Chap 12

"AC Revolution, initiating startup procedure." Xero stood in the cockpit, listening as the generator and subsystems booted up and roared to life. "starting system check... all green."

"Revolution, remind me to check your programming. You have a different startup message every time you boot up."

"yes sir."

Xero opened the comm. "Blaze, you ready to go?" he looked over and watched as Blaze stepped forward. Her AC Templar stepped out of the stall and walked up to Revolution's side.

"Ready. Where are we headed?"

"the Canyon in sector seven-six-five. Wanna race?"

she glanced at him sideways, "no thanks. Lets just get there quickly."

"well, its only a few hundred klicks away."

"lets just boost then. You will get there a bit faster then me with your overboost."

"eh, I'm not exactly supposed to use the overboost yet."

"whatever, can we go now?"

"yeah yeah, here are the coordinates." He sent a short burst transmission with the coordinates over to Blaze.

"lets go then." She boosted off towards the area designated by Xero. Xero followed shortly.

Xero quickly overtook Blaze but then had to slow up to wait for her. They made it to the area together in about two hours. Xero stopped and looked down into a large gorge, the bottom was far out of sight.

"don't want to fall into one of those." Blaze stepped up beside him and shared a glance down the hole.

"tell me about it." Xero righted himself and looked around. The area was mostly mesas and sandy plains, the few plants growing were a few near-dead trees that were spread far and sparce.

"we are in the time zone, he should be here."

The comm. rang up, "Xero, this is your operator. My name is Joseph Quinn. Nice to meet you."

Xero was a little surprised by the sudden appearance of an operator that he hadn't really signed for, but brushed it off casually, "Same here Joseph. Now, you got anything on where this guy might be?"

"yes, I am setting a mission boundary right now into your radar. You are near the left corner of the grid. He is close to the opposite side of the map. Head there now."

"on it, c'mon Blaze." Xero hit his boosters and proceeded towards the yellow line on his radar.

Thirty seconds later they had a visual on him. He had a midweight AC with the MOONLIGHT blade, and a right hand sniper rifle. He also had a chaingun and a laser cannon on his back. It looked like a damn good design. He was standing faced away from us with his arms crossed and his sniper rifle sitting on the ground and leaning against his right leg.

"well, it seems my secret is out... oh darn." He said sarcastically over the comm. "explain yourselves before I kill you."

He wants to kill me already? "I'm Xero..." He said as he boosted up to about five-hundred meters. Blaze came up shortly after, "and this is my consort Blaze. Nice to meet you...?"

"well, Xero. My name is Tyre, who sent you?"

"Vega Tech. they seem to want you dead for helping Mirage a little too much."

"really?" his voice came coolly and cold over the comm. His right arm came down and picked up his rifle. Xero and Blaze took ready positions, but the only other movement he made was lifting the gun up and pointing it behind him, at us. He popped off a single shot that almost made Xero laugh until he heard, and felt, the thunderous crash of an AC falling to the ground.

Xero turned to see Templar on the ground with a bullet right through the top of the core, cutting the main control helix of the entire Core.

She thankfully still had communication and video, "Xero, I'm alright, behind!"

A quick turn and the moonlight blade found itself burning into the left shoulder of Revolution instead of the head.

Xero hit the boosters and kicked up red sand everywhere as he flew back and up, his own left blade swinging up and knocking the invading plasma stream away. The blade did not follow, instead three rifle shots found their way into the left shoulder as well. "he seems pretty determined to take out my left arm." The third shot did accomplish this task as the arm went limp with its impact.

Xero responded by reversing his inertia, with great effort, and bringing up his shotgun as his shields came online. Two shotgun blasts found their target but little of the metal found a weak spot and sunk in, the rest simply ricocheting off with scratches and burn marks.

Tyre boosted to the left and brought over his laser cannon. He fired a single shot then immediately followed by switching to his chain gun and setting himself to continuous fire.

Xero easily dodged the laser blast but had a lot more trouble with the chain gun rounds, and wasn't sure how long his shield would hold up against the constant attack.

Tyre retracted the chaingun and jumped to meet Xero in midair with a full-on punch to Revolution's head.

Xero opened up his right blade and stabbed forward but Tyre ducked in and did an uppercut to revolution's head. Xero reeled as he lost all his momentum in a split second and hit the ground flat on his back after falling five-hundred meters. His fingers accidentally found the overboost. Something he was specifically warned not to do yet.

"Oh Shi--" was all that Xero had time to mumble before he was moving faster than the speed of sound. Xero's eyes shot open as he looked up and found Tyre floating back to the ground at a sickeningly slow rate.

He stood and felt a severe head rush as Revolution shot to its feet. Xero looked at Tyre, who seemed to have taken no notice that Xero had stood back up. He was still a good hundred meters above the ground. It took Xero a good second to realize that everything was moving slowly, a second in real time, a good ten seconds for Xero.

Xero smirked at the possibilities and hit his boosters and extended his blade. As he flew by he swung his blade three times before landing on the opposite side of Tyre. As he landed back on the reddish sand he hit the overboost again to deactivate it. He spun and watched as Tyre hit the ground without a head or arms.

He heard Blaze and Tyre over the comm simultaneously, "Holy Shit!"

Tyre fell backward and landed hard on his back.

Xero stepped over and his left foot on tyre crushed core. He pointed his shotgun at the general cockpit area of the core. "I doubt any of this would ricochet at this range."

"probably not..." was Tyre's reply

"you have two options, one; you could walk out of that AC. Or two; you could be carried out... in painfully small pieces." He paused for effect, "your choice..."

"what else do you want? You obviously want something else if you are willing to let me live so easily."

"well, yes actually, I'm glad your not stupid. I wanna know what you have really been doing for the last eight months. I had my computer check your records on the way here and either you have nothing to hide, doubtfull, or somebody forgot to encrypt some information." Xero paused to think for a moment, "my computer informed me that you have been a Raven for the last eight months but have only been of ten missions, only three of which were for mirage and even those were a while back. All of your latest were for this new power called Vega Tech."

"it's not your place to wonder how or why these things happen..."

"well, its my place now, I have been involved in some really weird shit lately and some strange gut feeling of mine tells me you tie into it somehow. So, I don't like to leave on a bad note so how about this... how about I let you live and we meet for dinner sometime and discuss it over a nice meal? Hell, I'll even buy."

"Can't turn down an offer for a good meal..."

"then it's settled. I'll be in touch." Xero took his foot off of Tyre's core and turned back towards Templar.

Blaze opened up a secure channel, "your going to let him live?"

"why kill him when he isn't done proving his usefulness." Xero looked back over his shoulder toward the remnants of Tyre's core. The bottom emergency hatch open and Tyre climbing out and surveying what is left of his precious AC. "he could be a powerful ally if he turns out to be friendly." He turned back to Blaze and shrugged, only Revolution's right shoulder moving in response, "if not, I know I can beat him."

"you don't know that." She responded with a bit of bitter sarcasm.

"we'll see, regardless."

Xero cut the connection and opened one up with Joseph, "hey Joseph, could you get me a transport out here, my consort got disabled in the battle and can't move."

"already on it." Came the quick reply. "And Xero?"

"yeah?"

"how in all flaming Hell did you do that?"

"that my friend, is a very good question."