[9] Beach Head – Hive Regime: Kim Dak-ho

Far, very far away, a Ryu Z-9 equipped with a last generation Tactical Module –a Corpnation-era AWAC with the ability to identify and trace up to ten thousand moving targets simultaneously- detects unusual –or rather quite usual- activity.

“Sir, we have recon's last report”, heard Kim Dak-ho through the frequency transponder implanted on his cranium. In the middle of an arid desert adorned only by a tatami and a Samjeongdo sword, Captain Kim Dak-ho sits in meditation, contemplating the sword that he got for his promotion to Captain raising from the ground like solemn but inexistent tent stake. The Captain’s meditations have been interrupted by a very important report.

“Today, at 0800 local time, an unidentified unit breached the perimeter of a Sphere Tiger patrol unit. The patrol unit was making the same patrol routes established since their camp began operations here four days ago”, explained Captain Dak-ho to a camera that transmitted to his superiors who only showed their silhouette through the multiple virtual screens surrounding Captain Dak-ho’s tele-presence equipment in his tent. “The unknown unit used an advanced optical reflection and thermal manipulation system that made virtually invisible to the Tigers’ sensors.”

As Kim sits in a perfect Zen position, a virtual screen floating in front of him shows a scene in which a Sphere Tiger is slashed in two by an Energy Weapon swung by a undistinguishable shadow.

“Referential analysis of the unit’s heat trail, optical correction, and wave emission shows that the attacking Meka belongs to the Technocratic Confederation. It was definitely being piloted by the Gaijin”, said Dak-ho, completing his report.

“The Gaijin is here?” said an evidently altered voice that emanated from the nameless faces on the virtual screens. With shame and defeat on his face, Dak-ho gravely responded, “Yes.”

“He must have new information on our target”, continued another faceless voice. “We must observe him carefully until he guides us to it”, said yet another voice, “but we must take care not to allow him to have any contact with Koyashi. It is too dangerous”.

“We will double protection measures around Koyashi. No unauthorized contact will be allowed”, replied the Captain immediately. “How should we handle the escalation that will follow this attack?” asked Dak-ho, seeking authorization rather than an answer.

“Take all measures necessary to achieve our objective”, said the faceless voices in unison.

“Yes, Sir.”, said Kim Dak-ho, taking the Samjeongdo sword that had remained staked in front of him in his Zen meditation position, while giving verbal commands to activate his Ryu Z-9 using his frequency transponder implant.

[4] Beach Head – Hive Regime: Ryu Koyashi

“And the winner is…”, voiced the speaker in a gigantic arena, big enough to fit six blocks of any urban 21st century metropolis, all with skyscrapers, subways, and sewers. This mini-metropolis was ritually rebuilt every week in mere ten hours, thanks to the millions of nanos dedicated to restoring the city to its initial state as if hell hadn’t run through its before, unless the league officials decided to make a structural change on the battlefield.

“RYUUUUU KOYAAAASHIIIII…!!!” screamed the commentator through dozens of virtual monitors. He was dressed up in a suit and wore white gloves, with which he pointed at the small, nearly destroyed, winning Meka. It was missing an arm, and smoke blew out of it, as it stood atop the inert rubble of a torso of its opponent. The losing Meka lay semi-buried on the pavement, dripping with foam from the anti-impact system that activated in the course of the 15-story fall that followed Ryu Koyashi’s “miraculous” dodging its charge.

Ryu didn’t hear the commentator. His ears were ringing with a deafening sound, while every alarm on his Meka went off simultaneously. His only reaction was to press the eject button, which launched him towards the partially destroyed concrete of the mini-metropolis. There, even smaller, he saw how thousands, millions of people around him stood applauding his victory amidst a cloud of pods that recorded every second of the final battle of this season’s Robot Wars Tournament.

Ryu got himself together as he heard the sirens closing in. He stood up and walked towards the mutilated and torn torso of his rival’s Meka. Stumbling, Ryu looked desperately for his enemy, whom he heard screaming during the endless seconds of his fall. He could hear him even from his hermetically sealed and noise-protected control capsule. Hear him even after turning off all radio frequencies. Hear him even with his eyes shut and his hands tightly clenched against his ears.

Ryu walked around the torso of his opponent’s Meka. The sirens wailed in the distance.

