Some sort of autopilot had activated ,leading his mech into the awaiting exoskeletal frame. It turned smoothly and stepped back into the conformal modules. The bright white screen flickered and then several command lines scrolled down. A moment later the hologram turned dark and then returned to display the emblem he had saw on the side.
Several more holograms appeared and then the walls of the pilot's deck seemed to stretch then disappear. In its place was a full 360 degree panorama of the surroundings. He looked down to see himself floating with just the seat and the controls with him. He mustered a few choice words under his cough before a series of new holograms replaced the previous ones.
These were system status windows , displaying the reactor state and the weapons ammunition counters. Several other holographic windows displayed radar data and multispectral vision. One of them was more intriguing though. A window displaying details of the various armaments floated off in the corner of his vision , with one item blinking periodically.
He tried to read its name but all he saw was its designation - HBM-01. What it meant was something he couldn't figure out. He had not once seen a weapon with that name , not even something similar. The last letter in the designation had to stand for missile though, it didn't seem reasonable for it to be anything else.
He noticed that the ammunition count for that weapon was at three, odd for a missile weapon as they usually came in fours or sixes, usually as part of a missile pod or rack. What good would three missiles be? There wasn't a users manual to refer to anyway so it was just a futile guessing game till he actually activated it.
The power up cycle finally completed when he regained control of the mech. The forward view showed a floating bracketed box , probably for the guided weapons systems. It seemed the mech's only active targeting missile was the BSRM-01. Everything else was semi-active, requiring him to keep the targeting bracket on the target he wanted to kill.
He pressed down on the foot paddle and twisted the right stick. Unexpectedly ,the mech burst into a sideways dash out of the container. A meter began to decrease as the boosters fired, obviously the amount of propellent in the mech. Oddly though there was a second bar below the diminishing white bar. This one was a navy blue and seemed to pulse. He didn't know what it would do and paid no heed to it.
On each arm was an autocannon with an underslung plasmathrower. On the back was a set of two autonomous arm mounts with a set of Gatling guns mounted to it, feed by a pair of ammo belts from two tanks mounted to the waist. On the torso was a set of heavy machine guns with smoke and chaff launchers arranged on the lower torso sections of the stealth armor. The arms in the Leonheart had fit into the autocannon loaded arms like sleeves, the same with the leg armors. It was odd that he was sitting inside a machine that was piloting another machine. How ridiculous did it look from the outside?
He allowed the mech to idle as he attempted to call up his team to tell them that they could come back. As he spoke with them about the status of the other mechs, he saw a small symbol pop up in the central console, a yellow exclamation point slowly fading in and out. He thought nothing of it as it wasn't a system alert since those were much more obvious and persistent. He would get to it when he had the time to. For now he needed his team to prepare for the assault on the secondary bridge.
While they marched back , he took the chance to open the alert message. He wasn't sure what to expect but what he say was definitely nowhere near what he could have imagined.
A video began to play , some kind of personal log it seemed. A figure cloaked in shadows began to fumble with the camera before he set it down. He adjusted the lighting with a flexible lamp , its bulb weakly glowing leaving most details hard to make out.
The figure in the video coughed as he prepared to begin. He opened up a bottle and scarfed down something that seemed to ease whatever intense pain he seemed to be dealing with. He tossed the little bottle behind him as he slouched in front of the camera.
"If you're seeing this,that means you are most likely one the few remaining untainted soldiers left in the Sol Republic" ? That didnt make any sense to Ryuki. What exactly was tainting them and why were there so few left that hadn't been 'tainted'? There was no way to find answers as the video had locked all the control panels. There was no way to search any logs or databases, it just would not let him do anything. "We failed. What you have before you is the last remaining gear we could plunder. The ship you found that in was our last refuge. The fight's over for us and probably for you too. I suggest you run as far away as possible", the man continued.
"They've infiltrated every echelon of the Imperial Navy , even the joint chiefs of staff are doppelgangers. Do not trust anyone. Do not believe what they tell you. Don't listen to their proclamations that we were terrorists , that we were the ones killing people. They did it, they framed us. So that they could harvest us. But we lost. We couldn't predict how well they would blend in. They copied everything that made a human. Everything except innate empathy. And now, these psychopathic parasites have control.
"Make sure you blow up the ship when you leave. It's equipped with an experimental warp drive. They said it could take us to before the shadow invasion started. We only listened to them out of desperation. Im sorry , Im sorry we couldn't do it. Im so sorry".
