Prologue - Part 1

The all-terrain, general-purpose vehicle sped with near reckless abandon along a narrow forest track, crushing autumn leaves and drying dead wood under its four rugged wheels. The turning of its engine was conspicuously loud to the driver as he raced through the woodlands and might have worried him if not for the distant sounds of overlapping weapons fire, missile detonations, and the thundering footfalls of immense biomechanical creatures rampaging many kilometers away.

The open-top, four-wheeler roared over a rise on the track and crashed somewhat heavily on the far side before driving up to a clearing about a hundred feet across that was obscured from the air by a canopy of branches extending from the encircling mammoth trees. Parking the vehicle just outside the clearing, the driver shut-off the engine and dismounted. Reaching into a small compartment behind the passenger seat, he pulled out a compact, nondescript carry-all bag and a separate survival kit. Almost as an afterthought, he reached in further and retrieved a pump-action shotgun and sidearm, that latter going into a holster strapped to his right thigh.

Clad in a black, silver trimmed pilot-suit, the driver walked to the edge of the clearing and withdrew a palm-sized transmitter from a pocket. He flicked the little device open, revealing a numbered keypad that he now depressed in a memorized sequence as he pointed the transmitter at the clearing. When nothing happened, he raised it a little higher, and re-entered the sequence of key presses. This time he was rewarded with a deep rumble from over-sized machinery beginning to move. In the clearing, a large rectangular trapdoor slowly rose on large hydraulic rams as thick as a man’s torso, pitching upwards until one end stood perhaps forty feet above the forest floor, reaching almost to the intertwined branches overhead.

What light could filter through the canopy of branches revealed a gun-metal grey ramp descending into a dimly lit underground cavern. Crossing the clearing to the opening quickly, the driver descended the ramp at a brisk jog, the carry-all bag across his back, shotgun in his left hand, and sidearm strapped to his right thigh. At the foot of the ramp, he keyed in a new sequence into the little transmitter. Above and behind him, the opening closed to conceal the underground storage hangar from the outside world.

Hangar illumination was at a minimum, but the driver knew the layout well. He walked to a panel mounted to a smooth, permacrete wall not far from the ramp, and flipped the toggles there to call up extra lighting to the facility. The hangar brightened, revealing it was bare of equipment, barring a handful of small service vehicles, cherry-pickers and a run-down, bipedal forklift parked to one distant side. It was devoid of life other than the driver’s and he released a heartfelt sigh of relief. But when he laid eyes on the large object standing in the center of the small hangar, the anxiety he’d felt up to now was replaced by joy that swept past his earlier relief.

It’s still here, he thought.

Stepping up to the object, he was overwhelmed by its beauty now as much as he’d been the first time he saw it when he was asked to pilot it, almost half a year ago.

Its sleek armour a mixture of greys and dark forest browns, the Shadow Fox stood a scant eight meters high and a whisker over seventeen meters long. Modelled on the ancient Earth creature, a small mammal known for its cunning, speed and agility, and long hunted to near extinction millennia passed, the creature had ended up on Zi millennia ago, and had found a new home on a new world. The Zoid bore a striking resemblance to the fox, hence its name. But there the similarities ended, for where one was an organic life-form, the Zoid was a biomechanical entity with abilities that were still being studied. Despite man’s colonization of Zi over a thousand years ago, there was still much to learn about the Zoids, while it was also a matter of relearning what humanity had lost during the centuries of conflict between rival powers across vast continents.

Scott Ronin looked up the Shadow Fox, the second of two prototypes built by Dr. Laon, a maniacal genius with a private vendetta that had consumed much of his life. Ronin knew little of Laon, outside of the rumours that invariably worked their way down the corridors of the Backdraft facility at Mount Isolena. He’d worked with Laon for a handful of months after the first Shadow Fox had been unveiled, and test piloted the Zoid for the doctor a handful of times before Scott was transferred to other projects. The Zoid had amazed him, a biomech that could pull maneuvers unlike any other he’d piloted in the past. He’d even leaped down a cliff wall one dark night when he’d been granted permission to test the Zoid further.

That was the last night the first prototype would remain in Backdraft hands.

At the time, Laon had almost finished the second prototype but upon losing the first, the man had simply abandoned the project, disenchanted with the quality of Backdraft pilots and the treachery of the Blitz Team pilot, Brad Hunter. It was then that Scott and a small group of engineers had persuaded the Mt. Isolena base commander to allow them to finish the unit on their own. With the work almost completed, it had taken less than two weeks to get the second prototype fully active.

But the Backdraft was changing direction. Something its people, even down to the lowest ranked soldier could sense. The organization had taken on a more militant stance, no longer satisfied with running the Dark Matches under the nose of the Zoid Battle Commission. It was challenging the Commission, a move Scott realized would undoubtedly result in the birth of a new era, or the destruction of the Backdraft Group, and so he’d removed the location of the isolated hangar from the facility’s computer and changed its access codes. The engineers he’d worked with ended up being transferred to the Central Command tower several hundred kilometers away, as the organization pulled more and more of its resources away from the outer bases to its central facility in light of its impending showdown with the Battle Commission.

So it was that the second prototype Shadow Fox had lain forgotten, its location known only to Scott. Now he’d come to claim it, and to leave the Backdraft once and for all – just as Stoller had accomplished, and Pierce before him. For the Backdraft had lost its battle with the Zoid Battle Commission, just as the Berserk Fury had fallen in combat to Bit Cloud and his Liger Zero. On that day, the Backdraft Group had ceased to exist as an overwhelming force of dark power on the battlefield.