Suddenly, the pavement under his feet caved, and Ryu fell along with the rubble around him to the underground levels of the arena, which are full with train lines; huge, mine-infested water wells; and mechanical animals, part of the various settings for the Tournament. Ryu fell for seconds, minutes, or hours, he never knew. When he came to, he was facing the control capsule of his opponent’s Meka, and it was open like a hatched egg, and sunk in a deep darkness that seemed to oppose any invasion of light.

Sirens kept wailing.

Ryu got back on his feet. This time he was standing in the shadow of light that filtered through the newly opened crater. Though he had heard the sirens in the distance, he felt their sound increase as he approached the capsule. “Are they getting closer?” he wondered, but he did nothing about it, and kept walking towards the capsule.

The sirens closed in. For a second, Ryu thought that he was hearing his opponent’s screams again, growing closer, louder. Again, the screams that he didn’t want to hear.

At the edge of the capsule the sound was unbearable. Ryu was leaning against the shell with one hand, while using the other to cup one of his ears, which bled profusely. With a great effort, he climbed over the capsule. Bleeding, and mad-driven by the overwhelming noise of the screaming, Ryu finally saw into the capsule…

He woke up screaming in his tent. Sweating, he jumped up from his gurney and went to get some water. Without noticing, agitated and shaky, he went out to the semi-toxic, arid field of the Earth. He was setting foot on Earth for the first time in his life. Earth was showing him, for the first time, an unreachable horizon.

Watching the sun timidly beginning to rise on the arid plain frame the silhouette of the ruins of a human, 21st century metropolis, Ryu slowly began to calm down. He stopped sweating; stopped shaking. Only then did he hear, or rather felt, her voice for the first time:

“Hello, Ryu. Welcome home.”

[1] Beach Head - Hive Regime: Wan Yang

I always remember my mother, sitting by the window in our little coffin of an apartment; a claustrophobic place of unendurable pastel colors, plastic walls, and a cheap, pink carpet floor that always looked raunchy despite my mother’s cleaning attempts. She would be smoking a cigarette – the illegal kind that she got in exchange for pirate copies of sensory videos - and she would sit there, on the carpet, with her arm resting on the windowsill and her legs crossed, telling me all about how it used to be on Earth, while behind her thousands of lights shone back from the Megablock-factories, evidencing thousands, tens of thousands of us – The Hive- working on the millions of parts that keep the post-Terrestrial world working.

[SYSTEMS ON LINE– TACTICAL DEPLOYMENT PROGRAM INITIATING]

“It was paradise”, she would say, “you could pick wealth out of the trees with your bare hands, and oxygen was free”. Every afternoon, on the windowsill, while I studied my flowcharts for the School Robot War Tournaments, she would repeat how wonderful Earth had been. The prize was a portable music player, which I coveted obsessively to escape the repetitive speeches that entered my consciousness like the proverbial Chinese torture water drop. “Thousands of miles of green vegetation, pure air, and clean water; fields for running and playing Fukbol” –or at least that’s what she called it- “and wonderful animals to watch.”

[LAUNCHER CHARGED – SAFETIES OFF]
[COORDINATES CONFIRMED – LANDING AREA CLEAR]

But that was a long time ago, in her delirium to escape her sixteen-hour long workday at the factory, my mother would remember old chapters of Terrestrial videos about the way it used to be, just before we caved and hid away from our own sins in space colonies and planetary bases. Of my mother’s memories, only “Fukbol” and School Robot Wars kept me from ending up as just another light bulb maker, working sixteen-hour days in a Megablock-factory.

[MEKA IN POSITION – LAUNCHER ALIGNED]
[CLEAR ORBITAL LAUNCHING ZONE]

Blood is a fascinating thing. In zero-gravity it surprisingly comes together and coagulates. I always try to think about this after a battle because it reminds me that, in the end, we are fighting among brothers. Sometimes I get very profound in the middle of a battle, and my superiors are always on my case for sending koans during battle, but I have illuminated more than one fellow soldier with those in times of need. On all those occasions, Earth has been a beautiful background against which our nations “negotiate”, but never a place, the ground, the sky, gravity, or inertia.

[LAUNCHER CHARGED – LAUNCHING IN 5]

I believe it was my destiny. Either that or I sought this without thinking about it. In any case, it is time to search for the paradise that my mother always spoke of. Sitting in this 5-ton death machine, I try to imagine what down there is so important to warrant the creation of an operations base in an environment so inhospitable and devoid of economical interest –believe me, we have tried- that three of our most prominent pilots (with good reason or, in my case, for bad reasons) are required to leave the frontier conflict and reassigned to…

[4, 3, 2, 1…]

…nothing?

[LAUNCH]