The thick welds slowly melted away as they torched passed over the joints. Fluid dripped and pooled into a metal puddle at the base of the door. Once all the welds melted away they began to pull on the doors. It took a few tries as the cold had frozen the hinges shut but with the two mechs using metal bars pried them open.
Inside they found not just supplies but a veritable assault battalion of black-ops mechs. Painted in black and grey urban camouflage, they were difficult to see except for the low light reflection of the visor sensor barriers. In the darkness it seemed as if their eyes were glowing red almost like diabolical entities waiting for their arrival ,in the shadows.
"What the hell is this?" Barry said, the first words anyone had said four hours. No one reponded, not a single word was mustered. While the mechs they found were unusual in their advanced capabilities, especially the command unit Ryuki piloted, these units were beyond anything they had seen.
The unmistakable angular contours of stealth plating and a dark aura, that scrambled their outlines, surrounding them were far beyond any special operations units they had encountered before. The electro-optical camouflage was disconcerting and a low hum emanated from the field that was unsettling. While they did operations that required customized mechs, none of them had ever been as sharp and menacing as these.
The first order of business though was the medical supplies. What they found in the cases and crates inside the container was an entire regimen of supplies, enough food ,clothing and medicine for a month. The entire container was filled to the brim with gear, from spelunking harnesses to glide suits. The stealth mechs, the supplies ,the gear. This was a dead drop container, something that would have been air-dropped by a Wave Rider rapid deployment dropship.
The machines were superb in their construction. Where actuators would be exposed in most other mechs, these had armored cowls to protect them . The joints were composed of an extremely strong plastic polymer, probably made of a nanoweave of titanium and nanotubes. It almost looked as if the arms belonged to a bodybuilder ,as the myomer musculature was sharply defined. And even that was heavily armored with plating that would normally be reserved for torso armor.
They assumed the mechs had to be super heavy but the frames looked to be designed for agility. The range of motion they could handle was implied to be incredibly wide from how the armor panels seemed to retract away from joints and looking as if they were actually free floating . Something like that was unexpected for what would be incredibly expensive and complicated to mount on a combat mech.
There was one suit , of the four inside , that seemed to be missing its torso and head with incomplete arms and legs. When Ryuki turned his flood-lights onto it , he saw a lion regalia much like the one that adorned his own mech. In a flash of realization , it became clear that it wasn't a mech but more like conformal modules that fitted his Lionheart command unit.
"Its our lucky day, eh?" Reaper spoke. It didn't seem that anyone was glad though. This was definitely odd , though just as strange as the ship they were stuck inside. With shadowy monsters lurking in every conceivable blindspot, a platoon of futuristic black-ops mechs was the topper on a pile of strangeness.
"Alright. Find the meds and antibiotics. Make sure to take some diuretics to drain out your lungs if you're having trouble breathing" Ryuki radioed to the team. Black boxes containing a faint red plus sign contained medications for every conceivable situation. Anticoagulants, beta-blockers , anesthetics,even big jars of gummy multivitamins.
Along with those were the crates filled with gourmet ready-to-eat meals. They were in big brown plastic containers but inside were vacuum sealed bags of pre-cooked food like grilled chicken. The most prized meals were the BBQ ribs that came as a half-rack with dehydrated cornbread and buttermilk biscuits. Even just looking at them made the hunger pangs seem to disappear. It steadily became difficult to concentrate on anything other than those tempting feasts that lay only meters away while they worked to heal themselves up and activate the mechs.
For morale, Ryuki stopped all work to make sure everyone was able to get a warm meal. They pulled out a crate of survival gear and pitched a large shelter up. A fire-stove in the middle warmed the room up to a comfortable temperature while the hot plates warmed up some of the larger meals. Many of the rations they found were in ready to make pouches that only needed the addition of some water.
It had been a long time since a proper meal was made. Between the scraps of food and the liquid meals, their stomachs had become unaccustomed to real food. At first it seemed too much for some, with their faces contorting to keep the food down. But those who did feel nauseous forced themselves to continue eating. Their strength was gone and the food was one of the few ways to replenish their stamina. So they ate , enjoying every bit of real food even if their stomachs cramped from exhaustion.
Ryuki stood at the far end of the container with a flashlight in hand while drinking down one of the liquid meals he had left. He shone the light into every corner ,every crack and crevice trying to figure out who would have brought this along.
The set up was clever , he admitted. Without the base unit, the modules would be useless. They wouldn't connect correctly without heavy modifications since they were specifically designed to only fight the Lionheart. So why was the Lionheart sitting unprotected in the armory while this was hidden away? Something about it had to be incredibly important then.