He walked up to the Shadow Fox’s left foreleg and touched the recessed switch that would rouse the biomech out of its slumber. Standing close to the Zoid and wearing the pilot suit that would interface with the biomech’s life force, Scott could feel its enormous power building. Then the cockpit light, the Shadow Fox’s eyes, brightened and the Zoid awoke. He stepped before it again and issued a single command.

“Down.”

The Shadow Fox dropped down on all four legs, its three-meter long head lowered until it was level with Scott’s waist. The cockpit opened, and the elegant control column swung upwards, giving him ample room to climb in. Opening the compartment behind the pilot’s seat, Scott stored the carry-all bag and survival kit inside, placing the silver shotgun into the holder straps he’d fitted to the compartment weeks ago. He closed the compartment and seated himself properly in the pilot’s g-couch before swinging the control column down and sealing the cockpit canopy shut.

The Shadow Fox powered up its cockpit systems. Multiple holo-vid displays and screens winked to life, each one displaying the status of the biomech’s various systems. He noted the core was at full charge, the auxiliary fuel sources fully stocked, the gyro stabilizers were on-line and functioning nominally. With practiced ease, he selected the weapons displays, nodded in satisfaction at seeing the cannon was still fully charged, with a maximum load of smoke discharge canisters at his disposal. One by one he checked the unit’s systems, as he had done countless times during its completion and testing, when the Zoid had belonged to the Backdraft Group.

Now it was his and he was taking it with him to freedom.

Scott sensed the Shadow Fox’s energy around him, transmitted through the suit as much as through the unique empathy man and Zoid seemed to share. Some pilots were uniquely gifted, able to gain synchronicity with the biomechs that set them apart, placing such men and women in a category of few that included Vega Obscura and Bit Cloud. Scott knew he wasn’t gifted as they were while confident his abilities were well above ordinary. He’d been piloting Zoids since his teens and he’d tested and trained on dozens of different breeds in the past dozen years. He trusted his skills enough to warrant taking a risk as a solo pilot. The Fox sensed his growing excitement and grew eager to break free and leave the confines of the hangar behind. Scott sought to soothe the great biomech by calming his own emotions down.

Wiping the holo-vid displays clear with a wave of his hand, Scott powered up the multi-sensor array designed into the Shadow Fox’s pointed ears. The system showed movement of large Zoids in the forest within a ten-klick radius, undoubtedly fleeing the fighting at the Isolena base. He noted several land vehicles among the deserters. Studying the pattern of movement for a half minute, he was satisfied none appeared to be deliberately searching for him or the facility.

Activating the hangar open sequence from within the cockpit, Scott powered up the Shadow Fox’s stealthrun to a minimum setting, generating an ECM field that would scatter electronic sensor scans and weapons locks. Though its optical properties were less effective than the visual camouflage system employed by Zoid Hellcats, it happened to consume less power while making the Shadow Fox hard to target.

Ahead of the quadruped biomech, light from the slowly falling sun crept across the exit ramp as the opening swung upwards. Pushing the column forward, Scott set the Shadow Fox into motion. With ease, the medium-sized Zoid walked quickly up the ramp into the afternoon daylight. Scott keyed in the power down sequence for the hangar, which also closed the exit behind him. Then he nudged the control column forward a little more and within moments the Shadow Fox was running lightly through the ancient, towering trees of the Isolena Forest.

It wasn’t easy for Scott to restrain the elation he felt as he piloted the Shadow Fox through the dense forest. He monitored his progress on a navi-screen and observed the location of other Zoids around him, mindful of steering clear of them. He crossed behind the path of slow moving trucks, their drivers unaware of the sleek, dark Zoid’s presence. He followed a gentle stream that wound its way down through the forest and out of the mountains. Eventually, the stream would merge with the River Isola that flowed along open and forested valleys, and across vast plains toward the western coast of Europa. The heavy trees offered the Shadow Fox cover from prying eyes within the woods. The thick, lattice canopy of branches obscured the daylight from above, and soon darkness crept earnestly across the landscape as the sun descended to the western horizon.

Abruptly, the ground trembled. The Shadow Fox felt the strong vibrations through its paw sensor pads, drawing Scott’s attention to the multi-sensor display. Something big was on approach from the northwest, on a bearing toward the mountains behind him to the east. At first, the tactical system judged it to be mega-class Zoid moving along the ground, but then the multi-sensor supplied more data, and the tactical AI revised its judgment. Whatever was causing the surface tremors was flying in the air.

Scott pulled back on the control column and the sleek biomech slowed swiftly, coming to a smooth stop within seconds. He then worked the column’s handles, turning them to send the Shadow Fox into a defensive crouch. Scott refrained from activating the thirty-millimeter Vulcan cannon, switching it to standby mode for the time being. It would take only heartbeats for the laser weapon to rise on hydraulic arms and spin its quad barrels, unleashing lethal bolts of supercharged particles at 600-rpm. Then the surface tremors grew stronger as the enormous flying object drew nearer and finally came into view.

A Grand Whale King soared majestically on a direct route to the Mount Isolena Base. It crossed the sky a couple of kilometers behind Scott, and he willed the Shadow Fox to half-turn around. The biomech craned its neck to look up through the tree branches at the flying monster slowly traversing the early evening sky. Its slow progress was deceptive, its size masking the true haste and urgency of its flight. Scott watched it through the artificial transparency of the cockpit canopy, humbled by its size and power as the four-engine leviathan soared into the distance at a speed well over three times what the Shadow Fox could muster across open ground.

