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"EX: Exodus Climber 1: Desolation Road"
 
   LAST EDITED ON Jan-06-14 AT 11:33 PM (EST) by Gryphon (admin)
 
This Mini-Serial was initially conceived and begun around the same time as Patience and Reunion in the March-April 2007 timeframe, but once the initial scenes were written, there was an issue of how to handle the remainder's presentation, and other more shinier stories caught our attention. It evolved into a "Finish This Story" challenge over the next several years, for while a framework existed, it never gained much traction... until now.
--- Philip



Wednesday, April 10, 2295
Unknown system, Enigma sector

"... Everybody OK?" Scott Bernard asked.

The other members of his small formation took a few moments to answer. Eventually, though, everyone called in an affirmative.

Ray Randall let the acknowledgements finish before asking the obvious question: "What happened?"

"We passed too close to the mass shadow of this system's primary in hyperspace," Scott explained. "Safety systems automatically kicked us back to the real universe."

"Great. Who plotted this course?" Ray asked sardonically.

"I did," Scott replied, either missing or just ignoring his Beta driver's sarcasm. "But there's not supposed to be a system here. Shinobu, check me on this - what do your charts show?"

There was a short pause before Shinobu Takeuchi's voice replied briskly, "Confirmed, Lead. My navicomputer indicates no star system, these coordinates."

"So... what? We've got old charts?" Ray wondered.

"No," Shinobu replied. "My charts are current. So are Scott's. We updated them before we left Fedora Core. This system is completely undocumented."

"I knew we shouldn't have tried to cut through Enigma," Houquet Erose put in. "This sector's full of navigational anomalies."

"We're skirting most of them," Lance Belmont told her. "This is different. This system didn't just appear here since the last time this region was charted. Someone left it off the official charts on purpose. And that makes me think someone had something to hide. Shinobu, can you access the origin data on this sectional?"

"I can try. Wait one. ... I assume you want to find out who did the survey for this subsector."

"Correct."

"... You're not going to like it."

"GENOM?"

"GENOM."

"Oh, here we go," Ray said. "Come on, Scott. Just because some surveyor who happened to work for GENOM left this place out of a chart - a chart of a region nobody ever comes to... "

"Lancer's right, Ray. If GENOM tried to conceal the existence of this system, I want to know why. Group, form up on me. Shinobu, let's start a survey sweep."

Ray sighed. As if traveling through hyperspace in the back half of a Legios wasn't boring enough, now Scott was off on another one of his obsessive-compulsive GENOM tears.

"Come on, you guys," he said dismissively. "I've got 20 credits says all we find is a big pile of nothing."

Six hours later

What they found was a planet. The system appeared to have only one, a terrestrial world orbiting in the G-class primary's habitable zone. As the four fighters approached, the pilots could see that it was barren, its surface a dull brown, pocked with craters. Thin wisps of cloud drifted above it, evidence that it had an atmosphere, but it did not look inviting.

Shinobu's Prowler Legios, a specially equipped ELINT variant of the Shadow Legios that had gone online shortly before the fall of the WDF, was best-equipped to carry out a survey, so it was she who took the lead as the group approached.

"Class L planet, roughly Earth-sized," she reported as her ship's powerful sensors scanned the planet. "Gravity and atmospheric pressure within point zero two of Standard."

"Class L? Well, there's my big pile of nothing," Ray put in. "Can we go now?"

Ignoring him, Shinobu went on with her scans. "Atmosphere... that's strange. Hang on. I'm getting some strange readings - ... oh my."

"'Oh my'? What is it, Shinobu?"

"I... correction. This is not a Class L planet. I'm reading significant evidence of former forestation along with massive atmospheric contamination. This was a Class M planet, but... it's been destroyed. More than 98 percent of the surface has been devastated, and the pattern indicates deliberate bombardment."

"Glassed during the Covenant War?" Scott wondered.

"No... the blast patterns aren't consistent with Covenant plasma beams," Shinobu replied. "Crater weathering shows it might've happened around the same time, but... judging by the trace materials in the atmosphere, I think this planet was carpet-bombed with thermonuclear weapons."

"Nukes?" Ray blurted. "Oh, man. That's some bad, bad juju. Scott, let's get the hell out of here."

"No," Scott replied. "I have to find out what happened. Shinobu, anything else? Any sign of possible survivors?"

"None. As far as I can tell from here, the planet's completely dead. The atmosphere's toxic with fallout byproducts. Nothing that would have evolved on a Minshara-class planet could survive down there now."

"Can our NBC systems handle the contamination?"

"Easily."

"Then I'm going down to have a closer look."

