It was mid afternoon. The sun was at its hottest, and the endless wastelands at their most inhospitable. Golden desert stretched on and on to the horizon, so hellishly hot and dry that one almost expected to find the bleached white bones of those who had succumbed to the sun's relentless assault half buried in the sand.
The Command Wolf was, in fact, a bone-white color, but it was in no danger of falling victim to the hostile terrain. Conditions that would destroy flesh and blood often didn't even amount to an annoyance for those lucky enough to be made of metal.
The Command Wolf paced across the dunes, blazing a trail for the cargo truck and Gustav following some distance behind. If the Zoid has been bright white instead of the flatter, grayer shade, the sun reflecting off its armor would have hurt the eyes of anyone looking at it. As it was, Calypso, now driving the Gustav with the GunSniper and Redler in tow, was growing royally sick of looking at the Command Wolf's butt.
She let out a deep breath, a heavy, growling, annoyed sound, and opened a commlink to Stevan. "How much farther do we have to go?" It was the first time she had inquired. Leah had asked twice already.
Stevan smiled, but with no levity. "No farther," he answered. The Command Wolf came to a stop at the top of a particularly large sand dune. Zoid and pilot surveyed the scene below.
Run-down buildings were clustered in a rambling, shapeless mass in the valley below. Constructed out of resilient metal and ferrocrete, their dark colors stood out against the yellow-orange landscape. They were uniformly plain and boxy, designed for functionality and durability with no thought whatsoever given to aesthetics.
The desert's constant attacks had made the buildings deteriorate much faster than they normally would have. Sand had been pushed by the wind into smaller dunes against the smaller, outside structures. Given a few more years, those buildings would probably be buried entirely.
Not so the larger structures at the center of the cluster. These loomed up over the rest, easily several times as large as those that surrounded them. It would take many years for the desert to swallow them, and if a hundred years after that one were to start digging, one would probably find them still standing beneath the sand, largely unscathed. They had been built to last. Last they had, and last they would, long after their usefulness to those who had built them had ended. They had been there at the inception of the town. (For a town it was, of sorts, or at least had been.) In fact, the town owed its existence to those massive edifices.
The Gustav and cargo truck made their way up the steep dune, the Gustav scaling the slope easily with its treaded wheels and incredible torque, the truck with somewhat more difficulty. They came to a stop on either side of the Command Wolf, settling (slightly) into the shifting sand.
Calypso and Leah examined the scene with surprise and curiosity. One minute, they were half ready to believe they would never see any sign of civilization again. The next, they found themselves staring at an intact, if deserted, town.
The Command Wolf let out a low, almost mournful howl.
"What is this place?" Leah asked.
She waited for an answer, but one wasn't soon in coming. The Command Wolf was in motion again, pacing steadily down the other side of the sand dune and down into the valley. The Gustav and the truck followed it a moment later, but they fell behind. The Command Wolf's nature-inspired, quadruped design allowed it to deal with uneven terrain better than any wheeled or treaded vehicle ever could.
Stevan let the Zoid find its own way down the incline, keeping his hands on the control yoke but not using it. The Command Wolf continued its steady pace down the hill, and after a couple of minutes the Zoid and its pilot found themselves on level ground again. They skirted the town and made their way down its main street. The buildings had shielded the street from the blowing sand, and the Command Wolf's metal paws left prints in only a relatively thin layer of dust.
They moved past the smaller structures that had served as dwellings, and made their way deeper into the empty settlement. At the end of the street lay the giant buildings they had seen from above. They dominated the view as much up close as they had at a distance. In fact, they seemed to get more imposing.
Stevan and the Command Wolf reached the center of town. They examined the weather-beaten Zoid hangar (for that was what the huge building was) together. The enormous doors of the hangar were gone, allowing the Zoid and its pilot to peer inside, where shadows, sand, and assorted detritus existed in harmony.