Reaching forward, Scott tapped a screen that was keeping a visual lock on the Grand Whale King. It froze the image, and he then enlarged the section where the Backdraft emblem was visible. Enhancing the picture as it resized, he soon recognized the emblem beside it – the personal crest of the Backdraft commander known Colonel Desura.

Wonderful, he bitterly whispered in his mind, then cleared away the enhanced image on display. His gaze tracked back to the Grand Whale King growing every smaller as it headed north at great speed and pondered the implications of Desura stepping into the fray.

Colonel Chiren Carmen Desura was one of the Backdraft Groups most respected commanders, a woman who had risen through the ranks in very few years. She’d commanded the base almost a year ago, before disappearing into the depths of the Dark Continent on some classified search mission. He’d heard rumours she’d returned a few weeks prior to the discovery of the Berserk Fury. It was no secret that she and Major Altile, the Backdraft CEO, were less than friends. On numerous occasions, Desura had opposed Altile’s plans before the Council of Seven. Clearly, she was heading for Mount Isolena with a mind to making the base her own once again…or what was left of it.

Well, we really dodged that laser bolt, Scott thought.

Indeed, it certainly had been a good time to leave. A day later and he’d have lost his chance to steal – that is, liberate – the second prototype Shadow Fox. Relieved once again, Scott switched the canopy’s exterior view to night mode, robbing the scenery around him of its color. But the monochrome view of the forest was clear and sharp, affording him sufficient depth of perception by which to navigate. Then again, it was the Shadow Fox that would be doing the running. Switching to night view made it easier for Scott to see where he was going. He then left the Vulcan cannon on standby, and studied the multi-sensor display for a couple more minutes. The Grand Whale King was off the scope, but there were a few Zoids and vehicles inside the forest. However, a great many had slipped away out of sight and mind during the past few minutes.

Scott willed the Shadow Fox to turn its body and face southwest into the darkening forest. He then pushed the control column forward to get going again. For less than an hour, the Zoid followed the mountain stream, all the while descending the side of the mountain toward a valley floor that stretched well beyond the range of the multi-sensor. Well before arriving at the valley basin, Scott angled the Zoid westward. Here the ground was less rocky, softer under the massive, ultra strong feet of the Shadow Fox, and the biomech kept to an easy pace far below its maximum speed as Scott no longer felt pressured to urge the Zoid to travel faster. They were clear of any would-be pursuers, and the moonless night behind a newly formed blanket of clouds provided him with the cover of darkness. Only the Zoid’s advanced night vision allowed him to pilot over the undulating terrain of the forested valley at any great speed without risk of a misstep or accident. Nevertheless, it was another long hour before he truly felt the tension in his shoulders fade away as he realized that he’d indeed made good on his escape. Months of work and weeks of planning had all come down to this one day.

Now, he was free.

Alone…but free to follow his own path.

Prologue - Part 2

The Grand Whale King’s bridge was an epic demonstration of controlled bedlam.

Every monitoring and scanning station in the multi-tiered chamber was hard pressed to track the activity of Zoids and non-Zoids in the heavily forested landscape surrounding Mount Isolena for hundreds of square kilometers. The tactical AIs burned a megawatt of power churning through the sensory data as they catalogued the chaos happening outside the Backdraft base, while relying on scans of the interior and intercepted communications to paint an accurate picture of the turmoil within the enormous facility.

The bridge was multi-tiered with two levels arranged in a horseshoe around a command dais where Backdraft Colonel Chiren Carmen Desura sat in the plush, high-backed captain’s chair. She was an attractive blonde woman in her late thirties, who kept herself in trim shape. Sitting in the captain’s chair with her legs crossed, she was dressed in a black and charcoal-grey uniform – a military long coat and dark pants affair that ended with black, heeled boots on her feet. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail and she sat with her chin resting on an upturned palm, while her right elbow lay planted on an armrest. In her left hand, she held a ceremonial truncheon that she tapped periodically on a thigh.

She watched events playing out before her with an air of boredom. Indeed, those that didn’t know her would have surmised she was disinterested in the chaos consuming the mountain base. But those that knew her had reason to fear the actual anger simmering behind her blue eyes and apathetic demeanor.

The Grand Whale King’s actual captain stood behind a lectern on the command dais – ahead and to the left of the captain’s chair and inches behind a guardrail that almost completely encircled this topmost level of the bridge. He had one hand on the lectern, the other clenched in a white knuckled fist behind his back.

Captain Pietro’s eyes were constantly on the move, his gaze shifting from bridge station to station, watching over his people operating their consoles, every man and woman hard at work in this time of crisis for the Backdraft. When he wasn’t monitoring them, he was either sparing a glance at the view through the bridge’s enormous windows, or he was surveying aspects of the situation and his Zoid on a touchscreen console more than a foot wide mounted to the lectern. Occasionally he would enter a command and read the information displayed. At times, he would look back at Chiren, his expression invariably grim with each report he made to her, and now was no different when he said, “The fighting could spread to the sublevels.”

Indeed, that would be a serious problem, she thought. “Let’s hear the comm chatter from inside and outside the base.”

The captain hesitated for a second, then input a series of commands into his console. Not long after, a new layer of noise was added to the chatter of the bridge operators. It came from the open comms of the combatants in and around the base picked up by the Grand Whale Kings transceivers. The sounds of gunfire. The cries of wounded men. The angry shouts exchanged between Zoid warriors, between base personnel, between division leaders calling for someone or other to stand down and surrender.