"Whoa, wait a second, Space Cowboy," Ray objected. "Toxic fallout byproducts? I don't wanna go anywhere near that action."

Scott had an answer for that; he punched the key separating his Alpha from Ray's Beta, snapped, "Stay here, then," and winged over, heading for the surface.

"I guess I will!" Ray replied. "Jeez. That guy."

"Houquet, Lancer, stay in orbit with Ray," Scott ordered, his voice all business now. "Shinobu, I need your sensors. You're with me."

If Shinobu had any reservations about entering such a hostile environment, they didn't show in her voice as she replied crisply, "Roger, Lead," and followed him down. The Alpha and the Prowler Legios re-entered smoothly along computer-assisted trajectories, then leveled out and skimmed the devastated landscape. Scott selected a likely-looking crater and descended into it, switched to GERWALK mode, and landed. Shinobu followed, setting her Prowler down on its VTOL jets next to the crouching Alpha. Making doubly certain that her CVR-3F was sealed against the environment, she climbed out and joined her leader on the crater floor. Ash, cinders, and shards of thermofused glass crunched under her boots. She knelt down, scooped up a small sample, and slotted it into the analysis port on her tricorder.

Scott had no real reason to be out here, but he was a man of action and had to see and do things for himself. It was just part of his nature that when he saw something like this, he had to get down and put his hands on it before he could really take it in.

Shinobu left him to it, busying herself with her analysis. After a few moments, the tricorder gave its report - and reading it, Shinobu felt her stomach tighten.

"Scott... I've got a match," she said slowly. "Spectral analysis shows that the fissile material in the weapon that made this crater came from the Athabasca Basin. On Earth."

Scott turned, his expression of shock and dismay clearly visible even through the tinted facebowl of his CVR-3. "Earthmen did this?" he said. Shaking his head as if in disbelief, he knelt down, picked up a handful of ash, and let it sift through his gloved fingers. Then he stood up, dusted off his hands, and looked off toward the horizon.

"Ray's right," he said after a few silent seconds of thought. "We should get out of here. There's nothing here but death."

Soberly, without speaking, the two pilots climbed back into their craft. Their armor and the cockpits of their fighters would need to be decontaminated once they were someplace safe, but they had equipment to take care of that. Shinobu would never have said it, but she was profoundly glad that Scott had seen things Ray's way. There was something unutterably sad and awful about this place, and she wanted nothing more than to be gone from it.

Which was why, when the reading crossed one of her sensors as the two fighters climbed out, she almost didn't mention it. Only her powerful sense of duty, so strong it even overrode her desire to leave, made her say,

"Hold on... I'm picking up an energy reading."

Scott appeared on her left-hand MFD, blinking in puzzlement. "An energy reading?"

"Affirmative. To the north, range approximately 600 miles. Some kind of field effect - maybe a forcefield. Definitely not a natural phenomenon."

"We'd better check it out," Scott said, turning his fighter northward. Cursing her professionalism, Shinobu silently followed.

A forcefield, Scott mused to himself. Maybe an environmental field. There might just be some survivors after all. Someone who can tell us what the hell happened here. Why GENOM devastated this world. He chuckled bitterly to himself. As if Largo needed a "why" to devastate a world. Maybe just to see how well his weapons could accomplish the task.

"I see it," he said after a few minutes' flight. Off on the horizon, he could make out a faint orange glow. After a few more moments, as the phenomenon rolled up from the horizon and came into full view, he could make out details with the Alpha's all-aspect camera. There was some kind of structure up there - a dome, made of some crystalline material, maybe the size of a football stadium - and the glow was an energy field surrounding it.

Scott keyed his communications panel to the international hailing frequency and said, "Calling the unknown structure ahead. This is Lieutenant Commander Scott Bernard of the Mars Division. We - "

Suddenly, a voice was speaking within his head. It was the voice of a woman, or so it seemed to Scott - one with a lot on her mind. Not elderly-sounding, but old in some indefinable way, old in terms of things seen and experienced, old and unbelievably powerful... but weary, so weary Scott's own body felt leaden just hearing her speak.

Why have you come to ruined Optera? Are you here to gloat over our destruction? Or to finish what your fellow-men began and destroy the last spark of life?

Scott struggled to keep control of his aircraft as his senses swam with the telepathic assault. We mean you no harm! he thought, uncertain whether the woman, if that's what she was, could "hear" him. Believe me, we are no friends of the ones who did this to your world. We're here by accident, but we want to help you if we can.

I find that unlikely, the voice replied, her tone scornful. I have seen the sort of "help" you Earthmen provide. You see its radioactive evidence all around you.

