SANDERS STOOD IN THE COCKPIT OF THE GIANT MECHA. The humanoid robot orbited a dark planet. Sanders stared at the planet with horror in his eyes. “We can not save them all,” a voice spoke over the intercom. The voice was right — but it still didn’t make it right in Sanders’s head.
“I can not fight anymore…” Sanders said, voice thick with sadness. “…I will not fail them anymore.”
“You don’t mean…!?” The voice said through the intercom.
“Yes, Whedon. I’m giving up. We are not worthy of these powers.” As he said it, Sanders clutched the scythe staff in his hand a little harder. It was a final goodbye.
“Sanders!” Whedon shouted through the intercom. Whedon’s own mecha knight came into Sanders’s view. It floated through zero gravity across Sanders’s window. Its body language almost mimicking the defeated stance that Whedon, the pilot, had inside. In a cockpit much like the one Sanders was operating.
There was the dark planet below them.
Eclipsing some of the sunlight, which reached from behind the dead planet, was the satellite known as the Colonies. It was where they were living while they desperately tried to save the planet. Sanders was sure that their descendants would live for thousands of years in those Colonies. …Even after he was gone.
“I will not fail another planet.” Sanders said.
The mechanical core that was just in his grasp, resting on the end of a pole, laying on a red velvet mat, much like a pedestal, was growing smaller with each command that he channeled. The core would transfer Sanders’s commands into the very mechanics of the mecha knight. The great Sagittarius has flown for the last time — at least for a while. Sanders held his tears.
“Sanders, what are you doing?”
The mechanical core slowly lost mass as Sanders transferred all of his commands for the Sagittarius, leader of the mecha knights. The exhausted parts of the core sweat off as mercury-like fluid. It dripped to the floor, collecting around the base of the pedestal, leaking into a drain on the floor.
“I’m transferring my last command.”
“Sanders, you can’t! You were there when Aethermane split! You are our leader!” The mecha knight Virgo came back into view. “…You are our leader!”
“I have failed us all. I’ve failed Applegate. …And Rowland…”
“What about Laurell!? What would she say!?”
“She would stop me.” Sanders simply said, half concentrating on his final command. “Which is why she’s not here.”
The Sagittarius let go of the glass-like sword it was holding. “Sanders!” Whedon cried again. The sword wasn’t a mecha construct. It was a different manifestation of elemancy altogether. Sanders was one of the few to master it. The mirrorblade, as it was called, drifted away from the mecha knight. There was no wind in space, but the giant blade was being pulled by gravity.
Thrusters were turned on. Sanders could hear them. He watched Virgo’s boots flare to life. “Whedon!” Sanders commanded. “Don’t you dare retrieve that sword!” The Virgo stopped. Fashioned as a female mecha, the Virgo had its signature weapon crossing over its chest. A beam ring that could flare to life and cut through metals of most kinds like butter. Adorned with flower etchings, the beam ring looked weak as a mecha weapon, but Sanders knew differently. Especially when Whedon was wielding it.
“Sanders, please don't do this," Whedon nearly whispered. Sanders could hear the tears in Whedon’s voice.
“It’s too late,” Sanders said as an escape pod appeared from the ceiling and grabbed him. He closed his eyes, arms and legs crossed. The escape pod swallowed him and expelled him out the back of the head of the Sagittarius. The mechanical core in the center of the command room of the mecha knight began to drip with liquid byproduct more steadily now.
The Sagittarius was one of the larger mecha knights. It had pointed protrusions upon its head, like a crown. Along with Sanders’ mirrorblade, the Sagittarius had another signature weapon, a bow with arrows made of beam energy. The Sagittarius was fashioned in gold and purple with red accents here and there.
The Sagittarius saluted and then the thrusters flared on around its boots and back. “Where is it going?” Whedon asked.
“A remote place,” Sanders replied with his eyes closed. His escape pod was boosting him towards the Virgo. “A planet alive. But one that might need some protection. May you do more than I could ever with you.” He said that last part more to himself.
Many Years Later
THE ARIES LANDED DEEP IN THE JUNGLE, FAR FROM ANY KNOWN CIVILIZATION. The people here were tribal and not nearly as technologically advanced as citizens from the Colonies like Laurell. The Aries was in a crouch, spiraled ram horns curled on either side of the mecha’s helmet-like head. The staff of a beam scythe clung to its back with magnetics.
Landing thrusters had cleared out a lot of foliage. But just as quickly the growth of the forest seemed to canopy over the mecha knight. Many of the trees stood taller than the robotic suit. Laurell was reviewing her instruments. “This is where the Sagittarius and the others have come.”
Four more mecha knights landed near the Aries. Two of them cradling two other mechas. Thrusters and mecha landing sent a vibration through the jungle. Everything seemed to go silent, weary, for a moment. Then the primates began to scream in the trees.
The carried mechas, the Scorpio and the Cancer, were posed in standing positions.