Chiren closed her eyes for a handful of seconds, but she couldn’t escape the sounds of the armed struggle taking place inside the base.

What in bloody Hell happened in there?

Was it a power struggle caused by Altile’s disappearance? After all, nature abhors a vacuum.

She swore inwardly at the Council of Seven and their foolish leader, The Count.

That bastard and his idiotic vision for the future—he brought this on us!

Wetting her lips quickly as she opened eyes, Chiren looked at a holovid window floating to the right of the command dais. It displayed a map of the local geography. An icon for the Grand Whale King moved steadily across the map toward the dark blot of Mount Isolena. “How far from the base are we?”

“Sixteen kilometers. E.T.A. two minutes,” Pietro replied.

“Have we established communications with anyone inside?”

Pietro studied his console for a few seconds. “Communications are still being jammed, but we’re now close enough for tight-beam laser comms.”

Chiren straightened her posture on the chair and tapped the comm panel on the right armrest. “Captain Priest, it’s Desura. Status?”

“Colonel, we’re ready to deploy. All wolves are in the drop bay.”

“Understood. I’m on my way. Nobody drops before I do. Is that clear?”

“Crystal, Colonel.”

“Desura, out.” She closed the channel with a tap to the comm console. To Pietro, she said, “We need to know what happened in there. Don’t fail me, Captain.”

Pietro nodded, hesitated, then quickly said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“The bridge is yours.” Chiren stood up and worked the kinks out of her stiff back muscles. “My best bet is that they’re fighting to determine who will be the next top dog at the base. Unfortunately for them, it’s not for them to decide.” Anger made the truncheon tremble in her grip. “That’s my decision to make!”

***

She hurried while trying to look like she wasn’t hurrying.

In her right ear, Chiren wore a comm-bud with a slender mike reaching out to her lips. The comm channel was open and by tapping the comm-bracelet she wore, Chiren could change channels on demand. Alternatively, if she called out to someone such as Captain Pietro or Captain Priest, the comm AI would automatically connect her to the appropriate party. Presently, she listened to reports from Pietro as the elevator that she rode carried her a quarter the length of the 800-meter long Zoid to a hangar bay where the Lhoenguard – her personal combat squad – awaited her arrival.

In the meantime, Pietro had the Grand Whale King circling the mountain in full view of the Backdraft personnel outside the base, as well as those inside the facility with access to the exterior surveillance cameras. Some of the fighting had died down as a few of the base division commanders threw in their support behind Chiren. But there were others who’d decided it was time to make a run for it, and they were shooting at whoever opposed their escape. However, she soon learned that initial assessments of the situation were not entirely accurate. There was a lot more at play than she and her officers had assumed.

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“It appears,” Pietro reported, “that the fighting did not start in earnest until the arrival of three Whale Kings with no markings. Before then, the base was in uproar after Major Benden—who’d been left in charge by Major Altile—decided to pledge his allegiance to Colonel Franz Fraxinus and declare the base was now part of the Fraxinus faction.”

Chiren felt the urge to vomit at mention of the name. “Then what happened?”

“Several of the base’s division leaders took umbrage and began staging a revolt. Maj. Benden caught wind of it and called for outside assistance. Within a couple of hours, three unmarked Whale Kings arrived with a complement of manned and unmanned Zoids to support him. Seeing this, the base commanders opposing him put their plans into action and attempted to overthrow Maj. Benden. However, by then he and his supporters had complete access to the base’s interior defenses. That slowed down the commanders and personnel opposing him, but it didn’t stop them. Now with our arrival, those forces not loyal to the Fraxinus faction are redoubling their efforts to retake the base.”

The elevator stopped, opened its doors, and Chiren stormed out onto a walkway that ran the length of a hangar where she expected to find the men and women warriors of Lhoenguard waiting for her.

“And the rest of the fighting? What’s that about?”

“Opportunistic individuals who chose neither side and decided to leave with whatever they could get their hands on. To that end, it appears they made off with about half the Whale Kings in the main hangar.”

Chiren cursed softly, then picked up her pace, no longer briskly walking. Now she was jogging. “I have to wonder how many of those Whale Kings were stolen by collaborators of Fraxinus’s faction.” She rounded a corner of the walkway, her heels clanging loudly on the metal as she hurried to a mobile boarding bridge with an operator waiting for her. She glanced at the hangar’s occupants, swiftly counting twenty-four Zoids including her biomech standing, each of them standing on a drop platform. “Captain, where are the unmarked Whale Kings now?”

“One is on the ground at the northern foot of the mountain. And another is in the air circling the base directly opposite us.”

She nearly skidded to a stop on the boarding bridge and waved sharply at the operator to bring it alongside her waiting Zoid, then she ordered Pietro, “Blow it out of the sky. And obliterate the one on the ground. Whichever you can do first.”

“Colonel…forgive my impertinence, but are you certain—”

“Captain, I don’t like repeating my orders.”

“Yes, ma’am. Understood ma’am.”

“And shoot down any Whale King that tries to leave the base. Make that a general announcement. Use the external speakers if you must. Whatever it takes.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

The boarding bridge’s platform came up to the right side of her Zoid’s angular head. She gave the operator a curt nod by way of thanks, then all but jumped across to her crimson Konig Wolf. The cockpit canopy was open and Chiren dropped into the g-couch a little harder and faster than she would have liked. She set a new best time strapping herself in, while simultaneously flicking switches and tapping flatscreen consoles as she powered the Wolf out of its slumber. She wasn’t in her pilot-suit – also known as the G-suit – so she could only feel her Zoids consciousness by her own means. Still, her empathy with the biomech was sufficient for her to sense its eagerness and unease.

