“We’re almost there!”
Jade gunned the engine of his Ride Chaser. Buster fire whizzed past him, but he accelerated anyway, sand whipping up under his engines. Gradually, he caught up to X, driving several meters to the squad leader’s side. One of their squad had already left the formation, his Chaser too damaged to keep up. Now, it was just the three of them.
Clad in shiny green armor, Jade lived up to his name. His design was mostly standard for robots of the time- large boots, clearly segmented limbs. His major deviation was his ears. Where most Reploids had circular cups, he had swept-back fins, a feature he was quite prideful of.
He gripped the handle of his power lance. It was mostly for comfort- they were nowhere near enough to the enemies for him to skewer anything. At this range and this speed, even the cannon on the front of his Ride Chaser wouldn’t do much, its shots going wide. Instead, he focused on dodging the oncoming hail. He felt the reassuring weight of his father clinging to his back. They just had to make it inside the Wily Tower, and it would all be okay. Grandfather would seal the gates, and his defenses would melt the enemy at the door.
The third member of the squad pulled ahead. They were attracting the attention of the gunners. A few shots came too close for Jade’s comfort, and they evidently spooked the squadmate as well. They started to pull out of formation, trying to lose the focus fire. X told them over the comms to loop around for another run. But right as they were almost out of the danger zone, a clean shot hit them, dead center. They were blown to bits, nothing remaining of them or their bike but for a spread of fine shrapnel spearing into the sands. Jade winced, gritting his teeth. That could have been him. This was getting bad. X radioed to inform HQ about the casualty.
Suddenly, without warning, the enemy landed one, two, three hits on the front of Jade’s bike, the nose crumpling. The engines were intact, but he couldn’t steer the Chaser. He shouted for X. He was a sitting duck. He tried to force the crippled machine to steer by leaning. Suddenly, he felt his father’s weight sag dangerously- he wasn’t adjusting to keep his balance on the bike! Jade looked back and cried out.
His father was slumped forward against him, a patch of blood staining Jade’s pauldron. Had he been hit by shrapnel?
The tower. Grandfather could fix this. Dad was just knocked out by the injury, that was all. Without looking forward, Jade pushed the throttle to max. Humans weren’t like robots. Every bad injury for a human was a timer. If they shut down, there was no turning them back on after you fixed the body. Jade looked back and saw only blinding white in the second before the blast blew him clear of the bike.
Time slowed. He was rising, launched upward by the bike detonating. He couldn’t see his father. X, who he’d pulled ahead of, was looking up at him and shouting something in slow motion. Jade’s eyes screwed shut and his limbs drew inward, assuming a fetal position. A moment later, he hit the earth. Impact was painful, but his system registered no damage. For a moment he just laid there, fully expecting to be erased by buster fire- but none came. In fact, it had fallen eerily silent. No blasts, no gunfire, no hiss of Ride Chaser engine. Total silence. His eyes opened.
He wasn’t in the desert anymore. It was still night, but he was in a forest. He got to his feet, looking around. It looked… like the forest near Tin Can? But that couldn’t be right, it was miles away. Tin Can was the next closest thing to the Tower, but it was still a hike. Had he really been blasted all that way? It made no sense. The bike was nowhere to be seen, but somehow, Jade’s lance was right beside him, speared into the dirt. He picked it up and tested its activation button. The hum of a magnet in its core reported back. It was seemingly still in one piece.
A nearby shuffling caught Jade’s attention. From behind a tree limped his father, his head tilted toward the ground.
“Dad! I was so worried when you got knocked out, are you alright? I think we’re near Tin Can. C’mon, it can’t be far, let’s go get you patched up!”
As he spoke, he ran towards his father. Before he could embrace him, the man silently put up his hand, the fingers stretched straight up and the palm facing towards him. A human hand sign for “Stop”. Jade complied. Slowly, the human lifted his head to face Jade. His skin was unnaturally pale, his face gaunt, his eyes glassy. A rivulet of dried blood trailed from his mouth, having run down his chin and neck and staining the shirt he was wearing. His jacket was tattered.
“D-dad! We- we need to get you help!”
As if attracted by the noise, a new figure joined the scene. It was a tall being not of this world, a humanoid clad in armor. His body was blue with white and orange accents. His green hair flowed. His eyes were black voids with glowing white pinprick pupils. It was Terra, the leader of the Stardroids, and prophet of their religion. Without hesitation, Jade yelled in anger, lunging with his lance. It buzzed through the air, going straight for Terra’s chestplate- and then Terra shot him. A thin beam of sickly green energy lanced from his pointer finger, curving directly into Jade’s chest, completely halting his charge. Then another, then another, until every finger on both of Terra’s hands had shot the same spot.
