The storm rolled in from over the ocean and hurled waves of driving rain on the coastline, as though the sea was expressing its frustration at not being able to overcome and swallow up the land. The blackness of the towering cliffs was stark against the iron-gray sky. Below, on the beach, chunks of rock left over from the cliffs' centuries of retreat in the face of the ocean's assault competed for space with sand turned to muddy slop by the downpour. The feet of the three Saber Tigers sank into it half a meter with each step as they walked slowly towards the wind-swept waves. The soaked sand clung to the Tigers' paws, caking their gleaming silver claws with brownish pulp.
In most settings, the huge Zoids would have dominated the scene. Not so here. The looming cliffs dwarfed them, but even the rock face was hopelessly outclassed by the enormous, hulking monstrosity that the Saber Tigers were moving towards.
There was a certain comic aspect to the giant vehicle. The almost cautious slowness with which it was easing itself out of the water and onto the beach seemed incongruous to its mammoth size. What was more, it was clearly formed along the lines of a crustacean, not exactly the most commanding template for the design of a military transport.
But if the design was not entirely menacing, it was eminently practical. Though it was not, properly speaking, a Zoid itself, the Dragoon Nest took a cue from the Zoids it carried and acknowledged the superiority of animal engineering over human design. The Nest had a segmented, bendable body and flexible legs, allowing it to swim through the water rather than push its way through it in the way a less elegant vehicle such as a WhaleKing had to. The Nest did have a set of thrusters on the end of its tail, but these merely augmented and assisted the movement capabilities inherent in the Nest's design. And once the mind absorbed the concept of what amounted to a metal lobster the size of a city block, the Nest did have an undeniably impressive air about it.
The transport's legs could also be used to move over land, and were currently engaged in pulling the Nest onto the rain-swept seashore. They carved deep pits into the muck and rock, a broad swath of which was being crushed into a smooth pathway under the weight of the Nest's belly. Finally the transport came to a stop. There was a booming hiss of escaping air loud enough to carry over the din of the waves, wind, and rain as a watertight seal was broken. Then, a huge hatch in the Nest's prow, beneath its relatively tiny head command center, swung open and folded down onto the beach, becoming a ramp to the cavernous hangar bay within the transport's main body.
Rebecca slumped in her Saber Tiger's command chair, then arced her back in an effort to stretch her cramped muscles in the tight confines of the Zoid's cockpit. She shook her head and blinked in an effort to clear the weariness from her eyes. At last the long, difficult passage through the mountains was over.
But she knew that the safety of the Dragoon Nest was only a temporary respite. The path ahead she had chosen for herself was not an easy one. While the storm spent its fury above the waves, the Nest's journey back from whence it had come would be merely the calm before a much more terrible one.
Rebecca throttled up her Saber Tiger and it paced forward between the Nest's massive pincers, trailed and flanked on either side by her two escorts. The A.I. "pilots" in the two Saber Tigers had performed well, better than expected. Even with the advantage of their being under the direction of a actual human commander factored out of the equation, Rebecca estimated the droids were at least half a generation ahead of the Backdraft designs they had been based on in capability.
There was a beep as her Zoid received a comm transmission, and the face of the Nest's commander appeared on-screen in a new window. "It is good to see you, m'Lady," he said. "We were beginning to grow concerned."
Rebecca smiled. "It just took a bit longer to get through the mountains than I thought," she answered.
The three Saber Tigers entered the hangar bay and came to a stop. Rebecca unfastened her safety harness and pulled the cockpit hatch opener handle as the Tiger lowered its head to allow her to exit. She climbed out of the cockpit and jumped the last couple of meters to the hangar floor, feeling the cold of the ocean outside ratiating from the metal.
The floor of the hangar shifted beneath her feet as the Nest's legs began to push it back off the beach into the water. There was a throaty hum of machinery as the bay's door/ramp lifted off the ground, followed by another hissing boom that echoed through the hangar as the door reached its closed position and sealed shut, cutting off the muted light of the outside world and leaving the floodlights in the ceiling as the bay's only illumination.
A squad of technicians swarmed into the hangar to examine the three Saber Tigers, pausing to bow perfunctorily to Rebecca as she passed. A smaller, more-ornately attired group moved towards her, but she waved them away. She stopped only long enough to take a hand-held comm unit from one, then walked towards the exit. The metal half-doors slid apart as she approached and she continued through into a long corridor.
The muted ring of her boots on the floor was the only sound, leaving her free to continue the musings she had begun on the journey through the mountains. Why had she done what she had done? Why had she made such an effort to help the Chimeras when Count Steinhoff's thugs had targeted them? It had probably been a waste of her time. She did not hold out much hope for their chances of survival after the ambush in the mountains.
She had reached something close to a an answer to these questions. Ultimately, her decision to help the three hapless warriors had been made more for her sake than for their's. It was resistance, her first true act of resistance instead of mere words. It helped her get used to the idea.