Easy girl. Easy. It’s ugly out there.

The cockpit canopy turned transparent as glass and Chiren looked through it at the hangar’s other occupants. Of the twenty-four Zoids in her squad, nine were Konig Wolves, including hers. Their bodies were black, but their armor was painted dark gold, and their eyes glowed amber. But Chiren’s Wolf had green eyes and there was another distinction – their weapons loadout. Unlike the other Konig Wolves of her squad who made use of the Heavy Arms configuration, her Wolf lacked the oversized sniper cannon, and Chiren had replaced the double-barrel dischargers with Blade Liger style assault boosters. However, her Zoid retained the boxy AZ missile launchers mounted to the shoulders of its front legs.

The rest of her squad consisted of fifteen Command Wolf AC Zoids, all of them painted dark gold as well to match the scheme of their much larger brethren.

In the cockpit of her Zoid, Chiren changed comm channels. “Captain Priest?”

“Ma’am.”

“Secure for drop.”

“Secured, ma’am. We’re just waiting on you.”

She snorted softly and muttered off comm, “…wise ass….”

Above her Zoid, mechanical arms anchored four drop wires to the Wolf’s back. Once secured, she received a message on a cockpit display. She was good to go.

“Captain Pietro, we are ready for drop. What’s your situation?”

At that point, she felt the hangar deck tremble under the Konig Wolf’s feet.

“Engaging the enemy Whale Kings, Colonel.”

She swallowed down a curse and tapped into the Grand Whale King’s optical sensor feed. In moments, she had a view of the world outside the immense flying Zoid. The Mount Isolena base loomed dark and ominous on the cockpit’s center display screen. “Captain, can you drop us onto the base’s summit. We’ll work our way down from there.”

“Colonel, we’re maneuvering to a loading platform with access to the main hangar.”

Chiren tapped commands into a console, then activated the cockpit command recognition system. She addressed it by the name she’d given her Zoid in an ancient tongue from the mother world. “Aurum, map us a route to the sublevels from that platform.”

“Acknowledged.” The cockpit navigation AI took on the job of finding a way down to the base’s subterranean levels. “Route plotted.”

The deck trembled again, a sensation she could feel through her Konig Wolf’s body. “Captain Pietro, what’s the hold up?” The muted boom-boom of the heavy guns travelled through the hangar. “Captain, report.”

“In position now, Colonel. We have downed the enemy Whale Kings. Be advised the base’s anti-aircraft defenses are active and targeting us. We’ll only be able to hold position above the platform for thirty seconds.”

She had some initial trouble believing what she’d just heard.

Benden has the base shooting at us?

“Oh, the audacity of the man,” she muttered, then remembered she was still on comms. Clearing her throat, Chiren declared, “Captain, we’ll drop on your signal but hurry it along.”

On the cockpit’s center screen, the landing platform came into view as the Grand Whale King circled the base and slowed to hover over to it. The platform was akin to a promontory or a spur jutting out several hundred feet from the side of a mountain. Abruptly, she felt the flying Zoid yaw sharply to starboard. Beneath her, Aurum had to spread its feet to maintain its balance. On the display screen, the view swung swiftly as the aerial leviathan slewed to a halt above the platform and Pietro’s voice announced, “Lhoenguard—drop, drop, drop.”

Almost immediately the deck under Aurum split open, dropping away like trapdoors. The ninety-tonne biomech fell to the platform about a hundred meters below the hovering Grand Whale King. Chiren clenched her midriff to fight the weightless sensation in her gut and the wires attached to her Zoid suddenly yanked hard, slowing the Wolf’s descent by half when it was a mere dozen or so meters above the platform. Aurum’s feet touched down a couple of seconds later and Chiren yelled, “Detach!”

The wired anchors affixed to her Zoid blew off, taking some of the biomech’s skin with them, but the Konig Wolf didn’t complain. However, that wasn’t the case when the platform came under fire from the base’s defenses. Aurum howled and jumped back, then sideways as if the ground underfoot was too hot to stand on, though it was actually escaping heavy bullets and laser bolts.

“Damn it!” Chiren almost growled out her complaint. “Captain, do something about those guns!”

An indicator on a side screen reported that all members of Lhoenguard were down and free on the loading platform that was as long and wide as the average Whale King. That gave Chiren and her people room to scatter and zig-zag, but those three-hundred meters to the closed entrance felt like three kilometers as they dashed under fire from the base artillery, while above them the Grand Whale King hammered away at those guns with its own heavy cannons, each one larger than Chiren’s Wolf. It silenced the base’s defenses around the loading platform, then used its enormous body to shield Chiren’s squad from incoming fire from elsewhere on the mountain.

“Priest, make us a hole,” Chiren ordered, piloting Aurum to the right to move out of the line fire. A second later, a series of blasts from behind her struck the entrance, penetrating the carbon-steel shutter door, but it wasn’t enough to bring it down. A handful of missiles from an AZ launcher pod finished the job the bullets started, ripping door apart with an explosion that flung the fragments into the mountain base. Anyone standing on the other side of that closed door was shredded meat by now. Chiren swallowed, pushed the image out of her head, and urged her Wolf faster into the facility. A second later, Aurum leapt through the massive, ragged hole in the carbon-steel door, swiftly followed by the rest of the Lhoenguard wolves.