A hole the diameter of a half dollar coin had been shot directly through Jade’s chest. He sank to one knee, his entire body seizing with pain. The lance clattered back to the forest floor as his hand clutched at the sizzling wound. Jade’s father silently shambled over, stepping in front of Terra to look down at his son. Wordlessly, slowly, the man retrieved an object from inside his jacket. It was a hand mirror. With a deliberate pace, he turned it towards Jade.
Jade didn’t see his own face. It was obscured. Stretched across his face and the edges of his helmet was a still-pink, bloody flap of flesh. It was the torn off face of his father. Red started to drip from behind the skin, tracking down Jade’s chestplate, some of it smoking as it crossed the glowing, ragged edge of his wound. Jade screamed, recoiling. Desperately, he grabbed at his head, trying to remove the face- but somehow, though it hung loosely, it would not come off. He screamed, and he screamed, and he screamed.
With a yelp, Jade’s eyes flicked open. His HUD flickered wildly with targeting reticles tracking nothing. His body was seized up like a dead bug. Slowly, the sensation of dream pain started to fade. He patted himself on the chest, searching. No hole. Nervously, his hands traced up to his face. His fingers felt the cool surface of his own face. It was just him.
The room was dark, but for the dim light from a city filtering in through the window. Jade was laying on a maintenance bed. Was this the HQ? Jade wasn’t certain. He collected his thoughts. He’d been on a mission, charging down Mavericks in the ruins of what used to be his home. The last thing he remembered was… a squadmate he’d forgotten the name of had to pull off because they were taking heavy fire, and then… a bright white light, heat… and nothing.
The nightmare version of the mission had transitioned to the scene of his father’s death, a few years prior during the Second Stardroid Invasion. They had been fleeing via Chaser from the Wily Tower, to the relative safety of Tin Can. They crossed paths with Terra, who passionlessly shot the both of them. His father was dead instantly. No staggering. It was different to the dream, but Jade knew it was the same place as his memory. Eventually, a Tin Can patrol team found them, searching after they lost contact. Jade, clutching his father’s body, had been brought back to the town. He’d watched as they buried the young roboticist. In short, Dad was dead, and he was certain of that.
So why did it look like he was standing in the darkest corner of the room?
The corpse sauntered into the light cast by the window. He looked even worse than in the dream. Much of his face was gone, only tatters of flesh remaining. The muscle tissue below was shrunken and dried. He was wearing the lab coat he used to wear back home. It was torn and covered in myriad stains.
“Son”, it rasped.
Jade couldn’t move. He couldn’t so much as turn his eyes away.
“Son.”
A targeting reticle appeared over the figure. A red outline was drawn around it. Jade’s threat detection algorithm was indicating very clearly that this was danger. His whole body felt tight, as if it was being squeezed from all directions by a hydraulic press.
“Y’need to let go, son. You failed and ain’t nothin’ gonna change that.”
His drawl was identifiable even through the rotted throat. Blood began to spread on his shirt, right where his heart was. Slowly, shudderingly, he lifted the shirt, exposing his rotted chest. Right where Jade remembered it was the hole, now oozing fetid, cold blood. The acrid odor of charred flesh hit the robot’s olfactory sensor array. The dead man dragged a finger across his chest, coating the rotten digit in blood. Outstretching his hand, he began to walk, step by step towards the immobile Jade.
Step.
Step.
Step.
His feet made no sounds.
“Drink of my rot, son… it may grant you to join me in eternal sleep.”
A clammy hand grasped Jade by the cheeks. It forced his jaw open. The corpse held the bloodied finger high, slowly inching it towards the robot’s tongue. Jade willed his body to thrash, to move, anything. His steel limbs remained motionless. If that blood touched him, he would slowly die, he was certain of it like he had never been certain of anything before.
With a click, the light switch by the door flicked on. The room was flooded with fluorescent light. The corpse of Jade’s father was instantly gone, as was the sensation of his iron grip on Jade’s face. The robot could move again. The dim light of the city outside the window was instantly drowned, the panes of glass rendered black by the clinical white of the room. A masculine voice barked something. Jade realized he couldn’t parse it because he was screaming. He kept screaming for a moment, clutching at his face, covering his mouth in a vain attempt to muffle it, before he could will himself to constrain it to a dull moan, and then, silence.
The voice repeated itself. “The hell’s going on in here?!”
Jade slowly turned his head, almost expecting his father again. Instead, it was a short robot that was missing a lot of exterior paneling, standing with the assistance of a metal cane with rubber claw feet. His face was like the visor of a motorcycle helmet, illuminated from within by the visage of a simple, pixelated face that was currently displaying concern.
“Who- where-,” Jade’s voice croaked.
“Relax, son.”