Stevan looked out the top of the cockpit canopy at where the top of the giant structure met the sky. The Command Wolf raised its head to look as well. Painted over the entrance, defaced but not totally wiped out by the pounding, scouring desert wind, was a once-renowned emblem. A stylized starship streaking around Zi, trailing tiny stars as it orbited. The Command Wolf voiced a soft, rumbling growl. Its vocal repertoire was limited, but it could express as much as with one growl as some humans could by talking until they were out of breath.
Stevan moved the control yoke slightly and the Zoid stepped forward into the hangar. When it came to a stop, Stevan slowly started to unbuckle his five-point cockpit harness. The Command Wolf lowered its head even as Stevan touched the control that opened the cockpit. He pushed himself out of the command chair and stepped off the Command Wolf's head and down to the ground, being careful not to let the bare skin on his hands or arms touch scorching hot metal which shade of the hangar had yet to cool.
Stevan walked slowly around the Zoid, wincing as muscles stiff from hours of sitting in one position ached in protest at being suddenly called into action. As he paced and stretched, he looked over the Command Wolf critically, his trained eye searching for any obvious signs of damage. His visual check turned up nothing that required attention, but he decided to run a full diagnostic scan. Later. Right now, he felt too tired to climb back into the Zoid's cockpit and perform that simple task. He lowered himself to a sitting position on the ferrocrete floor behind the Zoid, staring out through the hangar's gaping entrance. The truck and Gustav were coming down the street toward the hangar. Beyond them, Stevan knew, there was nothing to look at but barren wasteland. He couldn't remember being so tired of looking at desert for a long time.
The two transport vehicles finished their passage down the street and rolled into the hangar, which was easily large enough to accommodate them. Stevan lowered his head and covered his eyes with his hand to shield them from the cloud of dust that accompanied the truck and Gustav, which came to a stop farther back in the hangar.
Leah and Calypso climbed out of the vehicles. Stevan could feel their questioning gazes on him even before he looked back over his shoulder to see them.
"Welcome to Rocketown," he said.
At its peak, Rocketown, as the place was fancifully called, had been one of the most well known gathering places for Zoid warriors on the Central Continent. A retired warrior turned merchant and technician known only as Damon had started the place some two decades ago, and had built it up with blood, sweat, tears, and lots of cash into the only thing approaching civilization in that part of the badlands. The place had started as a Zoid depot. The "town" had come later, as Damon's employees built homes and the volume of traffic at the place increased.
How Damon had kept the bandits that called the region home from trashing the place and stealing everything in the first week Stevan had never heard. In fact, Damon had actually done business with the renegades from time to time. In its heyday, there was no better place to go than Rocketown if you wanted some complicated work done on your Zoid, and the kind of expertise Damon and his team offered drew all kinds of people. Besides warriors, Rocketown had attracted small-time traders transporters, and more than a few of the bandits and other criminals. With the varied and constantly population mix, Rocketown had developed a rather volatile dynamic. It was part of Damon's team's job to see that everyone "took it outside."
The three warriors remained silent for a long time. The only sound was the whisper of the desert wind moving the sands along on their never-ending migration. Stevan mentally urged the breeze to pick up and erase their tracks. The atmosphere inside the cavernous hangar, if not outright sinister, was somewhat foreboding. Calypso and Leah felt compelled to remain quiet and even found themselves breathing more softly.
Stevan heard something, and turned over his shoulder to look. The Command Wolf had turned around and was now facing the hangar exit. It was incapable of changing its facial expression, but Stevan had been with the Zoid long enough to read it pretty well. Right now it was on high alert, using all of its senses to search for any approaching threat.
The Zoid lowered its head a little after a minute and its posture seemed to soften, but its intent look never strayed from the hangar door. There was nothing visible through the door but sand-scourged buildings and sky. But Stevan saw more, and perhaps his Zoid did, too.