***

They met resistance.

They met allies.

Progress was at times lightning quick. At times painfully slow.

The Lhoenguard would advance, stop to shoot, advance some more, then stop and shoot again. It was repeated over and over, level by level that the Zoid Wolves descended the mountain base. Calling it a mountain had long ago ceased to mean anything since the line where the mountain ended and the base began had long since been erased. One could say that the mountain had been replaced by the manmade architecture of the Backdraft facility. Regardless, the base could at least be described as the size of mountain, and Chiren realized it had never felt as large as it did now as she and her unit fought their way down to the sublevels.

Meanwhile, half of the Lhoenguard had followed Captain Priest to the upper levels with orders to retake the command center at all costs. Chiren had faith in her stalwart second-in-command by virtue of him never having disappointed her thus far. Yet she privately admitted that this was one fight where she’d reconsidered going with him. If not for her urgency to secure the subterranean levels, she would have done just that.

From the moment the Lhoenguard went into action, Chiren had kept an open channel so that her squad could hear the to-and-fro of commands being issued and accepted. Unnecessary chatter was forbidden, keeping the channel free for her to issue orders and receive reports.

“Captain Pietro, do you read me?” she called out.

Chiren and Aurum, along with eleven other Lhoenguard Wolves had managed to gain control of two enormous freight elevators with access to the basement levels. They’d been aided by the base personnel who joined her in the fight to keep the mountain out of the hands of the Fraxinus faction. It was some fifty floors straight down the innards of the mountain. An anxious drop where she feared the elevators would suddenly plunge at terminal speed, killing everyone on them.

“Captain Pietro,” she repeated, “do you read me?”

“…coming through…Colonel…moved away…the heavy fire….”

“Damnit,” she whispered. “Priest, do you copy?” She waited a few seconds. “Priest, do you copy?” The lack of a response squeezed a sigh out of her.

“Colonel,” one of her men said, “it’s all the metal around us.”

She recognized his voice. “I am aware of that, Corporal Palance.”

A young woman spoke into the open channel. “Colonel, I’ve piggy-backed my comms to the base relays. I believe I have contact with the captain.”

Chiren’s eyes grew wide. “Specialist Kassai, was it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good work. You’ll be receiving a commendation after the battle.”

“Thank you, ma’am!”

“Make sure you don’t die before then.”

“…yes, ma’am….”

Chiren called out to her second-in-command. “Captain Priest, do you read me? Respond.”

“Priest here. We’re at the command deck. The blast doors are sealed shut from the inside. Attempting an override with help from the base specialists.”

“Captain, your orders are to secure the base command deck. You are to capture the traitors, preferably alive, but don’t take chances.” In other words, Priest was free to kill the defectors if he deemed it necessary to capture the base command and control center. Chiren then glanced at a display screen to her left, worried that it wasn’t accurately reflecting the condition of her squad due to the communication failures. “Casualties, Captain?”

“None. But I have three men down. And we lost their Zoids.”

She bit the inside of her mouth and clenched a fist that she banged against a thigh. “I’ll want a full report at the conclusion of this battle.”

“Aye, Colonel.”

Needing a moment to straighten her thoughts and composure, Chiren then informed him, “We’re descending to the basement levels. We’ll be there shortly. Can you monitor us from where you are?”

“We’re tracking your progress with portable equipment patched into the security grid.”

“Can you tell us what to expect down there?”

“Most of the security doors are engaged and blocking the corridors. I suspect the AI managing the sublevels slammed them shut when the fighting began.”

Chiren narrowed her eyes. “Good move,” she murmured, then asked in a louder voice, “What else?”

Priest notably hesitated. “Colonel, the security doors are shut…but something went through them regardless. At least two dozen doors were breached on subfloors one to seven.”

The news made her throat suddenly dry up. She struggled to wet it with what moisture she had left in her mouth. “Can you tell me the situation in sublevel nine?”

Again, Priest was slow to reply. “Sublevels eight and nine are dark, ma’am. We have no readings from in there. The security grid is completely down in those floors.”

She swallowed with some difficulty, then took a couple of deep breaths to relax her chest muscles and steady her nerves. “Understood, Captain. We’ll maintain an open channel as much as we can.”

“Acknowledged, Colonel. Good hunting.”

“Much appreciated,” she murmured under her breath, then addressed the specialist from earlier. “Kassai, show us how you patched your comms to the local relays. I want all of us to be able to contact the captain and each other at the drop of a hat in case you’re not around.”

The young woman responded promptly, though a tad grim. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t worry, Kassai. You’ve made it this far. The worst is behind us.”

“Yes, ma’am. Understood, ma’am.”

“Good, good. Now tell us what you did.”

***

The two freight elevators carrying Chiren’s Lhoenguard members descended to sublevel seven where she ordered everyone out. They exited into an enormous cylindrical chamber with massive rock and metal bridges crisscrossing the interior that spanned at least three-hundred meters in diameter. There were wide ramps leading up and down between the bridgeways. Other elevators stood stationary at the levels above Chiren’s elite squad. She took a moment to survey what she saw from inside Aurum’s cockpit, uneasiness creeping down her back at how deathly silent and still everything was around her. After another moment, she checked a map on a display screen to her right, with two sections highlighted in crimson.

“Lt. Morigan,” she said.

“Colonel?”

“Take your team into sublevel eight. I want you to report back on the situation in areas Eight-Gamma, Eight-Delta, and Eight-Zeta. If you encounter survivors, convince them to stand down. If they refuse, you are free to subdue them.”

