Revival

Year 35 of the Age of the Dragon

“As a phoenix rises from the ashes of defeat, so to shall you rise to victory.”

Admiral Kollia swiveled in his chair to face the main viewer. On the deep space scanner it looked like little more than a dot, but information was pouring in.

“Combat Scanner reports one Kamian God coming in hot from point one eleven!” Lieutenant Japser called from the RADAR station.

“Scramble two Real-Type Gunjins ASAP!” Kollia ordered.

Several decks bellow in the hanger bay, two of the massive green and white mechs were already being lowered onto the magnetic catapults while teams of technicians swarmed over them like ants.

“Half Ammo, full explosives, two-five on consumables!” Commander Laurana barked. “Let’s get these soldiers in the sky!”

Two young men in sleek blue flight suits came down the hall next to her, gently holding the moving rails on the electronic tracks in the wall. There tinted helmets obscured their faces, but Laurana knew who they were, there were four pilots on the rotation today.

“Rodney, your Digger One, Marco, Digger Two!” Laurana shouted. “Take your seats and go!”

The two young men nodded and leapt through the low gravity, each soaring gracefully toward the hatches on the bellies of there suits.

No sooner hat the metal doors closed then Laurana signaled the technicians to clear away and hit the launch button herself.

In the pressurized bay the electro-magnetic catapults whined and threw off sparks as they raced down the long hall. The static discharge made Laurana’s hair stand on end as the carriages flew past, and the wash from the wind threatened to pull her along for the ride.

The two suits leapt out of the launch bay and burned there Vernier engines on full as they raced off in the direction of the hostile targets.

“Gunjin’s away!” Laurana shouted through the COM. “Designating Digger One and Digger Two!”

She quickly turned back to her flight deck team.

“Get two more suits on the carriage, full consumables, ammo, and explosives, ASAP!”

* * *

“Command, this is Digger One, I have a shooting solution!” Rodney shouted. “Charging particle-beam weapon—firing!”

Rodney grunted angrily as the target jumped and dodged with inhuman reflexes, avoiding his beam.

“Target has evaded!” Marco grunted as he pulled out his beam saber. “Digger Two switching to melee!”

He moved in close and slashed, but the god dodged again and went in low, making a pass over the station.

“Digger One, moving in for another attack!” Rodney shouted as he dropped in behind the target and charged his weapon.

“Enemy is making a break for it!” Marco shouted. “Engaging!”

Rodney’s suit went into a barrel roll and came in directly behind and below the target.

He fired his weapon a second time and vaporized the drone.

“Command,” Rodney grinned. “We have a kill.”

* * *

Commander Kollia slammed his fists down on the armrests of his chair.

“Unacceptable!” he shouted. “Our response times were completely inadmissible! A real God would have done significant damage to the station before it was stopped!”

“It was just a drill sir,” Captain Henry replied.

“Just a drill,” Kollia growled angrily. “Hundreds of people could have died in a real attack, I wont accept ‘just a drill’. If we are ever to be ready for actual combat, we must treat each simulation as if lives were in the balance.

“I’ll be reporting our readiness to the Pendragon later today, I want all crews on the station running ten drills a day until they rotate back to Victory Facility. We’re going to make soldiers out of these kids even if it kills them.”

* * *

“All right, lets get this over with,” Hunter said jovially as they sat down around the conference table. “I know how you all love these monthly staff meetings.”

Grunts and chuckles off approvement went around the table. The Victory Research center had grown large, and every division was represented here. The strategic division of labor employed by the facility allowed projects to be completed quickly and efficiently, but it also meant that every branch had to be in constant communication with the other branches. In a way, maintaining this web of communication was one of the hardest parts of managing the facility.

Especially for the person in charge, namely Hunter.

He was proud of how well it was all coming together, but just staying on top of everything was mind blowing at best. To him the massive vortex of projects going on around felt like a giant boulder rolling out of control down a hill, despite that, they managed to make amazing advancements everyday.

Sometimes he wondered if the whole system wouldn’t just work fine if left to its own devices.

