"I told ya it would work Grimsley." Ronald slapped the youth on his back, reaching over the chair to do so. The Goliath rattled a little as they stepped into a ditch then kept moving. They had been wandering westwards since departing from Easley, towards the setting sun each night.
"Yes Ronald you've been telling me every five minutes since we left," Grimsley sighed, half-heartedly tilting the controls to manoeuvre around a tree. He was slowly getting used to the controls of a Goliath, slightly different from driving a tank. It seemed that Ronald had had the cockpit altered to function closer to the old tank had, but the two of them still needed to work together in order to do the functions a normal battlesuit pilot did on their own.
"Don'cha feel better knowing you did it though?"
"I suppose." Grimsley's eyes flicked up towards the image displaying Raven's face. The Goliath had recorded everything it had been looking at when Grimsley had proposed and so, with a little editing, a picture had been easy to extract, left on a viewscreen at the ceiling of the cockpit. The young pilot wondered how many other soldiers did this or carried around photos of their loved ones. And how many would die clutching it, never to see them one last time?
"Where are we going anyways?" Ronald shook Grimsley out of his thoughts, literally by grabbing his shoulders and rattling. There was another lurch as the warmachine moved. The head of the axe it wielded dipped down to touch the earth and carve out a groove in the ground.
"We're going west."
"Well I know that much. Not a crazy ol' man ya know. I mean where's the end result?" The axe struck a rock and sent vibrations throughout the arm of the Goliath, shooting into the cockpit and leaving Ronald's teeth chattering. "And can we pick that up please?"
"Sorry, wasn't paying attention," Grimsley muttered as he adjusted the controls. His eyes resumed staring out into the empty green fields of the Western frontier, with shallow, slowly rolling hills and an estranged tree breaking the horizon every so often. It was such a shame that nobody was using these places for farming or living, and few animals roamed here as it was the gap between two empires, the borderland where armies marched and passed through or new weapons were tested. Without war, these lands would return to being beautiful...or would end up exploited by a mining business and turned to rubble. "We're going to find the forward base camp of the Artisan Confederate."
"We're going to what?!" Ronald would've popped out of his chair were he not strapped into it but his eyes did an excellent job of bulging out. "Grimsley, not to tell ya you're nutty but we ne'er even fought with this thing afore. Why would we go into the hornet's nest? Why? Why? Why!" Grimsley was shaken again from behind and was really starting to regret ever bringing the old peddler along. But he did need Ronald's services to pilot the complex machine.
Grimsley stepped around another tree, double-checking the map and stopping for a moment to scan the area. "When I first saw Goliaths, the Artisans were attacking my town of Easley. After the battle was resolved though, I don't think anyone did anything about where the Artisans had come from. They must have some sort of small base around, something where they operate from. And I plan on finding it and paying them back for what they did."
"But...but...but couldn't we do that after we beat up some trees or something? Some sort of practice?"
"Just run a localized scan please for any activity in the area. And extend for bio-signatures, then a metal detection sweep."
"For someone who knew so little before bossypants..." Ronald grumbled.
"I've been reading up thank you." Grimsley pulled up a viewscreen, moving the image across the holographic field just in front of his vision with his fingertips. Upon it was a manual for different battle techniques. The picture flipped to a video describing the different scanner functions of a Goliath. The pilot glanced back over his shoulder and grinned.
"Came included with the head unit when I scrapped the thing. Didn't wanna use it, no no, thought it was kinda useless but good ol' lil Jimmy, he says to me you never know sir, you never know. Now I know. Should've never left it in there." Ronald did comply though, flipping on various switches and beginning to cast out the different invisible nets into the surrounding area.
The two ended up sitting there for a couple hours, two more than they thought they would when first stopping. Part of the reason was the ineptitude with the machinery, botching the first couple of scans and losing the results and other times searching for the wrong things by mistake. After a few fiery arguments, they had resolved everything and finally had the correct procedures underway.
"Report coming sir," Ronald snidely remarked, trying his best to venomously pronounce sir and instead ending up whistling through the empty spaces in his mouth where teeth once were.