“…survivors, ma’am?”

“Is there a problem with your comms, Lieutenant?”

“No, ma’am. Order acknowledged.”

“Excellent. If you need to find us, we’ll be in area Nine-Epsilon. Move out!”

As she led the way inside her Konig Wolf, Chiren quickly checked on the status of her Zoid. Heat levels were a little high, but she estimated she had a few minutes of combat left before Aurum began to overheat. Even the larger than normal cooling units fitted to the Lhoenguard Konig Wolves could only do so much to keep temperatures down inside the Zoids. Fortunately, the last few minutes descending by elevator had given the Zoids a break after nearly twenty minutes of battle as the Lhoenguard fought their way from the loading bay to the mountain’s core shaft.

In his Konig Wolf, Lt. Morigan was at the head of his team of six Zoids as they travelled down a ramp to sublevel eight. Chiren had her people follow another ramp to sublevel nine and they entered a corridor that measured thirty-meters wide and twenty-meters high according to her Wolf’s scanners. It was easily two hundred meters in length, with cracked and pitted permacrete walls. Very few of the ceiling light panels worked, so Chiren used the Konig Wolf’s night-vision headgear to see the way. After a minute walking in a loose, double-file formation, the eight Zoids including Aurum arrived at a circular passageway with entrances labelled Nine-Alpha, Nine-Beta, and so forth. Chiren turned her Wolf to the right, leaving the corridor behind as she treaded along the passageway, only to stop a half-minute later when the entrance to Nine-Epsilon came into view.

The double doors across the entrance were open.

The gap wasn’t wide, but sufficient for a small Zoid to pass through.

Damn it to Hell.

She nudged her control column forward and walked her Zoid the last dozen meters to the doors of Nine-Epsilon, then used the night-vision scope to peer into the partially illuminated hemispherical chamber beyond the entrance.

“Down,” Chiren commanded her Zoid. When the Wolf crouched low, she retracted the headgear and raised the cockpit canopy before cautiously climbing down to the ground, carrying a fully armed carbine rifle with her.

“Colonel,” one of her men called to her, his voice emerging from comm-bud in her right ear. “Allow us to check ahead.”

“No—as you were,” she ordered him, then reconsidered. “On second thought, check the remaining chambers. I want to know if any others are open.”

“Yes…yes, ma’am.”

“One more thing. No one comes in here. Am I clear? No one but me.”

A chorus of replies greeted her. Swallowing down her anxiety, Chiren stepped between the large open doors, and crossed the threshold into the domed chamber. Inside it was like a zoo enclosure for wild animals, not Zoids. Animals like those that were brought from earth centuries upon centuries ago. There were different rock levels, some covered in leafy vegetation that drew energy from the sunlamps in the chamber’s high ceiling. One area had an artificial grotto with running water that then streamed into another pond before it disappeared into a rock formation at ground level. She suspected the water was then pumped up to the artificial waterfall in the grotto. Another area had a rock obstacle course. Most striking was the artificial sky projected onto the domed ceiling. It looked perfectly realistic and was complemented by a cool breeze blowing strongly through the interior, no doubt supplied by the environmental control system. Overall, the chamber was enormous by human standards. She had seen the specifications, so she knew it was a hundred meters in diameter and nearly twenty meters at its tallest.

Something small, grey, and fast ran through the brush between short trees. Chiren spun in its direction, her rifle up and ready to shoot, the weapon’s stock braced against her shoulder. But then she saw it was a small animal, something like a monkey. It watched her with large, fearful eyes from behind fern-like plants before racing up a nearby tree and vanishing in seconds into the branches heavy with leaves. Relaxing a little, Chiren lowered the rifle’s aim a fraction and took another slow look around her.

A grey-white, maintenance robot – its rotund body riddled with bullet holes – lay fallen at the base of a short tree. Another robot lay crushed into the soil beside the grotto as if it had been stepped on by something with huge, heavy feet. A third, barrel-shaped robot was also riddled with bullets near the doorway into the chamber. The condition they were in told Chiren what she needed to know about what had happened inside the subterranean habitat. Lowering the rifle down to her side, she stared blankly at her surroundings, dismay growing into frustration, anger, and finally falling into despair that made her crouch on the ground and squeeze her eyes shut.

They’re gone.

No, not gone. Taken. Stolen. Appropriated. Kidnapped.

It hardly mattered what past participle she applied to the situation. The fact was that the precious little Zoids that lived inside the habitat were no longer here. She had gone through great lengths to keep them safe and hidden even from her comrades in the Backdraft group by hiding them under their very noses.

I was a fool. A stupid fool! I should never have brought them here!

Yet in the end it had been for nought. Someone had betrayed her. Someone who knew they were here. And now Chiren feared what their captors had planned for them if she didn’t find a way to get them back.

What the Hell was I thinking?

Abruptly, she remembered a detail that had slipped her notice until now. Three Whale Kings had arrived, but only two were still here to be confronted by Chiren’s Grand Whale King. The third was gone and she knew who to blame for the missing Zoids.

Fraxinus!

The comm-bud crackled in her right ear. Someone was trying to contact her. Hearing it, Chiren quickly stood up. And not a moment too soon. Behind her, a young woman’s voice reached out to her.

“Colonel? Colonel—Lt. Morigan….”

Turning around, Chiren saw the slender figure of Specialist Kassai standing in the gap between the chamber doors, her face a picture of astonishment as she slowly stared at the habitat’s interior. In that moment, anger washed through Chiren.