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The Command Wolf's body was set in a crouch, ready to spring into action as soon as the hands on its controls directed it to, if not sooner. It would have been impossible for Stevan to match the Zoid's posture in the cockpit even if he had possessed the correct physiology, but he was just as alert as his mount. He leaned slightly forward in his command seat, breathing fast enough to irritate himself, eyeing his opponent on the viewscreen projected onto the orange cockpit shield.
Together, Zoid and pilot looked over their opponent.
The Red Horn stood some one hundred-fifty meters away. Its legs were spread wide apart in a stance designed for optimum weight distribution and balance. The position was similar to the Command Wolf's in some respects, but the maroon Zoid would never be able to fully match the Wolf's predatory bearing. Easily twice as large as the Command Wolf, the Red Horn's spike-headed face regarded Stevan and the Command Wolf malevolently.
How did I get myself into this? Stevan wondered.
Damon was sitting in the cockpit of a Gustav positioned between the two Zoids but out of the firing line. He opened a commlink to both pilots. "When I give the signal," he said, "the fight is on. This match has no rules to speak of. Just watch where you're shooting. Damage to the town is frowned upon by management." Stevan glanced out of the cockpit canopy's left side. The outer edge of Rocketown was, in fact, less than half a kilometer away. "Damage to management himself," Damon added with a crooked grin, "is frowned upon even more."
Stevan took the last few moments before the battle would start to analyze the situation from a tactical standpoint. Just like at the Academy he thought. No sweat Aside from the obvious benefits of getting better handle on how his own strength and abilities matched up against his opponent's, it gave him something do think about beside how fast his heart was pounding. Adrenaline was coursing through his system, making his body shift into overdrive. It was a natural reaction, involuntary and uncontrollable, the reaction of those about to enter competition or combat (and Zoid battles were both) since the two concepts had come into being. And since the human spirit had never lent itself to peace and co-existence, that was a very long time.
The battle would take the form of a confrontation almost as old: strength versus speed. The Command Wolf was far from the fastest Zoid ever created, but it still possessed a lot of quickness and agility. It had originally been designed for raiding and small-unit leadership, and had only later wound up in the line-of-battle role. The Red Horn, by contrast, was essentially a mobile firing platform. It had enough speed to get from place to place and maybe a little extra for emergencies, but it relied on firepower, not mobility, to succeed.
"Ready…" Damon said.
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"Where did the place get its name?"
Stevan was startled out of his reverie. The images of his first match disappeared. "What?" he asked, blinking.
"I said, why was the place called Rocketown?" Leah asked.
Stevan his first genuine smile in what seemed like ages. "It was named that because the first humans came to Zi on a spaceship of some kind," he told her, "and the guy who built the place was kind of a history buff." Actually, Stevan doubted half the professional historians on Zi knew as much about the subject as Damon.
There was another long, silent pause. Then Leah asked another question. "How long has the place been abandoned like this?"
Stevan picked himself up off the hangar floor, feeling much older than twenty-one as he answered. "Two years."
--------
Stevan woke up suddenly. One second, he was oblivious. The next, he was fully awake. He was aware that he was lying on the cold, hard hangar floor, and that the blanket he wrapped around him was totally insufficient to protect him from the chill of the desert night.
A vague, undefined, irritated thought about the climate flashed through his mind as he sat up, but it fled quickly. It was smothered by the equally indefinable heaviness that had fallen over his consciousness. Something was wrong.
He looked around the hangar as his eyes readjusted themselves to the darkness. Calypso was sleeping a few feet to his right and Leah a few feet to his left. They were both curled into balls that indicated the cold was having an effect on them, too. Looming over all three warriors were the two hulking transport vehicles. Neither they nor the two Zoids on the Gustav's trailers showed any signs of trouble when Stevan looked over his shoulder to examine them. He felt an ache between his shoulders as he swiveled his head back to the front, but the aggravation that accompanied that was also quickly drowned out.