"And?"
"Oh."
"What's oh?"
"It uhm...it looks like we actually got something," Ronald admitted dejectedly.
* * * * *
Marian wound his way through the harsh metal corridors of the warship. As a commander he had ventured through every little crack and crevice a person could find on each ship in the armada. He was expected to have it all memorized and understood, as if this were his ship to be captain of.
Of course, it was not. The ship had a complete crew that did nothing but fly, day in and day out during war times, and they knew the ship just as well as Marian did. After all, it was their home for many.
Much of the hallways were plain and indistinguishable from the next; steam vents and fluid pipes interlacing electrical cables that bunched together on the ceiling, mingling with the light fixtures. Sometimes they covered up parts of the bulbs, creating oddly shaped shadows on the hard floor but there otherwise wasn't a dark part of the ship. It had been built that way. They all had. Were an enemy to infiltrate the place, why give them shadows to work with? Complete illumination was common practice in most modern vessels in any country's armada.
Marian took another turn down one more path. To the casual observer, it would seem as though he should be lost without windows or guidance, without a map or point of reference. But his memory served well and the Brigadier General eventually stopped in front of a door where a few of his other generals were held.
Inside was a rather well-decorated room, filled with military paraphernalia hanging from the four box walls. Different pilot uniforms from the Enian Federation, scraps from Goliaths, and various weapons were boxed, framed, or pinned, while the outer edge of the floor had one long bench that wrapped around the three walls to face the door.
Adorning the plush pillows of the bench were a handful of generals, who were dressed in different versions of the standard pilot uniform. Some had simply acquired the different variants over their years of service while others had personalized theirs with a multitude of adornments and alterations until they became something unique. As generals they were the only class of soldier capable of doing something like this, though they weren't nearly as flamboyant as the Artisan generals' outfits.
Marian immediately commanded their attention as he entered the room and surveyed each of them. However he gave a curt nod towards the centerpiece of the room, a metal circle that rose up out of the ground and had steel tendrils that snaked out and sunk into the floor, collecting power from the hidden lines in the ship, and each of the generals turned their gaze towards it. It wasn't unusual for Marian to avoid pleasantries and greetings; they knew who he was, he knew them, and every second was precious in war.
A ring of lights ignited around the inside of the circle, shooting up a holographic projection that quickly materialized into a sleek Goliath, the battlefield forming underneath its feet. It was the Rose Thorn General, the mysterious figure that had eliminated Scoly so ruthlessly and then proceeded to cause havoc until the battle had ended. She hadn't been seen since as the war entered a bit of a lull. The empty time had been punctured by the odd skirmish here and there but this was common. From here things would get harder.
"As you have seen by now, this was the first Artisan general we met here at Narrius, one we had never encountered before." The image flipped into a video feed of the Goliath in action. "A technical-type fighter, and from what we have gathered from the Fervent Prayer's audio recordings she seems to be some sort of cultist. We're looking into the notes we have on Artisan culture to see if we can gleam any additional intelligence and maybe understand behaviour patterns accordingly. In the meantime, we need to eliminate this threat to avenge our fallen, not to mention to give us back the advantage. It will be some of your jobs to draw out this general and eliminate her but I encourage you not to underestimate her power. The unknown can be quite dangerous. Do not take any foe lightly, even if you are confident in your abilities."
The display flipped into an overall view of Narrius and surrounding area. "The rest of you are to begin preparing for a counterattack. The Kaiser believes that the Enian Federation does not want to be seen as a pacifist nation that waits out its foes. We will not only push them back out of our country, but will being to march upon theirs, with the assistance of shock troops coming in soon as reinforcements. I want you to get your assigned squads in order and shape up your men to be in top form for what is to come." The holographic pictures altered as Marian spoke, showing the movements of projected soldiers heading into Artisan territory.
"We do not want to give the Artisans time to assemble their own force of generals to stop us so when the time comes, we will move with swiftness. Keep yourselves ready." Marian took a step back and listened to the door hiss and slide open for him once more. The rallying speech was done; his well-trained men would do the rest. These were some of the most powerful pilots on the planet; they wouldn't fail in their tasks.