“Specialist, you’d better have a damned good reason for coming in here or I’m going to shoot you where you stand!”

Kassai blanched. All color left her face.

“Answer me!” Chiren shouted.

Kassai lips moved but nothing came out for several seconds until she suddenly found her voice. “Colonel—Colonel, it’s the LT. He’s been trying to contact you. He’s saying it’s extremely urgent. Like really, really urgent—”

“Enough. Come with me.” Chiren strode angrily toward the open doors. “You and I are going to talk later.”

Kassai was as white as a sheet and lost her voice completely. She barely managed to nod as Chiren stormed past the young woman.

***

When Chiren arrived aboard Aurum, with Specialist Kassai close behind in her Command Wolf, she discovered Lt. Morigan’s squad belting cannon fire into the chamber designated Eight-Theta. Along the way, she’d been listening to the comm talk between the warriors, but no one was saying what they were shooting at. In fact, Lt. Morigan practically ordered his superior officer to keep her distance.

“Is it dead?” a man asked.

“No, it’s still moving—keep shooting!” a woman shouted.

“I’m out of missiles,” another woman cried out. “How in blazes can it still move?”

“Move aside, Sylvie,” Morigan ordered. “Fausto, take her place and hit it with everything you’ve got.”

“Copy that, LT.”

“Nobody stops shooting until it stops moving,” Morigan declared.

Chiren clenched her jaw. Being left out of the loop, even ordered to stay back for her own safety, was grating on her nerves. However, she held her silence and waited until her subordinate had the situation under control. That felt like it took an hour, though when she glanced at a screen with a chronometer on display, Chiren learnt it was only a minute after her arrival that the shooting finally stopped.

“Okay…is it dead this time?” a male warrior asked.

“I’m not going in there to check,” the woman called Silvie replied. “No way. The colonel can hang me upside down if she wants, but I ain’t going in there.”

Chiren’s eyes narrowed, and she clicked her tongue, but otherwise said nothing.

Lt. Morigan issued orders. “Stay here. I’m going in there. If I don’t make it back out, one of you has to take care of my dogs.”

The female warrior of a Konig Wolf with empty missile pods said, “LT, stop talking like that!”

Visibly hesitating, Morigan walked his Konig Wolf into the chamber. The remaining five members of his squad waited outside, their Zoids shifting nervously on their feet.

“Did anyone know we had that under the base?”

“Nope.”

“Not me.”

“Definitely not me.”

Then the female warrior, Silvie, announced, “Oh, look. It’s the colonel.”

“What?” was shouted in chorus.

Chiren decided enough was enough and piloted her Zoid up to the entrance and the anxious Zoids and their pilots. “I trust one of you will tell what the Hell is going on.”

“Colonel,” Lt. Morigan said, “it’s safe to come in. And it’s best if you see it for yourself.”

Curious and incensed, Chiren worked the handles of the control column and steered her Konig Wolf through the open doorway and into an empty chamber with gouged permacrete walls and very little lighting coming from the ceiling. It wasn’t domed but rectangular with at least double the volume of the chamber she’d left behind. In the middle of the floorspace, Morigan’s Zoid stood with its guns facing a corner. Chiren could see by its stance that the man’s Konig Wolf was still on edge and ready to empty its magazines at the drop of a pin. She instantly understood why when she looked into the corner his biomech was facing.

“Holy Death Saurer,” she whispered loudly.

Morigan said, “Respectfully ma’am, that ain’t no Death Saurer. That’s a Death Stinger…or at least it used to be…until it ran into us.”

The large, multiped Zoid had lost its legs, the tail was blown apart, and massive holes had been punched into its head armor. The body had taken a tremendous beating from the six Zoids of Morigan’s squad and finally succumbed to its wounds, which Chiren found too numerous to count.

“Colonel, my squad and I were lucky. Its E-shield wasn’t working, and it already looked heavily damaged when we came across it. It was only firing with fewer than half its guns. If this thing had been in tip-top shape, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it.”

Suddenly, the Death Stinger moved or twitched or shuddered. It didn’t matter because Morigan’s Konig Wolf hit it with a dozen more sniper rounds before its large gun ran empty. Chiren was about ready to add her Aurum’s firepower into the mix, but the scans she saw indicated the Death Stinger’s Zoid Core was growing cold. The fearsome biomech was finally dead. The scans also confirmed there was no one inside the cockpit.

Dear gods, it was moving on its own?

Morigan had his Konig Wolf take a few long steps back. “Colonel, like I said earlier, this Stinger was badly damaged when we came across it. And it wasn’t trying to get out until it saw us.” He released a troubled sigh. “Before then, I think it was hiding in here from something. Or from someone other than us.”

Slowly, Chiren sagged in her g-couch, her eyes taking in the sight of the terminated Death Stinger – a Zoid that inspired fear in the toughest of warriors – and then she put a call to her second-in-command.

“Captain Priest, have you secured the base command center yet?”

By the gods you’d better answer Yes, she sent the thought his way.

“Affirmative, Colonel. Mount Isolena Base is now under your command.”

“Very good, Captain. Inform Captain Pietro that he is to land inside the main hangar. It should have plenty of space now. Tell him to set down and await further orders.”

“Understood, Colonel.”

“And Captain, I want you to find and round up all the scientists still on the base or hiding outside in the forests. I don’t care where they’re hiding. Find them and throw them into the brig. It turns out there was a lot we didn’t know about what was going on here, and I intend to find out every single detail about everything they were developing in here. That includes all the research that I didn’t know about.”