Porter watched as his breath condensed in the air, turning into water vapour, becoming whiter until it was a miniature cloud hanging in front of him and then saw it disperse into the atmosphere. He rubbed his clothed hands together before his mouth, trying to warm them with that crystallizing breath. They were all wearing their pilot jumpsuits, but with a bulkier overcoat that had heated liquids running through it. It made things bearable but not perfect and none of the students were used to being in these sorts of conditions.
They had moved away from the ship and watched it take off, leaving them behind in the desolate cold. Sure, they had their Goliaths but otherwise it was just them up here in the mountains. They weren't fighting an enemy. They were fighting nature itself.
The Goliaths stood silently in the snow, their massive forms casting shadows across the frozen surface of the lake. There were a couple of arctic birds coming to land on them, returning after being scared away by the Goliaths dropping from the sky. They would be shaken off once again unfortunately, but for now they got to rest against the warm metal of the battlesuits.
The group quietly made their way to each of their Goliaths, their normally cheery spirits drained away by the seriousness of a mission. Things just weren't the same anymore it seemed whenever they came to Earth. Too many near-death events recently had forced them all to think a little harder, to take a step back and consider the repercussions of their formerly brash actions. So now they somberly walked to their Goliaths and loaded up into the cockpits, connecting with one another only through the communication network.
"Alright listen up guys," Ardwen broadcast to each of them as their Goliaths started going through their warm-up procedures. "General Ochenkov was last seen in these mountains. Shotuku has stressed many times he is a master of survival and will be hiding in a cave around here somewhere, unless he's dead, in which case we all go home fairly depressed. So let's try to find this guy quickly."
Various images of Ochenkov came up on everyone's screens, floating in front of them and piling up as they overlapped. Porter admired the burly barbarian for his willpower to leave a hospital and wander around in the cold like this and still survive. But when you considered how much power was in that blizzard, in the ability to bend nature to your will, it shouldn't be a surprise that Ochenkov was able to live in these insane conditions.
Porter stared down at his own hands, wondering if that kind of power rested within him, if his spirit had that kind of capacity. He never would have thought so months ago, before any of this started happening, before Shotuku had mentioned the word chi. It seemed like such a foreign concept at the time. Now it was becoming second nature. A pilot who had once been destined for mediocrity turned into the star of the academy. If he could control it. That was why he had been training so hard recently. Now it was time to put that to the test.
The teen gripped his controls, feeling his fingers tensing around the familiar White Storm, his muscles twitching with anticipation. His body's electrical current began to flow into the machine, synchronizing with its pulse until they were one and the same. He took in a deep breath through his nose, closing his eyes before opening them with the release.
"We will spread out in pairs," Ardwen continued. "We need to cover as much ground as possible as fast as we can in case Ochenkov's life is threatened. Make sure to use every scanner you have available to you and don't leave anything untouched. Raul, you're with Nami. Riya you're with Chase. Porter with me. Make sure to maintain contact at all times. Let's go."
Each pairing received a topographical map of the area, with highlighted circles that had their names marked on them. Ardwen had designated search zones to make things quick and efficient. He was getting better at this; better at running a squad with confidence and micromanaging correctly.
The groups split up, moving out towards their new destinations to begin the search. Their screens were consumed with different radars and readings as they scoped out every inch they travelled across. Ardwen and Porter had the middle zone, where some of the larger mountains were. It was impossible to think that Ochenkov would ever want to scale them in any way but they had to check the valleys and spaces in between.
"Porter, I haven't forgotten what you told me." Ardwen broke the silence between the two as they moved up the side of a snowy mountain, using a direct line so nobody else could hear. "What happened to your father and your family, it's horrible. It seems like all of us is carrying some sort of weight with us." Ardwen's Goliath looked up at the stars, towards the academy in the sky.
"Maybe that's why we all were chosen to go to the academy: to try to leave our burdens behind on Earth and run to the stars, outside its reach." Porter didn't really want to talk that much. He was busy becoming focused, attuning himself to the frequency of the world around him, trying to pick up on any sign of chi. The White Storm's computers were mostly off and none of its scanners were operating aside from necessary ones. He would do this on his own.
