Part 1

Awakened in nothingness, the mind at first knew nothing and felt nothing, with no name for the void that surrounded it. Nothing had a name, and if it had it would have been little use; the pattern had no language as of yet. Knowledge grew and expanded, strange new horizons opening up in the mental matrixes. Language flooded into the new mind, its thirst for knowledge fulfilled Then there was light, dazzling and colourless, as the mind learned of words to describe things which it had never experienced. Colour washed over the scene, bright and greenish, as tactics, instinct and information empied into a welcoming mind. Then the light flicked off and everything was dark for a second before sensors adjusted to floodlights. The last thing the mind learned was its name.
John stepped from the pattern-recording booth in the factory building, another humanoid form already taking place on the nanolathing turntable from where he had emerged. He looked around the place he had been thrown into and a word flashed into his new-born mind - base. More words flashed up - big, lethal, impressive, killing... They merged together, giving the word 'base' form and substance. He looked down at his body, painted with camoflage coating and looking sharp and angular. His mind told him he could shoot, and with instinctive reactions he ejected the laser pistol from its holster and aimed, legs falling into classic gunman's poise. He tested his systems, computer readouts flashing up and sounds telling him what he needed to know.
Everything was new to him, every experience a miracle of existance. But somehow he could remember this all happening before, almost like deja vu. He had been a warrior, he thought, someone who fought and killed. But the memories were far off and distant, misted over and seemingly untouchable. What was he now? A word flashed up - Freaker. Then more - Kbot, laser, kill, scout. He started jumping in the air, testing out his new-found muscles, and he found the mental controls for the jetpack, making huge bounds around the clear area in front of the factory. As he landed on a stone he fell over, but sprang up and continued.

*    *     *

Garth watched the rookie Freaker with detached amusement. It had got to its feet and was now busy inspecting the ground. He looked at the shiny suit of the Freaker, then sighed, glancing down at his battered and battle-scarred A.K. It was about the weakest unit in the CORE army, despised by all. A.K.s were mere cannon fodder, slow and ineffective. Face-to-face with their counterpart in the Arm, they would be slaughtered. He looked at the dual arm-mounted laser rifles, their coils dusty and slightly bent. He straightened up and tried to walk proudly, before resuming his habitual slouch.
"Hey there, kid. What's your name?" he said to the Freaker bouncing around.
The Freaker paused for a second, skidding to a stop in front of him. "Um...John. John Hayes. I'm a Freaker, I think."
"Yep, that's you alright. A shiny new Freaker, and I'm an A.K. The worst unit in the CORE. Nice to meet ya."
"What about you? What's your name?" said the Freaker.
"Mine? Hardly matters, does it. Well, it's Garth - Garth Paulson. I've got the honor of being the only A.K. in the last two thousand years to survive for longer than three months."
"How old are you?"
Garth sighed. "I'm two years old, and I used to pilot a Shooter. I surrendered to the CORE and got stuck in this d@mn A.K. That's five months as a Shooter and nineteen as an A.K. And I've hated every moment of it."
"Why? You look as if you survived pretty well." said the Freaker, obviously puzzled.
"You're new - you wouldn't understand. Well, in the Arm I thought it was bad. So I joined the CORE in the hope it might get better. Fat chance. Here I am, stuck in this crummy A.K., without even an avatar body to use. A.Ks don't get assigned them, see? Freakers do. We can't go into the clubs, bars, nothing."
"Why don't you get promoted?"
Garth would have rolled his eyes, but instead he just put on a sarcastic voice, the A.K.'s tiny speakers not doing it any justice. "Oh? There's an A.K. waiting to be promoted? Hmm...let's see...he's originally Arm, he surrendered to us, he might do it again, and he's only ever been in an A.K. Let's promote him! Yeah, sure."
Suddenly the Freaker seemed to notice the row of bullet-holes painted on Garth's chest-piece. "Why the bullets?"
"Shows kills. I've had thirty. Amazing for an A.K., eh?"
Garth walked away, the conversation over. He had to get back to his post, anyway, before he was shouted at. Garth chuckled to himself as he shuffled back into position. He had not told the Freaker the entire truth - the bullets were only his kills since he joined the CORE. Before, he had been a veteran in the Arm with forty kills.
He sighed again and locked his limbs into place, then went to sleep.

*       *       *

John looked at the motionless A.K. for a moment, then started to run around again.

*     *     *

Two weeks later, the rookies had all met and paired up, making friends and getting used to their KBots. John had been invited to a bar by one of his friends, Mark. As he sat down, Mark brought over two Ragers, violently alcoholic co.cktails served in pint mugs. He sat the mugs on the table and sat down.
"Have you heard the latest news?" said Mark, a grin on his face as he sipped his drink, the alcohol fumes almost visible in the air above the glass mug.
John grimaced. "What do they put in these things? And no, I haven't heard the news."
He took a small sip of the drink and started to splutter, while Mark laughed. "You wouldn't want to know what they put in them. Anyway, there's rumours we're getting a new Commander, someone who's a lot more capable than the one we've got at the moment."
John put the mug down, discreetly pushing it as far away from him as possible. "Any idea who he is?"
"Nope. Not a clue, yet. Hey, drink up! We've got a patrol tomorrow - you'll be wishing you had had that drink." said Mark, taking a gulp of his. John reached carefully for the glass and took another sip - the alcohol burned his throat and he coughed again.
"If I drink this, will I be alive tommorow to wish I hadn't drunk it?" he said, wiping his mouth. In the corner of his vision he could see a readout informing him of the composition of the drink - 99.26% alcohol, 0.74% lycosulphadrine. He looked at the readout which told him that his artificial body was already breaking down the alcohol, and decided not to risk it. While Mark was not looking he emptied three quarters of the glass into a pot plant behind him. He had completely forgotten about the miserable A.K.

*     *     *

Garth looked up from the ground on his patrol route as a screeching noise announced the opening of the base's Galactic Gate. He could not see the Gate from here - it was half a mile underground - but the sound carried through the ground. As the sound stopped he went back to his patrol. Probably that new Commander arriving, he thought. First move - reclaim all the useless units, that is A.K.s. Well, nothing to do with him.