The center was divided into four primary divisions. The ground mobile suit division, the space mobile suit division, the ground support division, and the space naval division; together made up the bulk of the research going on. In addition to primary divisions, support sub divisions such as metallurgy, propulsion, robotics, and electronics, provided the basic components of different projects. There were also the labor divisions, which handled the actual construction of different stage prototypes, consultant scientists who worked on specialized in specific fields, and division leaders whose soul task was to organize and coordinate and manage projects.

And at the bottom you had the very basic foundation divisions. Food and housing, entertainment for the staff and there families, acquisition and distribution of materials; there was so much involved in running the base it made Hunter’s head spin.

Part of the miracle of how he made it work was by borrowing from Gudersnipe’s ‘lack of bureaucracy’ system. Instead of having mountains of paper work and accountability, they simply used a good old-fashioned chain of command. But instead of soldiers firing guns to carry out orders, they had scientists making brilliant discoveries.

There was one more division of the Victory Research Center, one that Hunter himself was the head of. The Kiyoku Division was the most secretive part of the whole program, one that not even all of the people on the base knew about.

It was also the most important.

“The Rion project is going fairly well,” Joshua began. “We’ve been having some issues with the CO2 scrubbers in the environment, but the technicians are taking care of it. The mobile suit prototypes have reached the sixth stage, we’ll be ready to start working on the Real Type modes in a few months. The Lion’s are doing well, growing healthy and very accustomed to the pilots.”

Joshua was Hunter’s grandson, and while he had been in a wheel chair since the age of eleven he was without question one of the fore-most experts in the field of animal-type mobile suits. He was only sixteen, but he’d been to Gudersnipe with Hunter as a teacher’s aid, which made him more qualified to head up the Rion project than any of the scientists on base. He might have been the most qualified person in the whole Multi-Verse; animal type mechs were almost lost technology.

“What about the Armor CASTS?” Hunter asked.

“Still working on developing them,” Joshua explained. “The analysts—”

“Have several proposals,” Dr. Rikuykai interrupted. “Unfortunately we’re nowhere near implementation.”

“Why not?” Hunter asked angrily.

“The volume of combat data we’re dealing with is enormous,” the doctor explained. “Just the analysis alone is taking entirely to long. We need consultants, extra brain power just to absorb all the data.”

“We’ll transfer people from the tank project, that one can wait,” Hunter replied.

“Theirs another problem with the Rion project,” Joshua said apprehensively.

“What is it?” Hunter asked.

“Well,” Joshua cleared his throat. “Do you remember, back when we started the process, how we had no idea how we were actually going to transfer the lion’s consciousness into the mobile suit?”

“I believe my exact words were ‘we’ll burn out that bridge when we come to it’,” Hunter replied. “What’s your point?”

“The project is set for completion in six months and we don’t have a clue how the hell we’re going to burn the bridge.”

Hunter drummed his fingers uncomfortably on the table.

“Haven’t we had people working on it?” he asked.

“Since day one,” Joshua sighed. “But three years into the project and we’re no nearer to solving the mystery than we were when it started.”

“We’ve got six months,” Hunter shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. How are the basic suits coming?”

“We’ve just completed the basic armor sets that will allow them to fight in space,” Joshua said. “Testing with the Saber Tora arcotype has yielded good results, but we wont know their full capabilities until we complete the project.”

“Right,” Hunter nodded. “I want to concentrate all our efforts on three area’s: the Rion project, the Real Type Gunjin project, and the Victory Fleet. Let’s put everything else on the back burner for now.

“You all have your assignments, get to work.”

Joshua pushed his wheelchair away from the table and moved up towards Hunter while most of the rest of the scientists and project managers filed out.

“What’s up Joshua?” Hunter asked as he shifted the paperwork around in front of him.

“Aren’t we having a special meeting?” Joshua asked.

“That’s not your concern,” Hunter said simply.

“Hey, I’m the one who figured out how to use a Kiyoku System in an animal type mech,” Joshua said angrily. “If you guys are meeting to discuss it—”

“Come on kid,” Hunter gave Joshua a wry smile. “You know you’ve got top level clearance, your welcome to sit in on this. In fact I was going to ask, since you are the lead on the Rion project and we are hoping to implement Kiyoku in at least some of the suits.”