"Hmm maybe. That's kind of profound. Too bad coming to the academy has only brought out our issues even more." Ardwen gave out a bit of a shy laugh. Inside his cockpit he pulled off his glasses and wiped them on his jacket before resetting them on his nose. There was a little blip on the screen as a rabbit ran by up ahead and dove into its burrow. Then it was gone as Ardwen dismissed it.
"I guess so."
"You know what I wonder Porter?"
"What?"
"Sometimes I wonder what ever happened with that Grimsley guy we met back in Easley. We never really heard from him again after he saved all our lives. He seemed nice."
"You're only saying that because you're trying to date his sister." Porter sat back in his chair a bit and tried to relax again, hoping he could blow off Ardwen with short answers until he could have peace in his mind. Every little living thing and its life force was crowding his vision. He needed to eliminate the little creatures and search for the human they desired.
"No I really do wonder. I mean...well yeah there's Gretta and I and...hey you don't think that's weird do you?" Ardwen watched more signs of life coming and going, as well as updates from the rest of the squad that flashed by as they checked in.
Porter sighed, making sure it wasn't loud enough for Ardwen to hear. "Why would it be weird?"
"Well because I was after Nami and then now I'm with Gretta and all."
"Gretta and Nami have a lot in common. They're unfortunately similar." Porter thought back to the times the two had ganged up on him in stalking and shuddered. He had had something in his mind for a moment but had lost it as they moved down into a valley. Something might be nearby but he would never find it with Ardwen's chatter.
"Yeah she's really cool. I mean I never get to talk about engineering stuff and mechanics you know? And she adores strategies! I wonder why she never signed up for the army..." Porter started to finally find peace, tuning out Ardwen and instead tuning into the frequencies surrounding him. There had been something, something nearby. It was just a flicker though, extremely faint, coming and going. It was almost like a tiny flame on a candle that would nearly get extinguished with each passing breeze, only to spring back to life right after.
"That's good you found someone Ardwen. I wish you the best," Porter absently answered as he scanned around with his spirit. But his thoughts were starting to drift over to his own interests, to Riya. She wasn't too far away and he could feel her calming chi just past some of the mountains. He liked being able to feel it now when they sat in class or he passed by her. It was warm and loving but it was also timid and dark. It held a lot of darkness within it, a darkness Porter understood after witnessing her father.
The youth had to shake his head and reset his focus. The flicker had returned, stronger for a moment, before disappearing altogether. But Porter had picked up on it enough to lock in. The White Storm had done the same, tracking Porter's mind with its computers and triangulating the position of the source. It had come from the interior of the mountain they had just started climbing.
Porter's Goliath bent down and placed its hands on the snow, sinking in until it hit the rocky face of the mountain. It began to send out pulses, resonating sound waves through the earth and letting them rebound. Then came seismic waves. On went the pulses as a map of the interior began to form in front of Porter. He watched it carefully as the White Storm's computers matched the new maps with the location of the chi.
"Got something Ardwen."
"What?" Ardwen spun around to look at Porter, who had fallen quite far behind since he had stopped moving.
"It's inside the mountain. There's a series of caves. It comes out not too far from here. Right over there." Porter pointed to a rocky outcropping as he uploaded the maps to everyone's computers and opened up the public channel.
"Regroup at our position," Ardwen commanded. Within moments the other Goliaths had arrived, taking off at their fastest speeds and hurdling the obstacles of the terrain with ease. "We have a location of Ochenkov."
Porter held his tongue as Ardwen directed the squad towards the cave entrance. The chi hadn't belonged to Ochenkov. Shotuku had already given him a sample of what it was like and it didn't match. But this was a human's chi, or at least somewhat human. Something felt off about it. Porter had a feeling though that Ochenkov was somewhere near this human spirit, or at least the person would be able to help them.
The group could only get so close with their Goliaths. They had to get out if they were going to go into the caves since fifty foot battlesuits weren't about to fit into caverns. The problem they all faced though once they were removed from their warmachines was that there was no cave for them to enter.
Everyone spun to face Porter in the back, evil glares not hidden from him. "So Porter," Chase said with glee at being able to pick on his favourite target, "where's the hole you said would be here."
"I didn't say it would be here, the scans did." Porter brushed past Chase and examined the face of the mountain.