*    *    *

Three days later the base was flourishing, taken from its lethargy by the enthusiastic Commander. The older Commander, Juris Spears, had gone back through the Gate with only enough energy to spare. Now more than twenty construction projects were happening at the same time, and the base was bustling with activity.
In the centre, a massive, featureless dome was being erected, almost half a mile across. Advanced C-KBots climbed over the stucture and construction planes roared overhead, trailing green streams of nanobots. The dome was visible day and night, pulsating as waves of nanobots fused themselves into the structure of the mysterious building.
Ten advanced KBot labs were online, along with vehicles and aircraft. The green glow of nanolathes lit up the base better than floodlights with an eerie tinge. The stars were visible that night, nebulae and clusters of bright stars lighting up the sky like distant cities.
Garth looked up at them and sighed - what he'd give to be free on one of them. Just a normal person (as if he'd ever been normal, he thought sadly) going about their daily business. No war, no fighting. Oh well, back to work...

*   *   *

A rumble echoed across the flat plain that the base was built on, the scream of engines sounding as whatever it was came closer. As the black speck in the sky grew it could be made out as a Valkyrie, its arms cradling some sort of vehicle. Engines flaring, it touched down in the centre of the base, not releasing its clamps . The Commander stood by the transport, his nanolathe raised, and started to reclaim whatever it was that was held by the brownish aircraft. Seconds later a thump signalled the clamps letting go, and the Valkyrie flew off, jets washing over the ground. As the Commander stopped nanolathing, he stepped back from whatever it was and John gasped. From his mental images, false memories, he could see it was...
An Arm construction vehicle! It was a construction vehicle, its treads missing and a hole in the side - presumably from the nanolathe reclaiming. As he looked at it he could see the nanolathe emerging, presumably to try and reclaim the Commander as a last resort. As he watched, a quick burst of nanobots disabled the nanolathe, fusing the joints so it could not operate.
More nanobots washed over the vehicle, molecular viruses creeping through the circuits of the computer systems. An A.K. moved up to the driver's hatch, and it opened. As the pilot came scrambling out, terrified, the A.K. gently caught his arms and held the struggling human. The A.K. towered over the human by a good three feet, its lasers retracted and mechanical manipulators holding the human's arms like they were fragile eggs.
The cockpit closed again and finally the Commander began to repair the vehicle, holes and scratches closing up and disappearing as the nanolathe reconstructed original blueprints. Finally a glow came over the skin of the vehicle and faded to reveal a shiny new paint scheme on a fully intact Construction Vehicle.
At last two more Valkyries landed, carrying Cans which had acted as mobile Dragon's Teeth in the capture operation, the two massive KBots trapping the lone vehicle in a canyon as the Valkyrie lifted it. It was an old strategy and a good one, but few Commanders were foolhardy enough to fall for it. They had been lucky this time...
 
Part 2

As the base expanded, more and more Arm structures started to crop up, the factory ring of the base becoming crowded with both Arm and CORE versions of factories. Shooters stood next to camoflage-painted Dominators, and Morties patrolled by the sides of towering Mavericks. Overhead, Vamps and Hawks chased each other in mock dogfights, using dummy missiles and optical lasers instead of cannons.
In the outermost ring of the base, batteries of Guardians stood clustered around squat, boxlike, closed Doomsday Machines, and Sentinels guarded Protector anti-missile installations. On the ground, twenty Mavericks stood in rigid formation, their red flashes glinting in the sun. Guns stowed, the Mavericks were deactivated and powered down, while their pilots had a drink in the bar or played holo-pool and Space Invaders.

*       *        *

Garth proudly wore the chest badge that proclaimed him to be the pilot of a Maverick, and strolled through the bar in search of a drink. He sat down next to one of his friends in a corner booth, the sounds from outside muffled. A tray rolled up to them, pushing its way through the thin crowd, and spindly metal arms delivered two small glasses onto the table. Moisture condensed on the glass and froze in icy patterns, as Garth downed the drink in one gulp. The drink, at minus ten degrees, froze his throat, then thawed it out again with an intense burning as the normally toxic chemicals sank into his stomach.
Opposite him, his friend did the same and grimaced. The drink was powerful but tasted like stale seawater mixed with sulphuric acid. "So you're a Mav now? I got my assignment this afternoon - I've got a Sumo. Funny this..." he paused as a burp made its way up and erupted. "This cooperation. I keep having to tell myself not to shoot all the Arm suits...my guns won't fire at you anyway," he said hastily as he saw Garth's look.
"Glad to hear it. Who's your sergeant?" said Garth, waving for another drink.
"Oh, I've got old 'Whiskers' Jackson. Predictable but a good fighter. He's not too bad."
"I don't know who I've got. I'll go have a look." He got up, and strode out.

*     *     *

John tested out the artificial memcomposite muscles of his Ape, the massive, hulking suit thundering across the ground past a surprised Goliath. The Kbot was the result of a merge between Arm and CORE technology, the armour coming off a CORE Can while the weaponry came from a Maverick. The Ape was a stunningly powerful unit, the muscles designed for all-terrain work such as cliff-climbing. A side-effect of this was a great ability for lifting - John had seen other Apes at work lifting Goliaths out of potholes.
As he lumbered around, John armed his weapons and twin Gauss cannnons folded out of his upper arms, the long barrels folding out and locking in place as the metre-long tungsten-capped uranium Gauss 'darts' were loaded. He disarmed the weapons, panels sliding over the lethal guns, and walked back over to the building.