"This is the final log of Colonel Ryuki Morimoto". Ryuki's eyes bulged at the sound of his name. His mind flooded with conflicting thoughts but the single phrase that continued to bubble through the chaos was 'what?'. What was that? Sitting inside his mech, preparing to siege the secondary bridge and what he sees is himself. An older self, a Colonel. It was a lie, it had to be. The voice huffed softly as the medicine seemed to wear off. The video shook , dust fell past the recording lense and the light swung over the mans face.
It was him. Or rather, it was himself. Through the scars and the eyepatch, he could see the lines of his own face. Though his hair had turned grey and the face wrinkled and pale, it was him. It was who he would be in some future alternative history. He wished he could pick up the radio and call this man, ask him what it all meant. A one way message that seemed to be for someone who knew what was going on. Too vague to discern anything important but filled with ominous portents. "What do I do now?" he questioned himself. This wasn't about being stranded inside an old,frozen ship filled with parasitic aliens. This was a fight that had been going on for longer than they had realized. A war fought in another time and place that somehow bleed into his world.
The drive the message spoke of, could that be what was being powered by these reactors? He couldn't answer anything. His years of command had not prepared him for this. Fighting these aliens was merely an extension of guerrilla warfare, he thought. These things, they were conquerors. The voice told him so. Those trembling lips, the sullen eyes and the crackling words, these things had won an absolute victory. And now they were here , preparing for conquest again. This was beyond a bug hunt. This is the ground zero of humanity's eventual subjugation.
But this time it was different. This time, maybe, they could make a difference? Ryuki couldn't stop thinking about it. He couldn't understand how it could come to this. What physics he knew couldn't explain what he was sitting inside. They needed to get out, they needed to get back to central command and tell them everything, bring every recording , every piece of evidence.
His team peaked over the ridge, moving in their slow mechs back towards the container. They spotted the captain standing with his back towards them, his head tilted up , seemingly locking eyes with the Lionheart. They came to a slow halt and disembarked. It was surprising to see that Ryuki's mech was enveloped inside another machine, but what was more concerning was that Ryuki hadn't said a single word since they had came back. Something had happened and with the black-ops mechs standing in a neat line, it was definitely not about random explosions.
"The base ,it evacuated" he broke the silence with those words. "They didn't evacuate. The HQ was infiltrated. Everyone there was in some parasitic thrall. They left when we came because they didn't expect us. They left because they knew we would ruin their plans", he spoke in monotone.
"Sir, I would like permission to ask what the frak?" Barry said, not waiting for permission to be granted. It was a stunning accusation , everyone knew that. But the seriousness on the captain's face meant that it was as true as ice was cold.
"I discovered a message, ah , to myself. Well a message from some future self. This ship seemed to have overcharged its Warp drive and pushed itself into an entirely different universe. How thats possible ,I don't know. Frankly, it should have blown to bits the moment it crossed the M-space boundary. That doesnt matter. What really should concern us is that these parasitic aliens successfully infiltrated the Sol Republic and have been carrying out a program of controlled population harvesting. They've been ,essentially, consuming people. For what, I don't know. I don't care. My only goal now is to make sure we get the word out to the Terran Central Command that infiltrators have already began disseminating" , he spoke.
He waited a moment to see their response. On a normal day, the amount of disbelief would have been measured by the strength of the electrical discharge that caused massive brow furrowing. Today, nothing. Stone cold faces. They had been through so much that nothing really surprises them anymore.
"And now our goal is to keep this ship from launching" he said after the long pause. There they were, the emotions of fear and anger that had so far been sapped by this ship. "You can't be serious! We need to get the frak off this iceburg!" Barry yelled. The others had similar sentiments.
"I've put up with enough , I've lost everything I held dear to me and now you're saying that I have to give up my life!?" Ross growled. The breaking point had been reached if Ross was losing control of his anger. There was only one option to give them hope of returning home. "I intend to destroy the ship once you have escaped" he said. "Once we get control of the bridge, I expect the team to bug out in an escape ship. Considering this ship is pretty much the same as the ones the Republic use, that means the secondary bridge is going to have an adjoined ship capable of going into warp. So that'll be when we part ways" Ryuki finished. The only reply was the subtle shifting of the ice floes rubbing against the hull of the ship.
"This will probably be the last chance to get some food and rest. Unpack the tents, get the food cooking. Get some sleep everyone".