"Porter isn't wrong," Raul finally stated, moving up beside the younger student and placing his hand against the wrong. "We are just being deceived." He grabbed Porter and dragged him back to the group, then motioned for all of them to stand back further. The wall of rock detonated behind him, a bomb the ninja had placed going off in a miniature explosion. It did the trick though, exposing a gap that lead into the darkness inside the mountain.
Chase grumbled something about Porter being right before following everyone inside. It didn't take them long before they stumbled to the end of the cave, finding another wall blocking their path with the metal boxes around the edges.
"Well this is strange," Ardwen proclaimed. "The map showed a path going downwards right here. There should be a whole cavern right underneath us." He stomped his foot on the ground in indignation as teeth chattered around him from the chilled group. The centre of the floor shuddered in response before sinking down slowly, taking Nami and Riya with it.
The squad quickly hopped on to the lowering circle with the girls; none of the boys wanted to say they had been chicken enough to let the girls go alone like that. They all seemed to easily accept that they were riding an elevator and Ardwen started speculating that the metal containers they had seen probably helped power the whole thing while everyone else just enjoyed the warmth coming from the space below them.
As the rock elevator came down to the bottom of the floor, the pilots found three people standing waiting for them amidst an array of lab equipment scattered around the edges of the circular cavern. One they all recognized as Ochenkov, scantily clad at this point, with tribal tattoos covering the exposed portions of his body. One was an assumed scientist from the looks of his lab coat and goggles, his stringy hair sticking out in all directions. The third one was unfortunately familiar-looking as well. It looked like the android Marian had fought. It looked like Syn.
"Let not one man be unwelcomed from your home; we are all part of our greater society," the scientist exclaimed, throwing his arms wide.
"The book of Enia, the seventh passage, verse two," the cyborg blankly added. Ochenkov merely nodded at the pilots, keeping his words to himself.
"Yes, welcome to my home," the scientist continued. "We have been watching for some time now as you searched for this one over here." A finger was pointed at the general. "Much has been explained to us and, for some of you, I fear greater explanations are coming." He seemed to direct the statement at Porter but the youth didn't take notice. He was intently staring at the android instead, and it returned his gaze.
"Who are you?" he boldly asked.
"I am Sigma," came the hard response, calculated by a computer. "You are Porter Ryen of the Enian Federation, studying at the Saint Maurius Academy. You are all students there."
"Wow how does it know all that?! Creepy!" Nami recoiled in fear at the idea of something watching her every movement and everyone else rolled their eyes.
"He's a bit of a special being," the scientist answered. "He knows quite a lot about everything that is located somewhere on a computer. And yet there are many things he doesn't know..." There was a smirk from the man as he turned away and returned to a console. Ochenkov sat down and folded his legs, going back into a meditation and leaving Sigma all to the group.
"Porter Ryen," Sigma said. "You have no listed living relatives. Your mother and father are both deceased, correct?"
"And my brother died too when I was little." Porter didn't back down from the inquisitive nature of this strange machine. Something about it drew him to it, something he couldn't quite place. It was a strange feeling deep in his heart, like something that had once been lost was found.
"Brother? You have no brother recorded in any databases that I know of." Sigma's irises spun as they refocused on the pilot, causing everyone else to feel a bit grossed out. They couldn't get over the humanoid face on the mostly robotic body.
"Well he existed and then he died. Maybe you missed him." There were tears forming in Porter's eyes. "I miss him," he murmured.
Sigma cocked his head for a moment quizzically. "Doctor Roth instructed me not to kill any of you. He told me you were all critical to understand myself. Is that what you are Porter? What was your brother's name?"
Porter's hands clenched into fists at his side and he squeezed his eyes tight to try and keep any more tears from coming out. Almost everything about his childhood had been buried deep within him, locked away to keep painful memories of a former family from coming back. "His name...his name was Leif."
Doctor Roth paused at his console, listening for a moment to the silence in the air. Ochenkov opened one eye to look over at the stand-off between Porter and Sigma. The android looked down at his hand, slowly raising it up in front of his body and examining it, then holding it out in front of his chest. His other hand immediately shot up to the side of his head, clutching it and keeping him from falling over as a rush of different memories started swirling around.
"My...my name is Leif..."
A/N After years apart the two brothers have finally reunited! Will Sigma be able to survive the barrage from his past without breaking down? Can Porter keep his composure in the face of such a shocking revelation?
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