*     *     *

Words failed Grant Johnson as he flew the fragile Peeper over the base. It was huge; bigger than anything he had ever seen before. He zoomed the external camera in for a closer look, the ground rushing past before the camera's targetting AI got a solid lock. The camera tilted and panned as the lightweight scout plane rolled around the sky, a datastream transmitting the data to the Arm Commander.
He gasped as he saw what the camera had locked onto - a Krogoth Gantry! But that was not the real shock...the camera jerked and locked onto...
"My god...what the **** is a *ANNIHILATOR* doing in that base??"
He hastily fumbled the radio on, his jumbled thoughts confusing the computer. The plane's wipers went on and the undercarriage deployed, air screaming past as Grant finally hit the right thought pattern. "Commander?" he said urgently. The radio crackled for a second before the Commander of the nearest Arm base came on.
"What is it? I'm in a meeting here!"
"Commander, you're not going to believe this...there's an Annihilator sitting in the center of the CORE's base!"
"You're right that I don't believe it! What are you on? The Annihilator is impossible to copy, or so says our technicians."
"Well, they've copied it all right - and every other thing of ours! I mean, they've got godd@mned Mavericks and I can see at least forty Guardians down there!"
"Well, take as many photos as you can, then target-paint the Krogoth Gantry."
"You sure, sir?"
"OF COURSE I'M SURE!! THAT'S A KROGOTH GANTRY!! TH...."
Garth cut the Commander off in mid-rant. He activated the target designator and selected the gantry. A small Gauss rifle emerged from the bottom of the Peeper and fired six inch-long tranceiver darts at the structure. Four struck home while two bounced off and exploded in mid-air. The darts attached themselves magnetically and started to transmit a homing signal, audible on a secret frequency band at ten miles...

*      *      *

A raucous klaxon echoed through the base as three long-range radar towers picked up an incoming radar signal. Computers worked frantically to triangulate the signal, as missile pods emerged from hundreds of units and missile towers readied their complement of three missiles.
As the targetting signal from the underground targetting facility reached three hundred units, missiles painted the sky red and yellow with flame, smoke spouting from exhausts while screams and screeches reverberated around the buildings. Three hundred missiles took off in less than half a second, while in the center of the base ten titanium-plated double doors opened and revealed racks of fifty vertically-launched starburst anti-aircraft missiles. One of the missile silos was suddenly wreathed in smoke as twenty missiles took off in short succession, flames showing through the dense exhaust fumes. Explosions in the distance signalled the demise of whatever aircraft had been flying in, while down below more missiles howled off launch racks. Flakkers lined up targets in their short-ranged multi-spectral sights, white-hot flak shells booming as they flew towards their targets.

*      *       *

Kaz piloted his Phoenix in low down as missiles demolished the fighters circling him. His gunner swung in the dorsal turret, picking the large starburst missiles out of the sky with his light laser. White streaks that were cannon shells rained down on incoming missiles, fiery explosions sending missiles tumbling wildly towards the ground. A flak shell soared through the white clouds of smoke and exploded, just in front of Kaz's left wing....
"Ohhhhhhhhhhsh1tsh1tsh1tsh1tsh1..." A massive explosion cut him off as shrapnel cut one of his readied bombs to shreds, releasing its antimatter payload into the atmosphere. He clenched his teeth to stop them rattling as he flung the Phoenix into stomach-churning turns, flak shells airbursting behind the tumbling aircraft. Another explosion, and Kaz looked behind him to see his rear gunner tumbling away from the plane. A rocket flared and the gunner's ejection capsule launched itself away from the debris. He breathed a sigh of relief just as a starburst missile slammed into his tail...
Only the cockpit and the bomb-bay were intact now, and Kaz received a computer message - he had three payloads to deliver, all stored in the bomb-bay. Twenty-four heavy bombs...

*        *        *

Kbots scrambled out of the way as a frantically maneuvering Phonix hurtled towards the Krogoth Gantry, bombs tumbling out of its bomb-bay as it plunged vertically. John grabbed the nearest two Kbots by the arms and sprinted for his life, the two Mavericks he had snatched flailing wildly. Explosions blew shrapnel past them and John dived into a large pothole, landing hard on top of a Reaper that had already dived in there. Its turret crumpled, the Heavy Armour giving way with a screech. John lay on top of the Mavericks, his solid body protecting them from the blast which was soon to come...
The sky turned white as the Krogoth Gantry went up, its stored energy released all at once. The ground shook with the force of a nuclear blast as a single black speck surfed on the edge of the shockwave, heading upwards at a huge speed.
John felt the three layers of armour on his broad back burn and blister, his shiny paintwork carbonising and one of the armour layers completely disintegrating. His computer told him he had an armour percentage of 20%, and warned him to seek repair. John mentally slapped at it, and the computer fell sullenly silent.

*       *       *

Garth struggled to move under the huge bulk of the Ape Kbot, then stopped as he heard, or rather felt, the explosion. Seconds later as he got his vision back he saw the damp earthy walls of the shell-hole had turned into pure black carbon. Steam hissed out of the cracked walls and he looked at his arm which had not been underneath the Ape. It was burnt black and he could see the polymer anti-laser coating had melted into nothing. He looked more like a piece of burnt wood than a state-of-the-art battlesuit.
As he looked in wonder at his arm, he felt the weight on top of him easing as the Ape gripped the side of the shellhole. His sensors told him the external temperature was over 900 degrees centigrade, before they overloaded. If he wasn't in Heavy Armour he would be little more than a puddle of molten metal by now. And this was only the aftermath of the explosion - his outermost sensors had been burnt to mere stalks with the heat.
The Ape punched the side of the hole until the brittle carbon collapsed with a clatter. The bulky Kbot shovelled the black earth aside and started digging their way out of there...

*      *        *

John forced his memcomposite muscles to do the work, ignoring the agonizing pain that stabbed into his mind. He thought a series of commands and the pain flicked out. He knew he would pay a price for this later, but for nwo the only thing was to get out of here and to get repaired. He tossed rocks and boulders out of the hole and smoothed off a crude ramp. This was not the first time he had been grateful for the Ape's massive muscles. John made his way back into the shelhole, slipping and sliding down the loose soil, dried out by the intense heat. He picked up both the Mavericks and slung them over his back - one was hardly operational, while the other was badly damaged, with one arm almost burnt away. He sat the two KBots down at the top of the ramp and went back down.
At the bottom of the hole sat the Reaper, its turret now non-existant and plasma burns marking where the storage tanks had drained themselves. He looked down at his own chest - yes, there were the burn marks. he hadn't noticed at the time, though, so there couldn't have been that much plasma in storage - maybe one or two shot's worth, he thought. He dragged the damaged tank to the start of the ramp, its treads crushed and broken, before vaulting over the vehicle to push it up the steep slope towards ground level...