Jade flinched. The other robot noticed and grimaced to himself before continuing.
“You’re at Maverick Hunter HQ. I’m Drop Man.”
The robot mentioned no rank- likely avoiding it to build rapport- but Jade noticed the officer’s insignia painted over the camo pattern on his pauldron. He weakly tried to salute, but Drop Man waved his hand down.
“We’re in the infirmary, in the maintenance wing. I think we were on the same op. The big one. Out in the desert, where the ol’ Tower used to be. Right?”
Jade nodded.
“I was the one in charge of the orbital drop. Used to work for that outfit, called up some old buddies. Had a bad drop comin’ in. Landing went FUBAR. Broke my… shit, I just ‘bout broke everything. They’re still sourcin’ some of the parts I need, ‘cuz I’m sorta obsolete. Still, sitting there outside my pod, I had a good view of the fireworks. Saw the bike charge. I’m gonna guess you were the one that got blown clean off yours, mm?”
Jade rasped, “Yeah. I think so.”
Drop Man walked across the room, his limbs awkward and shaky as his cane’s rubber tip clacked along the ground. As he reached the edge of the maintenance bed, he asked, “May I?”
“Oh, uh- yeah.” Jade scootched over, making room for the soldier to sit. Drop Man took a seat on the bed, instantly unstiffening now that his legs and cane didn’t have to support his weight.
“Now, what was all the noise about? Everything alright?” Drop Man’s expression had regressed to its neutral state, a simple face with two vertical lines for eyes and a letter “W” shape for a mouth. It was uncharacteristically cutesy for an otherwise stereotypically masculine person.
“Yes, sir. It was just a nightmare, sir.”
Drop Man knew that wasn’t true. That wasn’t the sound of waking up from a nightmare. It was the sound of mortal terror. But he knew pushing the issue wouldn’t help. Instead, he replied, “Stow the ‘sir’ stuff. We’re both off the clock, s- bud.”
He kicked himself internally. Calling younger soldiers by “son” to indicate casual friendliness was a behavior Drop Man had picked up from human colleagues- one of those weird little pieces of military culture, he supposed. But it had made the green robot flinch, and whatever the reason, Drop Man was determined to not contribute to the robot’s distress. “Well, we’re both up. Tell me about yourself. What’s your story?”
Jade took a simulated deep breath, sucking no air into nonexistent lungs but still pantomiming the behavior. “My name is Jade. My father was a young roboticist that defected from the UN to work for Albert Wily in the interwar period.”
He paused, expecting some reaction to the mention of the betrayal, but none came. “The way he told it, the UN was twisting his arm, demanding development in exchange for not getting charges. He was involved in some unlicensed roboticist type stuff when they picked him up. I think he… probably felt resentful at the imposition. In the Tower, he said he felt a lot more free. It was ironic- humans can’t really go outside in that desert for too long, ‘cuz the radiation hurts ‘em. There were only a few humans in the tower, but they all had to take iodine with every meal, and wear dose badges.”
Drop Man grunted. He was familiar with stories about radiation. As part of the training for extended work in space, robots were required to memorize front to back the stories about the radium girls, and Marie Curie, and the Therac-25, and every Cold War nuclear material incident that had ever happened on either side. It was all to hammer home the need for rigid decontamination protocols. Up in space, radiation could build up on a robot over time, and they wouldn’t notice because it wouldn’t harm them. But to the humans, they’d be exuding an invisible aura of death.
“Doctor Wily was working on his Infinity Project, and my dad, who he kinda adopted, was also interested in advancing robot tech. He built me as his son. So the Doctor’s my grandfather.”
Again, a pause for expected outrage- surely an officer of a military branch of the UN would have some strong words for identifying their worst single enemy as kin? But none came.
“After he made me, the Tower got a bit cramped. Especially ‘cause a lot of Granddad’s kids from the Wars were coming back home, and he finally had the time to restore a lot of the ones that he’d not had the chance to. So Dad took me on a lot of trips to this… town. Of robots.”
Jade sniffled a bit, losing himself to the memories. Drop Man responded, “I think I know just the little bastards you mean. I like ‘em.”
After a moment, the greener of the two resumed. “Soon enough, the Second Invasion started.”
His fists clenched and his voice strained. Drop Man put a hand on Jade’s shoulder.
“We had to clear out of the Tower. Me and Dad made for the town on a Ride Chaser, one Dad built from designs he stole from the UN. Aaaaaaaagh. And then- and then- that- that- Terra-”
The name of the aliens’ leader tore out of Jade’s throat like a shard of glass.
“He- he shot my fucking Dad! And I held his body! And that’s why I joined the Hunters, because- because- because I tried to fight him and I didn’t even get the chance to swing! He just shot us and went on his way! Because I was a failure and I wanted to stop being one! Agh! Fuck!”