He rubbed his forehead with his hand and closed his eyes as he sat. He listened carefully for any strange sounds, but heard only the wind blowing through the derelict buildings that surrounded him.
And the Command Wolf's low growls.
His eyes snapped open and he looked at the white Zoid. It was still facing the hangar entrance as it had been when he had fallen asleep, but now it was half-crouched and rumbling ominously.
Thrusting the inadequate covering away, he stood up and walked towards the Zoid. Its head turned very slightly in his direction (a movement that would have been imperceptible were it not for the mechanical beast's size) to acknowledge his presence, then recommitted its full attention to its vigil over the night.
"What's wrong?" Stevan asked softly. A different noise, to the casual listener different only in its slightly greater volume, was the only response he received.
He stared down the forsaken town's main street. The shapes and silhouettes of the buildings on either side were clear to him now. Again, nothing seemed out of place.
Except for a glimmer of orange-tinged moonlight reflecting off of something. Something silver and metallic, in the center of the street at the far end, where no such object could be.
He was in motion almost before he spotted the faintly glowing green dots in almost the same place. The Command Wolf's growl, now almost a roar, echoed through the hangar as it opened its cockpit shield. Calypso and Leah were wrenched from their chilled but peaceful sleep in a moment by the sound.
"Mount up!" Stevan yelled to his teammates as they pulled awoke. "They're here!" As the Command Wolf strode purposefully out of the hangar, Stevan remembered again.
--------
The last embers of the campfire had died hours ago. Now the moonless desert night was lit by a different kind of flame.
Stevan was crouching beside the Gustav. The thundering of heavy weapons ripped apart the silent sky. Despite the awesome display of pyrotechnics for which he was serving as an unwilling audience, Stevan found himself thinking how cold he was. The biting chill of desert night had replaced the oppressive heat of desert day.
Zane's Godos fired off a salvo from the CP-13 "Wild Weasel" unit that it carried on its back. Stevan couldn't see what the target was, but he didn't think the shots had hit their mark. When the shells finished their whistling journey down-range, they spent their fury on unresisting sand.
Return fire from the unseen enemy was not long in coming. A series of beam gun blasts streaked toward the Godos, which side-stepped with more agility than one would have thought the little Zoid capable of if one judged by appearances only. On the other side of the Gustav, Stevan could hear the heavy thump of the CP-07 cannon mounted on the back of the Molga piloted by Deke firing. The bulk of the transport Zoid kept him from seeing if Deke had scored a hit, leaving Stevan to guess at the success of the shot as a loud explosion announced that the 120mm shell had made contact with something, be it an enemy or merely another terrain feature.
Stevan swore loudly, though no one could hear him. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so useless.
The cacophony continued around him, but no shots came his way, leaving him feeling like he was in the eye of a storm. He was stuck in the role of spectator to the fight, which greatly irritated him.
Strangely, amid the near-deafening din of the battle, it was a relatively quiet sound that startled him. He spun around to investigate the low, angry noise that had made him jump and found the Command Wolf on the Gustav's trailer fighting to break free of the restraints that held it, snarling furiously.
"I know how you feel," Stevan said to the Zoid aloud. Whether to fight or flee, the Command Wolf wanted to control its own destiny.
The Command Wolf apparently heard Stevan, because it stopped struggling for a moment and looked down at the human, making him take an involuntary step back. Stevan stared up at the Zoid for a second, but his attention was drawn away quickly.
There was a sound like an ocean wave breaking against the shore, and Stevan spun around again to see the sand parting ominously a few meters from the Godos. A dark, menacing shape halfway emerged from the hole in the desert, and in the flash of light that followed Stevan could see that it was a Guysack scorpion-type. The blast it had fired from the beam cannon that made up the "stinger" on the end of its segmented tail hit the Godos in the chest. The shot pierced the Zoid's thin armor easily, and as the Godos reeled backwards, Stevan could see arcs of electricity swirling around the newly opened wound. Before Zane could recover and return fire, the Guysack disappeared beneath the sand again, invulnerable to attack until it surfaced to strike again a minute or so later, as Stevan knew it would. It was the Guysack's M.O., and a perfect tactic for bandits.