*      *      *

Garth relaxed under the stream of nanolathes, reconstructing his damaged arm and repairing his outer skin. Next to him he could see the other Maverick, but the Ape was somewhere else. He had passed out when he got out of the hole but he thought the Ape had gone to get more survivors. Then he just relaxed as the Construction KBot poured much-welcomed nanobots onto the battered frame of the Maverick...

*       *        *

Finally the base was back up to its former glory, the Krogoth Gantry was being rebuilt and the Commander was assisting in the repair of the central dome of the base, still unidentified. The dome had survived the explosion with hardly any damage at all, but a lot of defenses had been simply vaporised in the massive blast and more had been uprooted or knocked over by the shockwave.
Guardians and Punishers were flung about the landscape, and against a small rock outcrop, about thirty Sentinels and Pulverisers had been flung, red flashes mingling with black carbon and glassy melted rock.
A Punisher had gone mad, its targetting AI knocked senseless by the blast wave, and was relentlessly pounding an threatening enemy boulder. Two Doomsday Machines were picking birds out of the sky with their lasers, and every so often an almost undescribably unique sound echoed across the base as the only surviving Annihilator fired.
In the distance, wreckage could be seen, friendly units that had been blasted to junk or had been targetted by crazed defenses. A group of Goliaths stood stock-still in the middle of no-where, their mainframes burnt out by homing armour-piercing missiles. As Commander James watched, the malfunctioning Annihilator folded back into its bunker as a Construction Vehicle repaired the damaged computers, and a Punisher exploded, plumes of plasma spewing out, convinced it was being captured. The Kbot that was repairing it was picked up and flung against a Sentinel, knocking it over. He sighed - things would not get back to normal for a long time...

Part 3

The Ape gently bowed its massive head to receive the medal, and thanked the Commander before gently walking off stage. Everyone clapped, Garth most of all. After all, the thing had saved his life. Next came a Goliath pilot in a mini combat-frame, who had dragged three people out of a burning building at risk of his life, but Garth didn't see him. He was busy looking for the KBot pilot who had saved his life.
There he was... The massive head and shoulders of the Ape towered above the rest of the crowd, as it waded through the mass of people. He pushed his way through and caught the KBot just as it was exiting the hall.
"Hey there, kid. What's your name?"
The Ape stopped. "You're that Maverick, aren't you?" The booming voice was unrecognisable.
"That's me. All repaired, now." Garth laughed. "Why don't we check out a bar somewhere?"
"Fine by me," the Ape boomed.

*       *       *

The mini-nanolathe booth sizzled for a moment, putting the final touches to an already-made avatar, and seconds later the figures of both Garth and the Ape pilot staggered out of the cubicle, laughing. Garth looked down at his hand. "What happened to my drink?"
The other pilot laughed. "They don't come through with you. You've got to buy another one. Here, I'll treat you." He went to the bar and pushed his way through, just as Garth realised he hadn't asked him his name.
When the pilot came back, Garth started to speak. "What's your name, sorry?" He laughed. "I somehow managed to avoid asking you it!"
The other pilot looked at him for a moment, laughing. "It's John. John Hayes. And you?"
"Garth Paul... Hayes? John Hayes? What, you're the little Freaker I saw weeks ago?"
"That's me. You're Garth? The veteran?"
Garth clapped John on the back, his drink sloshing onto the floor and sizzling on the tiles. "That's me, kid! This calls for another drink!"
John looked at Garth's mug. "Uh - you've already got one?"
"No, I'll buy this time." He tried to look for his timecard in his pocket, not realising what John had just said. They'd both had a few drinks on the way, then a couple more, so frothy liquid burnt its way through the lining of his coat. "Oh d@mn. Well, that's even more reason to get another drink!"

*       *        *

Commander James peered at the list, his old-fashioned spectacles - plain glass but he had got so used to having glasses in his past life he had had them made specially - pushed up onto his forehead. He read out the pairings of units in the 'buddy' system just created, where two units would always fight together no matter where they were. It was designed to create simple fire-support groups - heavy units paired with light fast units, low-cost units paired with high-cost heavy units.
"Shellah Coutah, Maverick, paired to Fraser Donaldson, Freaker. Theodore Jones, Sumo, paired to Kim Andersen, Morty. Andrew O'Reilly, Goliath, paired with David Davidson, Hammer...."
Finally he reached the end of the list. John was startled out of his stupor by the Commander's voice. "John Hayes, Ape, paired with Garth Paulson, Maverick. That is all, troops. Dismissed!"
Garth turned to John and treated him to a quick grin, and John laughed. "Somehow I think we'll get along quite well, kid," he said. "I don't know why..."

*        *          *

"That's it!" said Garth. "How do you like it?"
John switched to an external camera and admired his new paint scheme. As well as the paint layer, which was a layer of light-emitting polymers which could display paint schemes or camoflage, two retaining bolts had been added to the Ape's broad back. Garth walked over to him and extended two clamps from his suit's knee, the hooks fixing securely onto the other suit. Now John stood up, the Maverick standing just taller than the massive Ape.
"Ready weapons," said Garth, ejecting his Gauss cannons from the auto-holsters. John's cannons folded out at his mental touch of a button and they practised aiming. Suddenly John dropped to all fours, and sprinted out of the warehouse with Garth holding on for dear life. He leapt over a tank and rolled, the Maverick protected by the Ape's giant arms.
When John stopped, Garth disengaged the clamps. "*Never* do that to me again!" he said, shakily. John laughed.
"Just checking mobility, Garth." he said, walking off. Garth shook his head and jogged over to the hanger to transfer into his avatar.