She would probably have to grow accustomed to it fast. Steinhoff's pathetic Backdraft group was a mere sideshow compared to what she would soon have to face up against.
The Count himself was an enigma. Rebecca knew that he had ambitions and ideas of his own that were probably not in agreement with those of the Council. And not necessarily entirely in opposition to her own, either. The question is how far he plans to take them.
She raised the comm unit to her lips, fingering a lock of silver hair that fell over her shoulder and noting regretfully that she would have to disguise it again soon. But perhaps not for much longer. She keyed the comm's mic and spoke into it. "Captain."
"Yes, m'Lady?" the Nest's commander responded.
"Take me home." For however much longer it is home, she added to herself.
The command was not necessary – the Nest's Captain already knew what their destination was. Neverthless, he would not say so, would not question her, just as he and the others had never questioned any of the things she had done or said in the past. It was not their place. The Captain answered immediately.
"As you wish, Your Highness."
--------
Slowly, ponderously, the WhaleKing rose from the valley. Once above the height of the surrounding peaks, it stopped its near-vertical ascent and switched to forward thrust, rolling slightly to turn on to a course away from the moutain range and the storm sweeping across it. The rain beat impotently at the WhaleKing's metal hull, seemingly as dismayed to find the giant aircraft escaping its fury as the ocean the storm had so recently sprung from was at its inability to conquer the offending dry land.
Calypso walked in to the WhaleKing's command center and sat down in one of the control station chairs. She randomly keyed buttons on the console screen in front of her, switching through a series of displays and readouts, at least half of which made no sense to her at all. Giving up on the console, she turned her attention to her teammate, who was already seated next to her in the pilot's station. Leah's brow was furrowed, and Calypso thought she saw a hint of white knuckles on the younger warrior's hands as she gripped the control yoke, but she seemed to be doing alright so far.
"How's Stevan?" Leah asked, her eyes never leaving the readouts in front of her.
"Sleeping like a baby," Calypso answered. "I think he'll be fine once he's had some rest."
"Good."
The WhaleKing was far larger than any Zoid or other aircraft Leah had piloted before, but in a way that was to her advantage: the huge transport was simply so unwieldy and unresponsive that it was hard to make a mistake disasterous enough to have a discernible effect. "Hey, this isn't too bad," Leah commented, her face lit up by a small smile. "It's easier than the Redler, in some ways."
"Yeah, and you've got several thousand times as much mass wrapped around you for protection if you screw up," Calypso said. She had heard what the exact weight of a WhaleKing was at some point, but couldn't remember. The effort of trying to recall the figure triggered a deeply fatigued yawn that she couldn't entirely stifle. "Once you're sure you've got the hang of it well enough to keep us on an even keel, see what you can figure out about the navigation systems." Leah nodded, absorbed in her own data screens.
Calypso slumped forward across her console, rested her head on her folded arms and stared at the holographic projection of the WhaleKing and the surrounding terrain projected in the center of the room. The jagged peaks were outlined in glowing blue-green; a rather sinister effect, Calypso thought.
They had spent ten more minutes in the canyon after Stevan and the strange white Zoid had brutally defeated the Backdraft Rev Raptors. It had taken Calypso that long to get her GunSniper to respond, and she had hated every minute of it. The removal of immediate threat had not much lessened her desire to get away from the place as quickly as possible. Their pursuers numbers had thus far seemed unlimited, so she was by no means convinced that the group of Rev Raptors they had just fought were the last the enemy had to offer; and she wanted to get help for Stevan as soon as possible.
But her fear was not really based on doubt that the strange Zoid could handle any new attackers, even with its pilot unconscious; indeed, it was more rooted in her certainty that it could.
"Calypso."
She was shaken out of her reverie by Leah's voice. She stopped staring into space through the holo-projection and shifted her head on her arms to look at her teammate. "What?"
Leah turned away from her screens and looked Calypso in the eye. "That Zoid. There's something about it…that scares me. A little."
Calypso stared into Leah's gray gaze for a long moment. "Yeah," she agreed. "Yeah, I know what you mean."
"Where do you think it came from?" Leah asked.
"I don't know," Calypso answered after another long pause. "I wouldn't worry about it right now, though."
As difficult as the few minutes spent in the canyon after the end of the battle had been, the rest of the journey to the waiting WhaleKing had been worse. The pathetic pace of the damaged GunSniper and Redler (the latter reduced to shuffling along on the ground instead of flying), patiently paced all the while by the wolf Zoid, had made those last few kilometers take far longer than they should have, and every minute seemed like ten.
But now that they had reached their goal and were on their way, all of Calypso's fears and worries seemed to be melting away. Part of the reason was simply that exhaustion had rendered her mind incapable of processing such emotions. But there was more to it than that.