Not all Earthmen are the same! Scott thought desperately. Please, you must believe me! If you can read my thoughts, you must know that what I say is true. Did GENOM Corporation do this to your world? Because they're my enemy too!

Scott flinched as the presence dove deeper into his mind, rummaging through his innermost thoughts, seeking the truth behind his words. After a few moments of agony, it withdrew and hovered at the edge of his perception, as before, weighing him.

Then the voice said, Hmph. I can find no deception in you - but Earthmen are not to be trusted. I will allow you to leave Optera with your life. If you ever return, that life will be forfeit. Go now!

But if I can help -

Now! the voice roared, and Scott grabbed at the sides of his helmet as if he could somehow stop his ears, as if stopping his ears would help.

All right! All right! We're leaving, he thought. I'm sorry for what happened here. I wish I could help. But if you insist, we'll go.

The presence studied him for a few seconds longer, then said in a slightly softer voice, I believe you may mean what you say... but I can no longer afford to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone. Go. Never return... but never forget what you have seen here.

I... I won't, Scott replied. ... Goodbye.

The presence left him. Blinking at the sudden return of normal sensations, Scott took a moment to reorient himself, then keyed his comm system, feeling slightly foolish as the consequences of an earlier rash action occurred to him.

"Ray," he said. "I need you to come down and get me. The Alpha can't escape the planet's gravity on its own."

Ray appeared on the left MFD. "I thought you told me to stay here," he teased.

"I don't have time for jokes, Ray," Scott said. "I can't explain right now, but we have to leave. Right now. So come down and dock with me, and I'll tell you all about it when we're someplace safe."

"Now that's the first sensible thing you've said all day," Ray replied. "OK, I'm on my way." Then he paused. "... Uh-oh. Lance, do you see what I see?"

Lancer appeared on the right-hand MFD. "Roger," he said. "GENOM Acclamator-class assault ship entering orbit. They're launching attack craft. Looks like the first wave is headed for that energy source Shinobu spotted."

Scott didn't waste time with expletives or pointless questions about how or why the GENOM force had arrived. He swung immediately into action, rapping out instructions in quick, clipped tones.

"Ray, Lancer - take out that assault ship. Houquet, Shinobu, see if you can engage the second wave of small craft before they enter the atmosphere. I'm going to intercept the first wave."

"Roger," Shinobu said. She peeled off his right wing, stood her Legios on its tail, and opened up the Beta's mighty thrusters, blasting for space at full power to join up with Houquet.

"Are you nuts?" Ray demanded. "There's gotta be a hundred fighters in that attack wave. At least let me come down and - "

"Negative," Scott cut him off. "Your weapons are optimized for anti-starship combat. It's going to take two Betas' worth of heavy missiles to destroy that Acclamator. Form up with Lancer and follow his lead."

"... I hope you know what you're doing," Ray said, moving to comply.

Scott hunched over his controls, urging the Alpha to its maximum atmospheric speed and watching the glowing re-entry trails of the descending GENOM attack wave ahead. He waited until the channel was closed before replying.

"So do I," he said, and the attack was on.


Some minutes into the ensuing firefight, Houquet belted her red Legios through a pinwheel turn, grunting as the G-forces shoved her into her seat, and blasted a GENOM Vulture-class boomer fighter to ash with the fighter's cannon pod. Vultures weren't really all that hard to kill; the problem was how many of them there were up here. She and Shinobu were flying their hearts out, putting their Legios systems through the hardest maneuvering they could withstand, and barely keeping their heads above water, as it were.

Houquet knocked out three more Vultures with her cannon, then spared a couple of her fighter's smaller missiles to destroy a transport. Momentarily without an immediate target, she spared a glance for the fighters' launching platform. Lancer and Ray were making attack runs on the bigger ship using their heavy weapons. Houquet knew she had the easiest job of the four of them. All she had to do was kill fighters and stay alive. Ray and Lancer had to charge head-on at a capital ship, and Shinobu was doing the work of two people, fighting the small craft with Houquet and using her Prowler Legios's electronic warfare capabilities to assist Lancer and Ray with their attack runs at the same time.

Still, if they thought they had it bad, Scott had it worse. He was down on the planet below with just an Alpha - half of the two-part Legios system, and the smaller half at that - against the first wave of GENOM small craft to launch. It was a group about the size of this one, Vultures escorting ground assault transports, and Scott was up against it all by himself.