*        *         *

"We have received notice of an invasion, planned by the Arm and to be carried out tommorow. We cannot let this happen, as they will try to destroy both the Krogoth Gantries we have built, and also the experimental lab. We must stop them." The CORE Commander paced round the virtual meeting room, fiddling with his pointer. He folded it out with a snap and tapped it on the 3D map. "We can stop the here, at a chokepoint up in the mountains. With our new technology, it should be quite easy. Only aircraft and Kbots will be sent as vehicles are too cumbersome. I will transfer details in a moment."
John felt a cold trickle of information enter his mind and he accessed it, sending commands through his thoughts.
The file opened, flipping him out of the virtual scenario and into a recorded holofilm. He was hovering in the air over the pass, the sky cloudless and the sun just rising over the dark, forbidding mountains. Suddenly, the scene faded into greyness apart from a small circle, illuminating a narrow pass through the mountains. It was steep and guarded on both sides by high cliffs, but it was the only way through.
Simulated Kbots scaled the cliffs and took up positions as the viewpoint zoomed in, making John slightly dizzy with the speed. Aircraft could be seen speeding into hiding-places at the tops of the jagged rocks, sinking into volcanic craters as time speeded up. The clock in the bottom corner of the view showed five hours after the plan had started, and now the cliffs seemed totally bare of all life. As the view switched to simulated IR, he could make out the shadowy shapes of the ambushers.
Seconds later, the view switched again and John could now see more KBots - Arm ones, this time - coming through the pass, weapons stowed. KBots poured from the cliffs as a series of explosions marked the detonation of mines, the heavy explosives hurling the front-line units high into the air. Projectiles flew as the battle started and the simulation ground to a halt.
John shook his head as he was shoved back into the real world, his limbs feeling suddenly leaden and uncontrollable. Beside him he could see Garth doing the same, and he blinked. There was something strange in front of him...

*       *        *

The virus was almost alive, its artificial intelligence smart enough to recognise the conference going on. It homed in on the Commander, its shell taking on the form of the nearest unit. It switched into a regular avatar frame, its face that of a Thud pilot sitting nearest the 'door', the conference room's exit.
The virus walked across the room and stood next to the Commander, the man noticing and turning round to face the avatar. Just as the virus released its payload the Commander ducked and the attack failed. A few quick actions from the Commander and the virus found itself picked up and thrown against the 'wall', its next attack deflected. The Commander threw the pointer at the viruses' avatar, the scrap of code tearing through the virus and damaging it. In the simulation, the pointer warped and vanished, creating a slight scar on the side of the virus.
The room warped and distorted as the viruses' lethal payload hit the systems of the simulation processors, gaps appearing in the walls and floor. The Commander swung a heavy pipe that had appeared through the wall at the virus, the avatar screaming as its head collapsed into nothingness, creating a void that hurt to look at.
[In the real world a nanolathe processor overloaded, the nanolathe itself sending out random nanobots onto a vehicle factory. Metal and circuitry coated the factory walls, the beam stabilising on the energy storage. With an ear-shattering boom the anti-matter storage exploded, turning the factory into flying shrapnel.]
The virus lifted its hand, a head fading slowly into view. A searing line of brilliance lanced across the room, missing the Commander but hitting an avatar.
[In the real world a Sumo pilot's body convulsed in spasms, its pattern damaged beyond repair.]
One wall vanished as the Commander kicked the virus through it into the no-space beyond. Random shapes spiralled in as the virus grabbed at systems to haul itself back in, not caring now about stealth.
[As its processor dribbled out of the cooling vent, a light laser tower went mad, killing three missile towers before self-destructing.]
[A Fortitude anti-ballistic missile defence malfunctioned, radar systems showing an infinite number of incoming missiles. Rockets shot out of the system, homing in on targets that weren't there. A Doomsday machine unfolded and started picking off the missiles as they were launched.]
Ten shark-like avatars, anti-virus hunters, shot towards the virus. It turned, the avatar now mutating from a human into a fearsome monster, and launched code at the AI patterns. They disintegrated under the hail of light, but not before the virus was damaged. Shrapnel, pieces of program, erupted from the hunters, flying through the nothing-space.
[High above the base, twenty patrolling Finks, all controlled by one AI, plunged towards the ground, divebombing a Krogoth Gantry. Missiles screeched up from missile towers, demolishing the frail aircraft with ease. One Fink got through the barrage and hit the Gantry squarely, exploding in a shower of metal.]
The virus pulled itself back through the hole, code regenerating and preparing for another attack. The Commander raised a hand, D-Gun materialising in it as the virus launched streams of data at the Commander, the avatar blurring and crackling with static as the Commander's powerful systems fought off the attack.
With a rumble, the virtual D-Gun fired, something that was both black and white at the same time formed in the twisting air, warping space as it flew towards the virus. The monster raised its 'hands' as the bolt of energy burnt through it, the empty shell falling to the ground. The AI was dead - only the code remained.
With a sigh the Commander started to give orders...

Part 4

The leisure planet of Cheradenine floated in space, green and sparkling. At the start of the war it had been one of the most famous planets in the CORE-held galaxy, offering beautiful weather and white sparkling sands on its many beaches. The rich and famous had holidayed there, along with billions of people from all over the galaxy. The capital city, Rakkas, was a towering metropolis of white buildings, their ivory-coloured walls gleaming in the warm sunshine. Peaceful and prosperous, it had not joined the war until late on, and now...
A ruined and ravaged planet, its resources stolen and its beauty stripped along with most of its life. Only the capital city stood proud of the destruction, white towers scraping the sky. Now the city was threatened, the Arm trying to gain access to the massive underground fusion reactors and energy-metal converters that provided resources to the entire metropolis.
The CORE opposed them, the city now a fortress, its canyons of skyscrapers rumbling to the echo of tank tracks and its building tops the site for anti-aircraft. Plasma cannons were mounted on the monolithic building that made up the city centre, looking like a mutant cactus with gunbarrels as its spines. Even now Intimidators and Punishers lobbed sun-hot globes of plasma onto invading Arm forces, tanks and KBots alike melting under the onslaught.
Over the years the plasma had burnt a moat around the city, ploughing through the earth and rock to form a deep trench filled with the dead. Old and new, corpses of tanks and other machines of war littered the landscape, balck smoke staining the pristine skies as shrapnel flew.
Planes roared and screamed overhead, trying to break in or break out of the city at siege. Bombs rained down on empty ground as the bombers they had been dropped from exploded and disintegrated overhead. Twenty CORE fighters swooped down from their converted skyscraper, most of the top floors turned into launch pads and the rest of the building made into hanger space. Missile engines flared and screamed as smoke trails shot towards three Eagles, burning wreckage spiralling towards the ground. Seconds later the fighters dropped out of the sky as flak shells and missiles erupted from the ground, the fighters simply disappearing inside a cloud of fiery explosions.