"What if that weapon shows up again though sir?" Marian stopped in the doorway and sighed, his shoulders visibly dropping as snickers passed through the room. The voice was quite familiar in just such situations, belonging to General McCormack, a rough and tumble wrangler from the wastelands just north of Narrius. His torn and worn jacket was studded with metal bits and bobs, ones that ran all the way down to his black leather boots. He had a gold bandana around his neck, one he put up over his face frequently, unless in a respectable meeting like this. His short, brown hair was a permanent mess, as though he had just come in from a windstorm outside, every time, but it stayed away from his sharply defined and handsome face. Blue eyes burned into Marian's back from the bench. "Can it be my turn to kick its ass?"
There were guffaws and shared laughs as McCormack placed his feet up on the edge of the metal ring. Everyone had seen the video of Marian giving out a beating to Syn and knew precisely what McCormack was hinting at. They were equally used to the hard time McCormack gave out to Marian and just about any other superior officer he could get his hands on. The Brass Bullet General he was called and was one of the more talented at piloting but in terms of manners he had almost none. And so Marian continued to sigh.
"You can have your chance McCormack, if he shows again. In the meantime, acquaint yourself with the Rose Thorn General. I hear you're quite the ladies man at the local bars in Narrius anyways." With that the commander was gone, leaving the door to close behind him and his men to get to work.
* * * * *
"You said it was a couple little blips Ronald," Grimsley angrily muttered as he stared at a cluster of Artisan Goliaths, Exo-class units. They were milling about the small encampment that was nestled in a miniature valley, just below the average radar sweep and sitting slightly inside the neutral territory between the two countries.
"No I said something like some blobs. Blobs are a bunch of blips together."
Grimsley scanned the array of buttons available to him, some on touchscreen and others physically built in, until he settled on one and pushed. "It looks like a couple little blips Grimsley," came the recorded voice of Ronald in the cockpit.
"Hey! I din'nt know it could do that!"
Grimsley rolled his eyes in the front, even if Ronald couldn't see. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that your reading abilities are terrible and may end up killing us sometime soon." The inexperienced pilot's mind was racing with different options in such a situation but since he lacked in any formal training he really had no idea how you got around this. He was sure he could probably drive the battlesuit well enough to fight off a couple Goliaths but against these numbers it would be impossible. And since they had had to get quite close on the exposed, rolling fields in order to establish visual contact, it was only a matter of time before they were discovered, even if it was them running away.
"Well excuse me sonny, but my eyes ain't nearly as youthful as yours."
"But your brain is wise and experienced isn't it? What do you propose we do now mighty master."
"Shut up you, I don't got a clue. Fight 'em all I spose."
Grimsley shook his head, face held in his palms. "You spose? Because we, as veteran pilots nearing general status, have the capacity to simply fight off...let's see...eight? Yeah eight Goliaths. We can just do that."
"The Grimsley who proposed could..." Ronald blurted out before trailing off as he realized what he might have just incurred.
"The one who proposed could have..." Grimsley pulled his hands away and examined them, looking between his fingers at the reflection of his face in the viewscreens. "There are two of me? One who has strength and one who doesn't?"
"I thought we was going to be like your dad, be vigilantes, be free warriors of the people, son. Isn't that what'cha wanted?" Ronald placed an ageing, gnarled hand on the youth's shoulder.
"That is...what I wanted. To save, to help my people, to help all people. All the men and women out there who feel so useless when they are attacked, who are helpless and powerless. I want to give them strength. My strength. I will give them the gift of my strength. The strength to propose."
"Atta boy! I've never heard of no power of marriage but I'll take it. Now what do you say we go all rogue and kick some ass here sonny?"
"I would like that Ronald," a very dark and grim-faced pilot spoke. "I would like that very much. We are now...rogue..."
A/N: A new Grimsley is emerging: the hard-hitting, no-questions-asked best kind! And we finally get a look at the Enian generals. Is McCormack as good as his word though?
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