Over the slightly tinny sound of the antique rock music playing in Ray's cockpit, audible through his open mic (something with a thunderously insistent beat and the repeated lyrical motif "Invaders must die!"), Houquet's collision alarm went off. The sound was modulated in her earphones to indicate aurally the direction of the threat; she reacted instinctively, jerking her Legios in the opposite direction - barely in time. A craft of a kind she didn't recognize, vaguely humanoid with complex curving armor, shot past at incredible speed, so fast and so close that Houquet's fighter would have rocked with the backblast if they'd been in an atmosphere.

"Holy - !" she blurted. "Scott! Heads up! You've got something coming your way and fast!"

"Unknown mecha, a little bigger than an Alpha," Shinobu added, automatically locking a sensor array on the streaking craft and collecting what data she could on it before it plunged into the atmosphere and vanished in a smear of ionized air. "It just launched from the Acclamator and blew right by us. I make its vector straight for the structure you're defending."

Below, Scott finished off the last of the ground assault shuttles, dodged a burst of blasterfire from a Vulture, and instinctively looked skyward before turning his attention to his radar. "Roger," he said. "I see him. He won't get past me."

With a beep, the thin, cruel face of a man Scott didn't recognize appeared in his right-hand multi-function display. He had pale blue hair and wore a strange flightsuit with green and orange panels - the same color scheme, Scott realized, as the approaching mecha.

"What the hell are you doing here?" the man demanded. Scott noticed with some puzzlement that he seemed furiously angry - not just frustrated that his mission was being interfered with, but personally enraged that anyone dared stand against him.

"I won't let GENOM finish destroying this planet," Scott replied. "Leave now and I'll let you live."

The blue-haired young man blinked in genuine astonishment at Scott, then threw back his head and roared with laughter for a few seconds. Then, as if a switch had been thrown somewhere, his mood reverted to anger.

"You idiot!" he snarled. "You can't stop me! I am Batra, Prince of the Invid! I will decorate this dead world with your bones!"

Now it was Scott's turn to blink in bafflement. "The Invid?!" he blurted - but Batra cut off the channel and charged, leaving him no way to get the answers to the questions that flooded his mind, and little time to consider them anyway.

Like all WDF veterans, Scott knew the name "Invid" as a trademark - the name of a line of combat mecha GENOM had produced starting in the late twentieth century. They self-destructed when disabled, and as far as he knew, no one had ever managed to capture one intact for study, but most Wedge Defenders had always assumed they were just boomers, only bigger. This guy looked like a man. And how could boomer-AI-based combat mecha have a "prince"? Scott shoved the line of thought aside after no more than a second. If he chased it now, he'd only get himself killed, and despite his dangerous lifestyle and penchant for sometimes obsessively making it more so, Scott Bernard had never been in favor of getting himself killed.

For his part, Batra was livid. How dare some remnant Wedgies try to stand in the way of his destiny? Oh, this victory would be sweet indeed. For he had no doubt he would be victorious. He was the most sophisticated, intelligent, capable Invid ever created, his evolution personally supervised by Largo himself. His Gosu-class combat armor was the most powerful mecha ever constructed for the use of an Invid warrior, and it was controlled by his very thoughts. No meatsack of a human, operating his antiquated machine with clumsy hand and foot controls, was going to get the better of him.

The battle fought in the scorched skies of Optera that day was one for the ages. Batra was, indeed, everything he considered himself to be - but, unknowing, he faced a living legend, one of the best and most experienced Legios pilots in the galaxy. Scott Bernard wasn't going to roll over and play dead just because his opponent had a fancy 'Mech with a honking huge plasma cannon and a heavy load of heat-seeking plasma missiles. He had sworn not to let Batra pass - sworn that he wouldn't let GENOM finish devastating this planet - and, having so sworn, he was damned well going to get it done... or die trying.


"Fire in the hole!" Ray crowed as the Acclamator's engine cluster spouted fire and the ship started rolling out of control. "Everybody get clear!"

"Nice shot, Ray!" Lancer congratulated him.

"Wouldn't have happened if you hadn't taken out his shield generators, my man," Ray replied affably.

As the two men, Houquet, and Shinobu ran full-throttle for minimum safe distance, the Acclamator started to lose yaw as well as roll authority, then buckled in the middle as the fires started by its rupturing drive core spread throughout the hull. With a tremendous explosion, the ship cooked off, sending fragments of debris hurtling outward behind a plasma shockwave that wiped out most of the few surviving Vultures.

"Whoo! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" Ray declared. "OK! Where's Scott?"

"Still engaged with the unknown enemy unit," Shinobu reported. "Telemetry uplink from his Alpha is - " She stopped short. "Scott! Scott, I've lost your telemetry. Are you all right? Scott!"