Most of the scientists had left; only Hunter, Jason, Joshua, Dr. Tengi, and Dr. Rikuykai remained.

“Computer,” Jason ordered. “All operations in this room to silent mode, and run the shadow program.”

The computer beeped respectfully and the lights dimmed. All communications had been halted and white noise generators activated outside the room. This was where they held their most secret meetings, meetings to discuss the Kiyoku System.

“So where are we?” Hunter asked finally.

“Where we’ve always been,” Dr. Tengi replied. “Behind a wall.”

“We’ve got a lot of gifted pilots and a lot of Kiyoku pilots,” Dr. Rikuykai said. “But we can’t mount a force large enough to make a difference at this rate. We need to step up the testing program and find more pilots.”

“It’s not exactly easy,” Hunter sighed. “A lot of schools now are running mobile suit programs like we tried to encourage, but the plan is kinda backfiring on us. Instead of helping us catch all the good pilots, they’re getting recruited straight out of high school into the popular teams in Tournament World.”

“Maybe we should concentrate our recruiting efforts there?” Dr. Tengi suggested. “We may have a better chance drawing gifted Kiyoku pilots from that pool.”

“Except we need to get them while their young,” Hunter grumbled. “That, and theirs a certain mentality bread into pilots in tournament world, one I don’t much care for.”

“Perhaps we should step up our efforts to find a way to give people the ability to use Kiyoku,” Jason suggested. “Theirs strong evidence to suggest that the ability may be genetic, if we can isolate the gene—”

“No,” Hunter interrupted. “Not under any circumstances. After Kiyoku Zero we’re not trying again.”

“I think we may have a better chance than you think,” Jason said. “Genetic re-sequencing—”

“If you weren’t born with the ability to use Kiyoku you won’t use it,” Hunter snapped. “That’s the way it works, that’s the system.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to capitalize on the pilots we have,” Jason replied tersely.

“The pilot has always been the real weapon,” Hunter said. “Machines are expendable, but people who can use them effectively are irreplaceable.”

“Even more so when it concerns Kiyoku pilots,” Dr. Tengi said. “We’ve not advanced the technology much since Kiyoku Ascendancy, most of our improvements have been in the realm of the mobile suits themselves, and in improving the tactical library. The more people that use Kiyoku, the stronger everyone becomes.”

“Right,” Hunter nodded. “Unfortunately that doesn’t change the fact that we need more pilots. I’m going to begin screening pilots in the military, I’ve been getting a lot of pressure to include UEASF personnel in our project.”

“It sounds like a good idea to me,” Dr. Rikuykai said. “If we crewed our fleet with already trained personnel it wont take as long to get the first fleet up and running, and theirs a good chance we’ll find some Kiyoku pilots among the military’s forces.”

“It’ll also be a lot easier to screen them,” Jason stated. “Make EEG’s a mandatory part of the physicals and we can just run them all through the computer. Every base is already set up with the technology, we now have a wide enough pool of comparison subjects to write a computer algorithm to check the scans for us.”

“Right,” Hunter nodded. “I’ll meet with the generals this afternoon and have them take care of it. I’ll also start looking for recommendations on who to have re-assigned to the new Victory fleet. Let’s move people.”

Nods and affirmations went all around the small group as most stood to leave.

“Hunter,” Joshua said as he backed his chair away from the table. “I wanted to talk to you about the challenge match tomorrow—”

“Against the Puma Team?” Hunter asked.

“Yeah,” Joshua nodded. “Are you still planning to fight with me?”

“You know I’d never miss a chance to kick some ass by your side,” Hunter grinned. “I’ll be there. Jason and I are going to visit Cloud about the Rion technology—”

“We are?” Jason interrupted.

“Yup,” Hunter nodded. “Joshua, want to come with?”

“Nah, I got school,” Joshua said disappointedly. “See you tomorrow?”

“Be ready,” Hunter said as he stood up. “It’s going to be a fun match.”

* * *