*        *        *

Garth stared moodily out of the window, gazing through the heavy shutters. The layer of Heavy Armour over the building was visible as a slight grey sheen over the window, and he flinched as a plasma shell erupted into a white cloud of superheated gas. Drawing the curtains over the depressing scene, he walked back into the small room, the quarters of both him and John, along with two other KBot pilots, Kay Wilko and James Tomero. Kay piloted an Eraser and James was the occupier of a Sower, the new minelaying KBot.
It was almost a year after their first meeting and him and John had forged a lasting friendship. The two men still had exactly the same Kbots, the Maverick and the Ape working well together.  As he sat down on the bench at the window, twitching the curtains open again, John pushed the door to the empty room open and walked in, holding two hot dogs.
"Hey, Garth. Hot dog?"
Garth waved a no, and John sat down. "The siege getting to you?" he said.
"Yeah. Why can't we do anything? I mean, it's been almost three months now. Nothing can get in, nothing can get out. Surely we can do something."
"Like what? Attack the entire army with a hammer?"
Garth sighed. "No, but there should be *something*. New units, new strategies, something. There's no way the Arm could have thought of everything."
John finished his hot dog and started on Garth's. "Anything happening, then?"
"No." said Garth. "This is not war. This is just a stalemate. We've gotta do something now."
"What about that thing they were making in the base? That might be something."
"Huh. If it can survive being blasted by two hundred mobile artilleries, about three hundred heavy rockets, five hundred heavy tanks...the list is endless. I mean, when something like a Krogoth gets shot down in seconds, there's not much we can do, is there?"
"Bombs?"
"As in? Crawling bombs...we sent one out a while ago. It took down three city blocks without so much as scratching the enemy."
"No, as in guerilla warfare. You know, planting bombs or mines and stuff."
"That won't work. Too much stuff set up there - the IR would give them away instantly."
"But what if they don't have an IR signature? Cooling systems, plus camoflage skinning and radar-absorbing?"
Garth frowned, then picked up the communicator. "Commander? I think we have an idea..."

*       *         *

Commander James folded down the comm-screen, breaking the connection to Garth. "Hey, Lieutenant, what's the status of the nukes?"
A small man bustled up. "Well, which ones? We've got twenty low-yield, large-area ones, about eleven of the tactical nukes, two high-yield, large-area ones and twelve high-yield focused ones."
"I'd like a few high-yield focused missiles dropped on top of the heaviest concentrations of Arm units. How fast can you ready them?"
"Twelve minutes."
"Great. What about the Heavy force-field armour?"
"It's finished - but the generator is still too inefficient. It needs two thousand energy units just to power it for one second. You'd need three reactors just to keep it going."
"Well, we are right next to Rakkas, aren't we? How many reactors are buried underneath that city?"
"Let's see...we have built twenty, and there are..." The lieutenent paused. "Yes, that's twenty of ours and nine of the mega-reactors. That's an output of 30,000 units for ours and 45,000 for the others."
"Well, what are we waiting for?"
"Yes sir. King Krog is about to climb, sir."
Commander James smiled at the outdated reference. But it was appropriate - the Krogoth Special would indeed rock an entire city. It was built around the chassis of the Ape Kbot, upscaled to a behemoth ninety feet tall. It was armed with the new force-field armour, and it packed a real punch with four massive Gauss cannons on each upper arm, twin plasma riot cannons, doing the same amount of damage as an Intimidator, on its shoulders, together with four anti-aircraft missile launchers and a single ultra-laser taken from an Annihilator. The disadvantage was the King Krog needed two hundred energy units simply to move. It took almost twenty weeks to build, and its factory alone took three weeks to make. The armour required 15,000 energy units to operate and the weapons drained massive amounts of energy. Finally, it could not be transported except by its own special amphibious transport - it simply overloaded every other transport. Oh, and when it exploded, it really *exploded*.
And one was currently on its way to Rakkas...

*        *          *

John and Garth both looked on, astonished, as the screen flicked on and they caught their first glimpse of the King Krog, as it had been dubbed. As ten nuclear missiles climbed out of their silos, the transport crawled towards Rakkas, its tracks creating three-foot-deep ruts in the ground as the Krogoth Special's weight compressed the earth. The King Krog sat on top of the transport, deactiveated but menacing. The guns were retracted, and the armour was deactivated, only a thin layer of regular Heavy Armour protecting the gargantuan frame.
"Obviously the Commander doesn't go in for guerilla warfare," said John. "Maybe gorilla warfare, though."
Garth grinned at the bad pun and called up the unit statistics for the Krogoth Special. He gasped as he saw the weaponry. "John...look at this."
John peered at the screen in amazement. "So that's what they were working on in that dome, then?" he said. He sighed. "How I'd love to be inside that walking monster. Now *that* would seriously kick some flabby Arm backside."
"We might have a chance at that," said Garth as the Comander came on-screen.
"Garth Paulson, John Hayes? Nice to see you again. Anyway, to the point. You're piloting the new King Krog, part of the team of twelve. John, you're the pilot, as you have experience in an Ape suit. Garth, you're gunner on the Annihilator turret. Enjoy your stay! Commander James out."
The screen winked off and both Garth and John sat in silence until Jay came in. "What's up with you guys?" she said, sitting down beside John.
"We're in the King..." sighed Garth. "We're piloting the new Krogoth."
Kay grinned. "Lucky you. What about me? Do I get to do anything?"
The screen winked on again as it recieved Kay's transciever code, the signal activating a recorded message. "Kay Wilko? You're in the new King Krog..you're radio operator. I hope you like your new job...I certainly would! Commander James out."