"Hell, it's just one damn thing after another today," Ray grumbled, wheeling his Beta around. "Come on, you guys, let's go pull the boss's bacon out of the fire!"

"What's 'bacon'?" Houquet wondered. "Are you making up words again?"

"Later!" Lancer snapped.


Damn, thought Scott as his Alpha plummeted toward the cratered ground.

The thought might've been considered a bit of an understatement. The last hit he'd taken had destroyed his comm array - nearly taken the battroid's head off, in fact - and seriously deranged his flight controls. The Alpha wasn't the best of flyers in battroid mode anytime, and right now it had all the aerodynamic efficiency and controllability of a brick. If something didn't turn back on damn quick, he was going to be a black streak on the brown ground in about ten seconds.

Scott smirked involuntarily, remembering the words of one of his flight instructors. A fighter pilot doesn't think, "I'll be dead in ten seconds." A fighter pilot thinks, "Hell, I got me ten whole seconds!"

He thumbed the mode select key on the Alpha's throttle lever and bent the lever to its first stop, at 45 degrees. The airframe shuddered, and for a second he thought nothing would happen - and then came the oh-so-familiar half-second vertigo of the cockpit flip and the sudden flood of light as the fighter switched to GERWALK mode. With its mass redistributed and some of its lifting surfaces restored, the Alpha stopped spinning, though it was still falling. Scott glanced at his radar and saw that Batra was following him down, whether to gloat or to finish him off, he wasn't certain.

Either way, the Invid pilot wasn't going to get the chance.

Scott kept the Alpha rolling, giving the impression that it was doing so without his consent. With one eye he watched the altimeter unwind; with the other he checked his systems status. He had a small fire in his number-one engine, but the turbine was still running and throttle response was OK. The damage to the head would have prevented transformation to GERWALK mode if it was going to interfere with operations at all. He might just get away with this after all.

Ready... steady... now!

Thumbing the mode selector again, he bent the throttle lever to its full 90 degrees and shoved it all the way to the forward stop. The Alpha - oh you wonderful machine! - quivered, then snapped obediently into fighter mode and returned totally to his control. Scott dove toward the ground at full power, then threw out the speed brakes, chopped power, and flared the Alpha as if for landing. Jamming in full rudder and firing the RCS to back it up, he slewed the fighter 180 degrees, facing back toward his pursuer, nearly halted a hundred feet off the deck -

- eyeballed a target lock on the still-descending Gosu -

- and then switched back to battroid mode in order to salvo all his remaining missiles without using the wrecked primary sensors.

Batra bellowed with fury at having been duped as he flew straight into the teeth of the barrage, taking the full missile spread on his mecha's forward armor. Pieces flew into the slipstream; the machine's whole right arm, with its massive plasma cannon, blew off, fell behind, and exploded. Thrown off-balance, the vehicle started barrel-rolling, trailing smoke and fire. Batra snarled and wrenched at the neural controls with his mind, intent on straightening the Gosu out, bringing it to a landing, and then beating the Earthman and his machine to death with his mount's one remaining hand. The damaged Gosu responded, but sluggishly, its roll slowing - but by doing that, Batra had played straight into Scott's hands.

Almost nonchalantly, the Alpha raised its EP-13, unfolded the collapsible shoulder stock, took aim using its secondary sensors, and opened fire. The Invid mecha's weakened armor collapsed, filling the cockpit with fire and shrapnel. Batra never even had time to scream, let alone realize that all his ambitions had come to nothing. One moment there was the exultation of the imminent kill, and the next... there was nothing.

What was left of Batra and his Gosu smashed into the wasteland a few hundred yards short of Scott Bernard's Alpha, bounced twice, then came to rest, a burning hulk.

Scott switched the Alpha back to GERWALK mode and landed it carefully, shutting down the main engines before the portside one could burn out completely. He felt curiously lightheaded. Blinking away a sudden wave of dizziness, he shook his head and took stock of his situation.

Only then did he notice that his cockpit canopy was smashed, and that a chunk of the transparisteel had cut through the undergarment of his CVR-3 in the gap just below the plastron. He was bleeding - and worse, he was exposed to the deadly radiation outside.

Oh, hell, he thought. He reached for the first-aid kit mounted under the right side of the instrument panel, but it suddenly seemed to be about a hundred miles away. He noticed the space outside the cockpit filling with a brilliant light. It seemed oddly familiar, but he couldn't think why

and then he blacked out.

TO BE CONTINUED

"Desolation Road" (Part 1 of Exodus Climber Mospeada, an Exile Mini-Serial) by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2013 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


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EX: Exodus Climber 1: Desolation Road [View All] pjmoyermoderator Jan-06-14 TOP
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