The Lionheart was a unique mech but it wasn't particularly astonishing about it. But perhaps with these parts it would be something more? Or it could all be a gambit by someone long since dead to get a fool to equip it and set off a massive explosion that kills everyone.
Once the team was sated , Ryuki approached them with a stern face and a firm gait. "Take your mechs as far as you can. This container may be a trap and I don't want any of you here if it sets off" he said, leaving everyone dumbfounded.
"Sir, with all due respect , what the hell is going on with you?" Barry interjected. Everyone else murmured , some nodding slightly in pensive agreement. "We already opened the thing, nothing happened. If it was a trap we should have already been dead" he continued.
Ryuki realized that they thought he was delusional, speaking of traps when the entire time the only thing that was a danger to them were the biomechanical monstrosities that continued to chase them.
"Alright, I may sound a bit paranoid but listen to me. The mech I found, the Lionheart, it was out in the armory unguarded. Those pieces of armor in the back of the container, they hook up into my mech. So why leave the Lionheart out and the upgrade parts in a sealed container? Why was it sealed if its got a beacon on it? Thats why I think its a trap. So take all the supplies you can and go as far as possible. I will check each mech myself to see if any of them are trapped. Just remember the original plan is to get to the secondary bridge to regain control of the ship. If you find any shuttles, take em and leave" , he said.
"We're not leaving you behind,sir" Ross replied back. "Don't worry , if Im not dead than I'll probably joining you guys for some iced teas when we get outta here" , Ryuki said. There were some murmurs but everyone agreed this would be the best path forward.
The thinktank was rigged up with a tow cable and a skid made of lose planks of wood and steel to carry the supply crates away. The others rearmed with the munitions found inside the container, replacing empty guns with fresh armaments.
Leaving behind the captain as they marched away, there was an eerie sense of calm as they watched from their seats as Ryuki stood atop the ruins. The low light had turned him to a shadow, as if he was a specter.
"This is insane" Dizzy said to herself. Everything about this was delusional, she thought. Though thankful for the a hot meal in such a long time, she was strangely annoyed at the discovery of the cover ops unit stashed away in an unmarked container. It was as if the normalcy of being stranded on a deserted planet with only murderous ,thoughtless monsters in her presence had been shattered by the discovery of weaponry far beyond any she had seen before.
And in that moment she realized that she had been through so much that her mind was slowly forgetting what normal actually was. Just a few days on this forsaken ice ball was enough to cast a pall over her memories and take over her thoughts and motivations. No longer did she want to go to Arnolds for a hot pastrami and egg sandwich. No, now it was replaced with dreams of solid chunks of tuna in tin cans.
Maybe all of this was just a horrible nightmare ,she thought. It had to be. People only joked about finding aliens. Everyone always said it, that the boring missions were always bug hunts because they were just that, hunting for things that probably don't exist. When colonists talked about a missing tractor, they called down some marines to check it out and the result was always the same. Nothing other than bad luck was the culprit.
She tried to reassure herself that she was in a fever dream somehow. When she coughed up blood though, when the warmth of her body escaped into a cloud of water vapor, she understood that this wasn't a dream. That maybe those colonists did see ET's, that maybe the bug hunts had a purpose.
Ryuki waited until he lost line of sight with his team. He activated the first four mechs and walked them outside to gain access to the armor at the back. Nothing out of the ordinary happened , no traps were sprung , not even a warning message from the anti-theft system.
He climbed back into his Lionheart and approached the mech.
While the other machines behaved as expected, this unit seemed to be reacting strangely to his mech. At first he thought he saw some sort of hazy glow tracing the panels of the armor. Then as he got closer, the clamps that held it together unlocked as if preparing itself for his arrival.
The Lionheart too began to do things on its own. Ports opened up over the arms and legs and studs extended out from the chest. The weaponry attached to its back and shoulders were purged along with any remaining gas tanks and magazines.
The holographic display changed from the purple and gold to a stark white all of a sudden. A symbol popped up on his screen when he lost control of his mech. It was a swooping eagle , with missiles carried in its talons and a fire blazing from its wings. Its beah was angular and wide open flames shooting out of it. Encircling it was a ring of deep red with a star burning from the background. No, not a star. It was the Sun. A Sol Republic mech?
The control sticks dropped away and replaced with a set of control panels attached to two sticks planted into a set of linear tracks. Holographic buttons were arranged around the grips and a second series of buttons popped out from the hand guards. The seat flattened out and a large bright screen dominated his view.
