V3 was developed, but never built, as far as he was aware. Numerous small iterations on the V3 design later - well after the the production First-models were already stomping off the assembly line - Zero was conceived as a possible high-performance commander-type unit, conceptually completed, but never built beyond the frame and some modules due to the course of the war demanding resources be shifted elsewhere.
On the night before this day, he had slept inside the cockpit. At this point it was more natural to him than sleeping on the ground, a reassuring feeling of safety.
The morning of this day, the final hours before the plan would be put into action, they prepared.
Loading weapons, double and triple-checking that nothing was off, attaching the cleaver to Zero’s back just in case, packing anything and everything Burgess deemed important into roughshod storage tablets… And waiting for him to prepare “the parting gift”. As the engineer described it, the protocol would distribute the main partition across trusted terminals in the network, send out a timed-delay communications pulse from the terminal to other trusted terminals in the network informing them of the workshop’s location, then destroy itself.
When even this was ready, when there was only a short time until the execution, they readied to depart. And whilst Alcerys and Burgess would simply walk up the ramp, Strake’s path was through a wall.
Uttering a brief prayer to his ancestors, he swallowed a metallic pill and began the engine spin-up sequence. Phrases that were associated with the muscle-memory played out in his head as if from a wax cylinder recording.
A button press.
“Heating coil engaged…”
Another button right next to it.
“Initial startup… Successful.”
The cautious movement of the gearshift lever upwards one position.
The cockpit’s lightgem dial-lights came alive, followed by projection glyphs displaying the wall that he would soon break through.
“Spinning up to idle output… Successful.”
Dial arrows twitched within their gauges before settling to a steady readout.
“Igneic reaction steady, fuel essentia mixture optimal…”
Before he would wake the steel beast in earnest, there was one last thing. The control sleeves. Cognitively-conductive casements for the arms covered by Fog-infused fabric and padding, three cables winding from each into the depths of the machine, deceptively slack and flexible as to not impede arm movement. They clung to his arms, for now inactive.
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“Engaging primary powertrain.”
It was a heavy lever that demanded an equally heavy pull to move into place, falling into a position out of sight but well within reach.
Zero’s entirety shuddered, and that ever-so-familiar thrumming pain shot up Strake’s arms and into his chest, but it soon faded. Taking a deep breath, Strake stretched his neck and with a small motion of his foot impelled the steel monstrosity to take a step forward. The ground shook underfoot, kinesis drivers organically and noiselessly shifting hundreds of kilos in metal.
Strake had no particular technique for doing this, no names or weird incantations, perhaps at most a bit of mental focus and a deep breath to get into the right headspace. Even the pills weren’t necessary, they just made it orders of magnitude easier, they were a medium for gaining control over a machine he hadn’t had the time to properly become acquainted with. He’d heard it called different names, none of which fit in his opinion - it was the Sodan Special while he was with Pine Tree Riots, then Steel Union during his stint with the Iron Brotherhood, which eventually mutated to Steel Command when he rejoined the Sage’s service… And that, inevitably, was linguistically distorted into his nickname.
Steel Comet.
Even the origin of that nickname was lost to the simplistic explanation of raw speed, because it made for a better story.
Strake cared for none of these things.
There was just him and the machine, and his skills were particularly geared towards narrowing the ravine, reinforcing the connections in-between.
His heart’s rhythm synchronized to the engine’s growl.
With two more steps he reached the wall, raising Zero’s right arm, directing output to the pilebunker’s kinetic capacitor as he placed it over a marked weak spot.
Thoom.
A clean hole punched straight through, clean - all too clean.
Still, there were four more such spots on the wall, and each one he diligently rammed through with a pilebunker, increasing the kinetic dispersion with each firing, directing less into the stake itself and more into a tight thirty-degree cone surrounding the stake.
It ripped holes the size of human heads, throwing clouds of dust and shards of brickwork all over the street on the other side… But it didn’t collapse.
Seeing that the wall still held, he simply decided to ram through it.
The brickwork gave way like rotten wood. He emerged into a street beneath an overpass, just barely wide enough for two cars. An old bell tower down one way was the landmark for his path. Ever so briefly Strake turned Zero in the other direction, considering just leaving… No. That wasn’t an option. This was as good an opportunity as any to hurt the Empire.
Strake worked the gear shift to the right, shifting into second gear before he took off running headlong down the street in the direction of the bell tower, ripping holes into the road with every step. Then, when he activated the kinetic skates Zero began skidding, but it was in a controlled manner. His directional controls still responded, and indeed, he knew what Burgess had meant.
It was like tracks without the usual downsides of miniaturization. He ripped down the street at full speed still in second-gear, nearing fifty kilometers an hour, nearing a corner. Instinctually anticipating the turn radius was a valuable skill, the speed loss of a sharp turn, but that one turn immediately made Strake realize it was a skill he had to unlearn with Zero.
Its tremendous mass effortlessly drifted around the ninety-degree bend, barely losing any speed at all in the process.
A checkpoint came into view, parts of the street still littered by old rubble and the facades of houses scarred by bullet holes. Third gear.
Sixty kilometers per hour.
Seventy.