The sound of simulated hyperventilation came from Jade’s throat as he clutched his head. Drop Man spoke in a low, gentle tone. “Hey. Hey now. I didn’t know you fought in the Second Invasion. I was there, too, Jade. I remember it. It was a bad day for everyone.”
“I just wanted- just wanted to fight that asshole- and- and-”
“Shh. Shh. You fought that day, far as I’m concerned. You survived it. Do you know what that makes you?”
Jade wailed, “Don’t say I’m a fucking hero! I’m a coward! I’m a goddamn coward!”
“It makes you a veteran. You survived against one of the deadliest members of an enemy that was already just about as bad as it gets. It’s not about how many hits you get in, it’s that you swung, or that you even wanted to swing and would have if you could have, and you survived. We’re equals.”
“I- I joined the Hunters- because I wanted to become better! I wanted to save all the other sons out there from holding their dads! I trained myself to be the bes- best rider I could be, and look at me! I told m-my-myself I could handle it, it wouldn’t get to me that-that they were in my old home, touching on everything left, and it got to me! It almost got me killed! And then I relived it, with my-my-my dad on my back! But I tricked myself into thinking I wa-was going home, that everything would be fine if I had just not fucked it all, that-that if I had just made it past the gate, Granddad would get those fuckers and Dad would be okay, and I’d be with all my uncles again! And then, and then, you know what I saw? The-the same clearing where he fucking died! I saw Terra again!”
“Jeez, kid.” He considered talking about his own experiences with nightmares, but Jade was gearing up to reveal more, and Drop Man realized it would be tactful to wait for him to calm down.
Jade stared directly into Drop Man’s face, his gaze piercing past the visor and laser focusing on the camera sitting inside the enclosure. “And-and you know what the worst part of it was, Drop Man? I-I-I woke up. And I was gonna j-just-just- just dismiss it as a bad dream, and-and-and-figure out what happened to the-the mission. But he was there. He was fucking there in the room, Drop Man.”
Jade frantically pointed at the far corner, his finger shaking.
“My D-Dad’s body was right there, all rotten, and he walked over to me, and he called me a failure , and he told me to drink his blood, that it would slowly kill me and I co-could join him. And-and- I was so scared to taste it, sca-scared to- hic - die, but some small part of me wanted it and if I could have moved I might’ve taken it. But-but-he was gone as soon as you- you- arrived.”
Drop Man watched the shaking wreck of a robot with concern. He didn’t believe in ghosts or phantoms. It sounded like a vivid hallucination. The kid would need psychiatric maintenance. He certainly wouldn’t be field ready for a while. Gingerly, he patted Jade’s shoulder again.
“I-I’m a c-cow-coward! I can’t get on that fucking bike again, I just can’t! I won’t do it! You can’t make me, even if you’re my superior!”
The older robot chose his words carefully. He was a hardass with new recruits, because that was just a part of the training. But as soon as someone was deemed ready to run missions, it was different. “I’m not gonna make you do anything. If you want out, you can get out. It’s fine. Nobody, not one Hunter, will think less of you. It’s okay.”
“I- d- argh! Aaaah!”
Jade doubled over into a fit of wordless sobbing, clutching at Drop Man. In turn, Drop Man held the green robot close to him.
He liked the business of soldiering. The discipline, the procedures, the hardware, the camaraderie, and all the little things in between. But this- this was always hard. It wasn’t giving compassion that was hard- that came naturally. It was the fact that his fellow soldiers suffered like this. That he had, himself, had his turn suffering like this.
Drop Man finally experienced a revelation that had been building for a long while. Warfare was, by far, the most fucked up thing ever, and he couldn’t even engage in the cliché that it was some Earth-specific problem- they had direct proof that aliens were just as capable of thinking in terms of killing to get shit done. Humans had just figured out how to make the moments in between the death structured and calm. In that moment, Drop Man wished more than anything that he and Jade could have found their callings in any other line of work. Maybe there was camaraderie in robots that did demolition or factory work. Maybe there was deep discipline in construction or ocean floor survey.
Jade’s sobbing lasted a long time. He could no longer say anything coherent. All of the agony simply submerged him and tugged him with its current, and he held to the older robot, the only thing keeping him from being whisked away. The color of the window started to shift as the world turned to that twilight before dawn. It was just a few minutes before the brilliant disc of the sun peeked above the buildings that formed the horizon when he finally ceased. He wasn’t totally composed by any means, but Jade was, for the moment, through the worst of it.
He spoke, sniffling. “S-sorry about- about that. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Drop Man?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you st-stay for a while? I don’t want to be alone again. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ll stay.”