Stevan breathed a profanity. It looked like Zane and Deke might be in trouble. And there was no way he could help. Unless. . .
Stevan eyed the thrashing Command Wolf again. Making a quick decision, he used the step on the side of the Gustav's trailer to climb up onto the flatbed. The Command Wolf stilled again for a moment, lowering its head to see what the human was up to. Most people who were unused to Zoids would have found the giant metal head and mouth (the mouth in particular) only a few feet away from them intimidating, but Stevan took it in stride. Sweeping his gaze over the trailer, trying to find the load restraint control.
There. Stevan dropped to his knees beside the control, which was located near the trailer's edge, and examined it closely. The buttons were lighted, but the intermittent flashes of weapons fire had a detrimental effect on Stevan's night vision, making it hard for him to see what he was doing.
After half a minute of staring at the control box, Stevan swore again. It required a password to operate.
The Command Wolf's deafening growl made Stevan jump yet again, and he nearly fell off the trailer. He crabbed backwards as the Zoid locked its jaws around the restraint holding its right front leg in place. As hard as it tried, however, it couldn't bite through the lock.
I can help you with that, Stevan thought. Getting on his feet again, he moved closer to the Command Wolf. It turned its attention away from the restraint to look at him again, its snarl stopping him dead in his tracks.
"It's alright," Stevan told the Zoid. "Let me help you out." Cautiously, he took another step forward. And another. The Command Wolf rumbled, but didn't try to stop him. In a few seconds, he was standing beside the Zoid's head.
"Okay," he said to himself, patting the Zoid below the cockpit frame with his hand, "how about letting me in."
"Hey, kid!" a voice bellowed. Stevan and the Command Wolf turned to look at the Molga.
"Stay away from that-agh!" Deke's warning was cut off a cry of surprise as a Guysack surfaced beneath his Zoid. Its pincer claws glowed yellow-gold as they sliced into the Molga's underbelly and threw it several meters into the air. Gravity returned the Molga to the ground a second later. Luckily for Deke, the Zoid landed on its wheels, but the attack had damaged the system that drove the wheels and rendered the Molga immobile.
Stevan turned back to the Command Wolf in time to see the cockpit canopy swing open. Grinning, Stevan swung his legs over the cockpit frame and settled into the command seat. He had piloted Command Wolves at the Academy, so it only took a moment to remember where all the controls were. He closed the cockpit and strapped himself in, then gripped the control yoke firmly.
"Alright," he said to the Zoid. "Let's see what we can do about those restraints."
The Command Wolf began biting at the leg-locks again, but had no more success than before. Stevan swore. With the Molga out of the fight, it wouldn't be long before the bandits appeared again to finish the job. The Command Wolf growled again, but without the anger that had been apparent in its voice (or Stevan's) before. It seemed to be trying to communicate something.
What does he want me to do? Stevan wondered. The Command Wolf put the lock in its mouth again and gave Stevan another growl, louder this time.
"That's it!" Stevan said aloud. He pressed a button on the side of the control yoke with his right thumb. Crackling electron arcs appeared between the Command Wolf's fangs, producing a glow that Stevan could see from the cockpit. The Zoid bit down again, hard, and the restraint snapped in two. In another five seconds, both of the Command Wolf's front legs were free, and the rear leg locks were easily disposed of after that.
"Way to go," Stevan said quietly. "Now let's see what we can do to help Zane and Deke."
With an exhilarated howl, the Command Wolf leapt off the trailer and into the battle.