Part 5

The stars shone through the thin layer of cloud, their silvery light illuminating the massive frame standing outside the city. The wind whistled through the limbs of the gargantuan beast, its shoulder cannons casting a baleful orange light over the ground in front of it. Menacing and lethal, the beast moved forwards, its footsteps sounding clear over the flat plains as it approached the Arm forces...

*       *        *

Sergeant Andrew O'Donnell deactivated the sensor suite of his Fido, jacking out of the command matrix and sitting up in the large cockpit. He opened the Fido's access hatch and dropped down to the ground, the Fido's massive frame standing still in the high winds. Andrew stumbled as he got used to having two legs again and jogged towards the command bunker.
He pushed open the permacrete door and walked into the Commander's office. The muscular, tall man inside looked up as he approached.
"No news, Sergeant?" said the Commander, frowning.
"No sir. This is getting spooky - the CORE've gotta be planning something."
The Commander called up a holographic projection, a 3d map of the terrain. As it stabilised blue and red blips appeared on it, enemies shown in red and friendlies in blue. Only three red blips were visible, all stationary. The Commander pointed at one of the blips and info flashed up about it.
"We know that this radar sig is a large geothermal plant complex, set over a massive vent. It's too well defended for us to attack, and we haven't read any energy signatures that might signify the construction of LRPCs or offensive capabilities."
"Now this," he said, "is a settlement of the local semi-sapient species. There's nothing they can do, so we don't bother them. And the last point is a CORE junkyard. Again, nothing which could be used as a strikeforce. So where are the CORE?"
The Commander hit the desk with his fist, the hologram wobbling as the projectors struggled to compensate. "They've got to be there *somewhere*!"
Andrew spoke. "Well, if they're not anywhere near, why can't we launch an offensive?" Then, hurriedly, "Sir."
The Commander readied a fierce reply then stopped. "An offensive, huh? Smart idea, Sergeant. But you're not leading it. You're one of my best, I'm not losing you. Good work, Sergeant. Dismissed."
Andrew walked out, smiling. The Commander had taken notice of him! And he'd said that he, Andrew, was valuable to him...

*        *         *

Kay sent an electronic signal through the Krogoth's command network, notifying the others that the radar sweep was over. John started moving again, the camoflage skin deactivating and the cold air blowers switching off, their job finished. The weapons retracted as the gorilla-like shape dropped to all fours and bounded forwards, the ground shaking with the impacts as it sped towards the city.
In the distance, John could see the city lights, patches of darkness telling of a building demolished, or a heavy strike knocking out part of a tower. He left the piloting to the computer - it could deal with the incoming data streams better than he could. He linked into Kay's advanced sensor console, accessing the sensor arrays of the King Krog. The world suddenly lit up as IR, radar, EM and amplified light information was overlaid onto his vision. He saw a flash of silvery beads, the computer's visualisation of the Krogoth's radar. Light flared as a laser rapidly downed two scoutcraft far off above the city. As the IR view compensate for the intense heat generated by the burning aircraft, his vision darkened momentarily, returning to normal levels soon afterwards as the flames disappeared behind buildings.
As the ground rocketed past underneath the Krogoth, Kay suddenly deactivated all active sensing devices and John found his vision almost returned to normal as a bright green beam lanced across his vision. He could see by the status panel the the Krogoth had stopped, and its advanced camoflage systems had activated, supercooled liquids pumped through pipes in its hull. Half a second later the Krogoth was the temperature of the surrounding terrain and had merged into it. It was, from an observer's veiwpoint, invisible.
The radar sweep passed over and the Krogoth started moving again, blundering towards a massive Arm attack...

*          *           *

Sergeant O'Donnell activated the advanced sensor array and scanned the horizon, nothing appearing even though his intuition told him something should be there. An old cliche popped up in his brain. It's quiet...too quiet, he thought.
The radio crackled. "Sergeant? It's McKenzie here. What's that up ahead?"
Andrew grinned. McKenzie was a Zipper pilot and was a rookie. He was excitable but a good fighter, and he tended to spot things that others missed.
"What is it? More to the point, where is it?" he radioed.
"Hang on...here," came the reply as a target designation box appeared on Andrew's virtual HUD.
"McKenzie, you're not meant to do that, you know." McKenzie had decided one day to find out how the Arm computer systems worked. With his typical determination, he had figured out the entire system and now loved to play pranks using the system to his advantage.
Andrew zoomed in on the box, the green outline filling his vision. All he could see was an oddly-shaped rock formation, almost like a gorilla. But it was far too large to be anything like a war machine. He shivered as the memory hit him of a terror he had once faced, the Krogoth. But even it was not this big. He quieted his fear and told himself it was only a rock.
"It's only a rock, McKenzie. Don't get all worked up."
"If it's a rock, sir, why is it moving at a fair clip towards us?"
Andrew swore and zoomed in. He could see the 'rock' was now bounding forwards at a fast pace. "What the hell have the CORE gone and done now," he said, almost reverentially. Then he realised they were right in its path...

*         *           *

Far off, thunder rumbled and clouds covered the stars as the stealthy attack of the Arm and the brute force of the CORE drew steadily closer, the pilots of the Krogoth Special unaware of what they were facing...
 
Part 6

The first shot rang out as lightning illuminated the scene with actinic light. A hardened TCU javelin sang overhead from a nervous Fido, glancing off the massive shape in the darkness. As the terrified attackers watched, what seemed before merely fearsome now became terrifying. The dark shape stood up, at least ninety feet tall. Andrew cursed softly as hatches and panel opened up seemingly everywhere on the huge body, unimaginably lethal weapons emerging in what seemed like slow motion. The huge body was lit up by pale blue light as a lightning bolt struck nearby, turning the ground to glass.
A loud whinig noise caused the troops to scatter, just before they heard the sonci boom from the Gauss javelins that had just buried themselves in a Bulldog directly behind Andrew. Sparks skittered over the tank's skin and flashes of white and red light crackled as the Heavy Armour generator overloaded. The tank simply disintegrated in a shower of shrapnel, three layers of hull flying apart and the reactor overloading with the feedback. Seconds later Andrew's Fido rocked on its feet as a white sphere of energy consumed the tank.
Missiles rained down on the hapless units, slicing through Zippers and Bulldogs, Jethros and PeeWees. A Storm was hammered into the ground by a vertical-launch missile travelling at almost Mach 8, the Storm's rockets bouncing innefectually off the monster's seemingly invunerable skin.