Under the muted thrumming of the WhaleKing's engines and the occasional beep from its command center's controls and data readouts, Calypso could hear the faint sount of the wind and rain outside. To her it seemed like the last, useless parting shot of the mountains as they were left behind, defeated like the Chimeras' persecutors that had nearly run them to ground within the range.
We won, Calypso thought. She had not failed; her mistakes had not cost everything after all. Her heavy eyelids fell closed, blocking out the glare of the multitude of screens and displays that surrounded her. We won.
--------
The floor seemed to sway beneath Stevan as he slowly walked into the hangar bay, as though he was on an ocean-going vessel rolling on the storm-riled waves instead of an airship.
He reached out with his right hand but found nothing he could grab to steady himself, only empty air. The metal floor rushed up to meet him. He managed to save himself from falling, albeit by landing hard on his right knee with a thud.
Hissing from a sharp intake of breath at the pain, he levered himself back on to his feet and kept walking, focusing careful attention on each step. There was a question rumble that reverberated briefly throughout the bay. It knows I'm here, he thought. No surprise.
A few meters away stood the white wolf Zoid. Beside it were the Gustav and cargo truck, and beyond them the GunSniper and Redler. The white Zoid and the two transports looked starkly pristine next to their pair of savagely battered hangar-mates. The wolf-form turned to look at him as he got back on his feet and walked closer to it.
"Hi," he said quietly. He felt the two entities, the Zoid and whatever the presence was, draw up around him, seep into his consciousness at its edges. After experiencing variations of the feeling twice already, he was almost used to it, or at the very least enough so that it did not seem frightening or alien to him. This was what, he was convinced, had awakened him from his exhausted sleep, brought him almost inevitably to the hangar bay before attending to any more immediate concern such as getting food for his painfully empty stomach, and pushed aside his brooding a few moments before.
He thought about the first time he had experienced the indescribable triune merging with the Zoid and whatever the other thing was, how its results had been so horrible he had vowed to himself he would never allow it to happen again. And then, when it had happened again, how different it had seemed, how laughably foolish his promise and his terrible fears had suddenly seemed.
He did not become the monster every time this bonding occurred. That much he had already had proven to him.
On the other hand, there was no guarantee that he would not ever be overcome at some time in the future, either.
He and the Zoid stared at each other. He blinked, and thought with amusement that it was not fair he should have to do so first simply because the Zoid lacked the physiology or need to do so. "Not a fair contest," he told the Zoid as he stood under its firey orange gaze.
There was a long time where the hangar silent except for the distant voice of the storm outside. Finally, Stevan spoke again. "I think I know what you are," he said, addressing himself to the previously unidentifiable presence.
He was not sure when he had reached the conclusion. It had been foremost in his mind when he had woken up a little while before, but he found it hard to believe his mind had been able to undertake any such contemplation during his deep, hopelessly tired slumber. Now that he knew, though (or at least thought he knew), it did not seem strange to him. It should have, but it did not. It seemed natural, as though he had always known it.
"You can come out," he told the presence. Then, after he received no discernible answer, he added lamely, "It's alright."
There was still no response. A minute passed, then two, as silence competed once more with the storm's persistent whisper for supremacy. Stevan sighed and looked deeper into the hangar bay, wincing in sympathy as he saw just how badly damaged his teammates' Zoids were.
The Chimeras' base was gone, and their repair facilities were gone with it. Contracting out the work would be expensive. Stevan glanced around the hangar bay. They would have to put the WhaleKing's repair equipment to good use while they had the chance. He had no idea if they would be able to keep the WhaleKing, but he resolved to do everything in his power to make sure they did. It was closest thing they had to a home base now, and they would go broke from lodging, storage, and repair expenses without one. Of course, they might well go broke trying to maintain the massive vehicle, too.
But all of that could be avoided if they could bring in enough money, if they could win enough battles. To survive, you win. The truth of that principle had been hammered into him by the recent ordeal.
"OK," Stevan said at last, turning back to the wolf-form. "That's fine."
He stared into the orange eyes, and when he spoke again it was to both the presence and the Zoid. "Look, I need your help," he said. "The important thing is that we understand each other."
"We can work together."
"Right?"
The Zoid breathed another quiet growl, and though he could hear nothing else, Stevan felt that the third partner in the pact had also responded to his proposal. Unholy as it might prove to be, he decided, the alliance had been agreed to.
"Alright," he said, nodding with a sense of finality.
He started to leave, and had made it about halfway across the bay before he looked back. The Zoid stood motionless, its white armor shining faintly in the illumination of the hangar floodlights, its head turned slightly to watch him leave, now meeting his gaze.
He nodded once more, by way of goodbye, then turned his back again. The echo of his footsteps, steadier than they had been before, mixed with the sound of the continuing storm as he walked toward the exit.
--------
Soli Deo Gloria.