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That image from the first battle Stevan and his Zoid had ever fought together melted away as they came to a stop in the middle of Rocketown's main street. A Rev Raptor turned the corner fifty meters ahead and faced them. There was a brief pause (probably less than a second) as the Backdraft Zoid took note of their presence. Then the air between the white Zoid and its maroon adversary was ripped apart by flashes of light. Stevan watched the twin blasts from the Command Wolf's paired beam cannon strike the Rev Raptor an instant after he fired. The answering fire from the Rev Raptor, its pilot a hair slower on the trigger and its aim thrown off as it took the hits, dug out two blackened pits at the Command Wolf's feet. Before it could recover, Stevan's second and third shots had frozen its command system. The Zoid crashed to the ground, but a second was coming right behind it.
Stevan froze. Standing still was suicide, but if he moved a stray enemy shot could find its way through the hangar door. Before the Rev Raptor could force him to make a decision, Calypso appeared on his cockpit screen. "Take that guy down or let someone else have a chance!"
Stevan yanked the control column to the right, and the Command Wolf sidestepped. A swarm of orange laser blasts followed a moment later by sparklike tracers and invisible explosive bullets ripped through the space where it had just been standing. The salvo didn't do enough damage to take the Rev Raptor down, but did enough to convince it to make a retreat (or "tactical withdrawal" as they had called it at the Academy) and re-enter the fight when the conditions were more favorable.
The numbers on the HUD clock caught Stevan's attention. It was almost exactly midnight. He smiled. If the Backdraft was going to keep on a regular schedule, staying alive might not be as a big a problem as it seemed.
Leah flew overhead in her Redler, whipping up clouds of dust that rolled down the street like tumbleweeds. The dragon Zoid reached the end of the street and then pulled up into a steep climb. The few shots directed at it from the lurking Backdraft Rev Raptors passed by harmlessly.
Stevan paused to consider the situation. The enemy Zoids seemed content to stay under cover for now, but it wouldn't be long before they tried again. The Chimeras couldn't afford to lose the transports, so they would have to stay near the hangar. And if they stayed near the hangar, sooner or later the Backdraft Zoids would overwhelm them. Now what do we do?
Before Stevan could ponder the problem any further, his train of thought was broken by the sound of more weapons fire. The Command Wolf turned ninety degrees to look at the GunSniper, which was firing down a side street, spending ammo and energy at wholesale rates. "Stevan," said Calypso (pausing briefly after that to adjust her aim), "we have to do something."
"I'm thinking," Stevan answered as the Command Wolf turned back to scan the main street again. Calypso had one flank covered, but Stevan guessed that the enemy Zoids would try to trap the Chimeras in a…
Pincer maneuver. A small building to his right collapsed, creating another reverberating crash and another cloud of dust and sand. A Rev Raptor stepped through the space where the building had been, plowing through the wreckage. The couple extra seconds it needed to do that was all Stevan required. He swung the Command Wolf around, aimed, and fired in almost one seamless motion. The Rev Raptor took the shot in at point blank range and pitched forward on to the ground directly in front of the Command Wolf, as inanimate as what remained of the building.
"Think faster," Calypso said, a current of urgency underscoring her words.
A new window opened on Stevan's screen. "There are two of them getting close to the main street again," Leah told her teammates. Her Redler, armed only with its claws and tail blade, was of little use from a combat standpoint in this battle. The spaces between the streets were too small, the chance of a crash during an attack too great. But it was useful as an airborne spotter.
"Where?" Stevan asked.
"A couple hundred meters in front of you. Get ready."
The Command Wolf put itself in a ready stance. Zoid and pilot stared down the street. He caught a glimpse of a menacing saurian shape, and fired down the street twice. He didn't hit anything, but he hadn't expected to. You just stay back a minute, he told the Rev Raptor, which halted in mid-stride and backed into the shadow of the warehouse from whence it had come.
"More bad news," said Leah.
An angry snarl escaped Stevan's lips. "What?"
"There's are more Zoids entering the town. Bigger ones."