"Garth!"
He fired again, the four massive Gauss cannons, each six metres long, launching their deadly load. TCU javelins punched through a Fido, turning it into a walking colander. As the Fido collapsed on the ground, three legs blown off, it vanished in a sphere of white light as its reactor overloaded.
"Garth! Something's wrong!"
He jerked back into reality, the sonic booms of the Gauss cannons still echoing. "What is it, Mac?"
The captain of the Krogoth Special appeared on his 'screen'. "We've got an unspecified error in the armour generator. It says we've got no armour at all, only the heavyplate."
"Sh1t! That can't be right?"
"I'm speaking to everyone here. We've gotta get out of here. I checked and the armour generator's faulty. We're down to our last 20% of advanced armour and we've got all Heavy Armour. That won't last long, though."
Garth swore as the entire crew of the Krogoth popped up onscreen. he left the targetting to the AI and joined them in the virtual conference room.
"What're we meant to do?" said John nervously.
"Well, staying alive'd be a good choice," said Kay.
"No. We've got to deactivate the reactor core first. That's essential." Captain Macdonald frowned. "We're sitting on top of the equivalent of three nukes here, and we're right next to..."
John interrupted him as Garth swore. "The citiy's reactors...sh1t..."
"Well, how do we deactivate the reactors?" Miles Halsen, the quiet ant-aircraft crewman, spoke up.
"We can't that's the problem. We've got to jettison them into the atmosphere, and pray they'll not come down before they explode."
"And if they do?"
"I'll leave you to imagine that."
"How long can we survive?" said Garth.
"We've got eight hours until the armour decays. We've got to get as far from the city as possible..."

Lighning flashed down from the clouds, piercing the air while thunder rolled like a chorus of bass drums. The lighning struck again...on the Krogoth Special...

Millions of volts flashed through the structure of the massive metal monster, striking venomously at electronics and melting fibreobtic junctions. The virtual conference blinked out and Garth snapped into nothingness as a blinking light in his vision told him of pattern core ejection. A rocket leapt from the 'head' of the apelike Krogoth, climbing into the air while it transmitted the patterns it contained to the nearest communication centre.
As the lightning reached the motor controls, the Krogoth flipped over, spasming as sparks skittered over hardened metal skin. The reactor control systems overloaded, the massive metal doors of the reactor chamber opening with a scream. The plasma core of the fusion reactor ejected, burning deep into the ground and feeding itself with raw matter. As the core reached the gargantuan underground reactors of the city, the reactions combined and burnt their way out of the earth...
Plasma fire flashed at enormous speeds along the conduits between the reactors, magnetic containment fields collapsing with the energy. Sunhot gases burnt the earth to carbon along the conduits, the controlled, safe network suddenly turning into a raging inferno. Then the central failsafe flipped into operation...
And stopped. When it had been installed, the designers could never have forseen this kind of event, so they had not provided for it...
Inside the central computer a single line of code executed. The computer flashed an error, and the code repeated. The computer repeated the message.
[[[1112992095 CLOSE FAILSAFE RELAY DOOR 3 WAIT 5 OPEERATE FAILSAFE REACTOR COMMAND]]]
[[[BAD COMMAND: OPEERATE]]]
[[[1112992095 CLOSE FAILSAFE RELAY DOOR 3 WAIT 5 OPEERATE FAILSAFE REACTOR COMMAND]]]
[[[BAD COMMAND: OPEERATE]]]
[[[1112992095 CLOSE FAILSAFE RELAY DOOR 3 WAIT 5 OPEERATE FAILSAFE REACTOR COMMAND]]]
[[[BAD COMMAND: OPEERATE]]]
[[[PROGRAM TERMINATED]]]
Reactor doors crashed open as magnetic containment fields shut off, the program operating them no longer working. The plasma burnt its way out towards the city of Rakkas, disputed but held fast until now...

Ten small focused nuclear missiles finished their orbital burn and turned towards the city of Rakkas, intelligences seeking out the heaviest concentrations of Arm units. They activated boosters and dropped out of orbit, speeding towards the city while their warheads armed. Forcefields came online, containing and channeling the nuclear reaction. The air whistled past as the missiles roared through the air...

"Shield Leader here - what's that noise?" radioed Kim Wallen, Vamp pilot. She put her plane into a tight turn just before she saw the downed Krogoth. "What the hell is *that*?"
The radio indicated Shield Two - Tom Falken, her best friend. "Don't know. but I've got a feeling we should be getting out of here..."
Shield Three came online, Chris Ryan. "Good idea, Shield Two - I don't want to be fried in the explosion from that thing."
Kim agreed. "Let's go, Shield. We want to put as much distance between us and that as possible." She activated the afterburners and the small stealth craft shot off into the night, Kim launching her twin missiles at a radar vehicle as she went. The rest of Shield flight did the same, the Vamps flying in loose formation, plenty of space between them in case of explosions.
Behind the Vamps Kim saw the ten missiles descending on the Arm troops and cheered over the radio. "Good riddance. Well, that's a few less..." She was interrupted by an unimaginably loud rumble, the city disappearing in her rear-view camera. "What the...sh1t..."
Plasma fountained up from the Krogoth, pushing everything out of its way and consuming the outlying buildings of the city. The sun-hot gases spread out, smoke forming into a classic mushroom cloud as the dust from the explosions was expelled from the gas cloud. Kim's vision shook as the ten nuclear missiles impacted, her camera view whiting-out for a second before the optics adjusted. She gasped in horror as she saw what was happening to the city...

A spy satellite spotted the plasma spreading from the centre of Rakkas and radioed the information to Arm Command, Rakkas. But no-one responded...
 

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The Old Hand was written by CamTarn / Andy Walker

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