“Are we sure we want to do this?” One of the pilots asked.
“I don’t think we have a choice.” Laurell said. “Keep your eyes peeled for sentients.”
“Got that,” a few pilots replied in unison.
How did we fall so far? Laurell thought. She could see Sanders now. The Aries’ beacon bleeped red, showing where the Sagittarius was — or maybe it was one of the other mecha knights that had been abandoned over the years. Sanders had started a tradition. All abandoned mecha knights would be left here, in the jungles of this remote planet. Why Treen? Laurell silently asked Sanders. What is so special about this place?
“I don’t know if I can do this. There are still plenty of worlds that can be saved!”
Silence. “We do it together, as one — or we don’t do it at all,” Laurell commanded. She was their leader now. She has been since Sanders abandoned the Sagittarius and then disappeared into the universe.
The Taurus came into view. “We have a job to do!” The mecha knight stood, arms crossed — just how Laurell knew the pilot was inside. The core mechanics copied the physical commands of the pilot. “We’re the only ones that can do it! We can’t just give up!”
He did, Laurell thought. “There is nothing more that we can do. Applegate has been stopped. Many of the scythes have been lost in the last battle. The universe is dying. It is too far along for us to stop it.”
“Coward!” Andre, the Taurus’ pilot, spat!
“You will stand down!” Laurell ordered.
“You are not my leader anymore.” The Taurus’ fists were clenching.
“Andre, I order you to stand down! We agreed we were going to do this together. As one.”
“We have never been one. Applegate went rogue. Sanders abandoned his oath. We were nothing when they stepped away from our original ideal!”
The Aries stepped aggressively closer. “What do you know of the original oath!? As I recall you were not here when the first of us accepted our stations. You were not there when these knights were built from the asteroids that were collected from across this galaxy. You weren’t even a tickle in your pappy’s pants when Sanders and Applegate transferred their first cores! You weren’t there when Aether split himself into fourteen ribs of power!” Laurell was remembering the moment, “How that godform literally ripped ribs from his own body, with his own hand, straight form his own chest! And tossed them throughout the universe. As one last defense. One last hope.”
“Hope! Exactly! We are that hope!” Andre cried.
The Aries sagged. “I used to think so too.”
“We need you,” Andre pleaded.
The Aries fell to one knee. The mecha knight looked weakened, projecting the stature of the pilot within. “We already made our decision.”
“You mean, you decided for us.”
“Andre!” Whedon said. Andre had taken it too far.
The Aries moved like a blur! The mecha knight was standing, its signature hammer in hand. “Don’t make me,” Laurell threatened. Laurell turned on the beam-power of the hammer.
“This ought to be fun.” Andre said, a smile on her voice. A beam-lance appeared with a bull’s head shield, most of which also beamed with power.
“We don’t have to do this.” Whedon said. “Sanders wouldn’t want this.”
“Sanders abandoned us!” Laurell screamed as the Aries charged! Beam-hammer raised over the mecha’s head.
BOOM!
The sound was deafening as the Aries’ hammer slammed into the Taurus’ shield. A blast of beam-energy shot left and right. The Taurus was ready, already wound for a jab with its beam-lance. The Aries didn’t seem ready. But like their animal counterparts, the Aries was a little more agile than the Taurus. Beam-energy sizzled.
Inside the cockpit, Laurell pulled out another mechanical core from a satchel slung around her torso. The one she had been using was just about depleted. The metallic sweat oozing off the tiny ball was nearly the same size as the core itself. And soon, the ball oozed to nothing. Mercury-like liquid heavily falling into the drain in the floor. Laurell replaced the melted core with the new one. This one was just a bit smaller than her head. It sat in the pedestal, instantly sweating as she transferred commands through it.
At this point, the Taurus rolled a giant-sized core towards the Aries. Laurell wasn’t sure what Andre intended, but like most of the Knights, she knew Andre could transfer commands through a core that wasn’t nearby. This advanced use of core mechanics allowed for some interesting applications.
Like the one Andre was now using.
The giant metal ball rolled towards the Aries. And though Laurell didn’t know what Andre was going to do with the core, she knew that the giant ball rolling towards her wasn’t the threat. It was going to be whatever the core touched. What the core touched could be manipulated.
The ball rolled along the ground and suddenly the earth seemed the curl up behind it, like a carpet of rock and dirt. Laurell tried to move the Aries out of the way, but the influence of Andre’s transfers were too vast. The earth blanket covered too large a space for the Aries to escape. Laurell turned thrusters on and fired everything the Aries had!
The mecha knight launched into the air just as the tidal wave of rock was about to come crashing against the Aries’ star metal layer. The Aries was a fire type mecha. They excel at offensive weapons and thruster flying.
Before the Taurus could lock on for an aerial assault, the Aries’ spiral horns seemed to open, revealing missile silos. Laurell released the missiles.