.
The Raven team had been formed by the youngest son of the aristocratic Raven family, and this team would primarily be based around the use of the mighty zoids that this family had picked up in the years following the founding of this family at the end of the Guylos war 200 years before.
The Paladin team, formed by a disparate group of friends had less financial security than even the vast majority of zoid teams, with most of their zoids so far having come either from various junk heaps or been loaned to them at least as a short term arrangement for testing purposes.
Of all three teams the Paladin team looked least likely to advance in the ranking, and after he turned down the Hawk team (who apparently only wanted him as a pilot for a fourth stormsworder) the best team for him to join appeared to be the Raven team.
The next morning, they started off for the interview arranged the previous day, which would take place upon the Raven estate. The pair of them hoisted themselves into the cockpit of the Dragowing, thankful that the technicians of the New Helic Republic had been farsighted enough to fit this zoid with a two-seater cockpit. Taking off at full speed, the Dragowing began to practice both targeting and manoeuvres on route, with Garth's effective top speed at absolute accuracy climbing to Mach 1.3 by the time they touched down outside the gates of the Raven estates.
The estates owned by the Raven family were opulent to say the least. Indeed most would have described their grounds, which stood not twenty miles away from the capital of Geigolos, as palatial, their neatly manicured lawns making a welcome change from the scrubland that was found almost everywhere on the other side of their fence. In the middle of it all stood the white marble palace of the house Raven. The family's head groundskeeper met them at the gate, escorting them to a zoid hangar where they could park the Dragowing while they were here, and then, once their zoid was secure, he led them to the house. At the top of the stair that led to the front door of the house, Count Vincent Raven awaited them, walking sedately down the stairs to greet them as his groundskeeper returned to the keeping of his grounds.
"Good morning to you, Professor," he exclaimed, shaking Garth's father firmly by the hand, "so, this is your son, who would become a zoid warrior. I should probably introduce the pair of you to my son, meet Andreas Raven, whose zoid team your son would join. Son, meet professor Karyl Meyer, and his son Garth. I hope you will show Garth the estate while me and his father discuss the arrangements in private."
"Certainly father," replied Andreas, who at a height of five foot nine had jet black hair and a lean but well muscled physique. Behind him stood a machine, not large enough to be considered a full zoid, but of a similar appearance nonetheless. It was in appearance lizard like, with a body of black metal, yet with an almost blue sheen to it.
"What is that thing?" Garth asked in puzzlement.
"This," replied Andreas, "is Darkness, my organoid."
"Your son has an organoid?" asked the Professor, who was still in earshot, "I thought they were only mythical constructions."
"My dear Professor," count Raven replied, "there are many things in the world of zoids that have at some time or another been considered little more than myths. The experience of my family has been that the majority off these so-called myths are nothing but the truth. Come Professor, I shall show you our family's zoid museum."
"That was going to be the first stop on our little tour," remarked Andreas, "come on."
Soon they were inside an underground hangar that housed one of the largest and most diverse collections of zoids known to man.
"Impressive," Karyl remarked, studying the first row of zoids.
"Isn't it just," the count replied, a condescending expression upon his face. He then proceeded to lead them down the rows of zoids, pointing out everything from Blade Ligers to Gojelos' until, at the end he showed them the pride and joy of his collection, a Double-sworder, a pair of Genosoarers and a Genobreaker, all of which were fully functional.
The morning continued, with it becoming all the more clear that all the Raven family wanted was the Dragowing, and that Garth was nothing more than an optional extra as far as they were concerned. So, politely but firmly Garth turned down membership in the Raven team, leaving him with only the Paladin Team as an option, given that no other zoid teams had responded to their advertisement of services for hire.
The Paladin team, when they caught up with them, were in a small back street café having a cup of coffee. Their team, like most, already boasted three members and these took the form of a man in his mid twenties, thickly muscled and reaching a height of five foot seven with fair skin and blue eyes that darted about all over the place as well as a skinhead which didn't look out of place on him; a youth in his late teens, dark skinned and lean with brown eyes that seemed to look straight through you into your very soul and black dreadlocks, as such this six foot two pilot appeared to be very disconcerting at first; the third pilot seemed to contrast with the other two even more than the pair did with each other, for while the other two dressed in the practical jeans, vest and combat boots of zoid pilots, their jackets draped over the back of their chairs, she wore more expensive clothing in the form of a lightweight blouse and a more formal style of trouser on top of fashionable heeled boots, also wearing a single silver bracelet around one wrist. At five foot four she was the shortest member of the team but her age, as far as Garth could tell was at least a year greater than his own fifteen years and her fair skin and green eyes seemed to convey whole volumes of emotion without even trying while her shoulder length blonde hair looked perfectly natural rather than a peroxide blonde.
"Hey, I was told that you guys are the Paladin team, is that right?" he inquired.
"Depends on who's asking," the skinhead replied.
"Yes we're the Paladin team," said the girl, suppressing a yawn as she did so.
"Are we to take it you're the new zoid warrior who's looking to join the team?" asked the skinhead.
"Yes, I am," answered Garth.
"Any competition to snap you up as a pilot, dude?" asked the dark skinned youth.
"No, they were only after either me or my zoid, not both," Garth replied.
"Okay, dude, pending your agreement, your hired," stated the skinhead, "my name's Jake Sanders, the lady on my left is Adrianne Tovas, and the gentleman in the black is Mykkael Josephson, but he don't speak too much. Sit down dude, have a coffee on us, then we'll show you our base and our zoids."
Sitting down he joined them willingly, ordering just an ordinary coffee, before Adrianne, noting his clothes, changed his order to some specific brand that she knew, telling him that if he just ordered coffee here he would get, instead of the delicately flavoured coffee he was used to, a brown sludge that looked like it could be used for stripping paint and a taste that was even worse.
Afterwards, they took him over to their base, which was just on the outskirts of Geigolos, the three off them bouncing along in a jeep beneath him as he followed at low speed in his zoid. Their base, it seemed was a disused military bunker that had been constructed to protect against the abortive mobilisation of the Chazidi Free States barely ten years ago. Within it stood their zoids, a stripped-down Rev-Raptor, a white Liger Zero and an odd bear-like zoid, the like of which had not been seen before, which Jake explained was called an Ursazerk and was the first working prototype of its design.
Reflecting back on this moment, Garth was able to see clearly that the members of the Paladin team respected him as an equal, creating a far better working environment than he would have had as a member of either the Hawk team or the Raven team. For better or for worse, the Paladin team, and all of the problems that it would face, were where he belonged now.